“Willfully Ignoring Everything Romney Has Said”: Log Cabin Republicans Kidding Themselves About A Romney Supreme Court
I’m not surprised that the Log Cabin Republicans have gone against the best interests of LGBT Americans in endorsing Mitt Romney. Responding to their rationalization would normally not be worth the time, but one of their attempts at self-justification deserves a response. They claim, “Those who point fearfully to potential vacancies on the United States Supreme Court, we offer a reminder: five of the eight federal court rulings against DOMA were written by Republican-appointed judges. Mitt Romney is not Rick Santorum, and Paul Ryan is not Michele Bachmann.”
The Log Cabin Republicans have willfully ignored everything Mitt Romney has said about the Supreme Court.
Romney has said that he will appoint Supreme Court justices and lower court judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who are both adamantly opposed to protecting the rights of gay people under the Constitution. Both dissented in Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling that ended criminal sodomy laws. In his dissent, Scalia accused the Court’s majority of signing on to the “homosexual agenda.” These are the kind of justices that Mitt Romney has promised to nominate to the Supreme Court.
We can also look to Romney’s choice of Robert Bork to lead his judicial advisory committee, a clear signal that he’s ready to cede judicial nominations to the religious right. Bork has vehemently disagreed with every pro-gay-rights decision the Supreme Court has ever made, and he even claims that marriage equality will lead to “man-boy associations” and “polygamy.” This is who Romney has picked to advise him on judicial nominations.
Romney doesn’t just support amending the Constitution to prohibit marriage equality, an amendment that every justice would be obliged to enforce. Everything Romney has said about judicial nominations indicates that he will appoint Supreme Court justices and lower court judges who will do lasting damage to the rights of all Americans — including LGBT people. No LGBT American or anyone who believes in equality should be fooled into thinking otherwise.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, October 23, 2012
“Pro-Domestic Violence Party”: GOP Opposes Expanded Domestic Violence Bill
The Violence Against Women Act was enacted in 1994 and has been reauthorized twice with bipartisan support. No one in Congress has ever wanted to be branded the pro-domestic violence party. Yet this week, the Republicans and Democrats entered into a bitter feud that fuels talk of the GOP’s purported “war on women,” and gives Democrats like Representative Judy Chu of California an opportunity to bust out phrases like, “It’s not the Violence Against Women act, but the Open Season for Violence Against Women Act.” From the perspective of the GOP, approving a new version of the act would help protect immigrants and homosexuals from intimate partner violence, and in 2012, that simply cannot stand!
In April, the Senate passed legislation that expands services for immigrants who are domestic abuse victims and specifies that people who are gay, lesbian, and transgender are covered under the law. After a bitter fight on Wednesday, the House passed its own version of the bill, which removed the new provisions in the Senate’s legislation, in a 222 to 205 vote.
Throughout the debate, the GOP’s refrain has been that the bill already protects everyone, so there’s no need to name specific groups. Sounds pretty logical! Yet the GOP is ignoring the fact that immigrants and LGBT people won’t be adequately protected under the House’s version of the law. Per the Christian Science Monitor:
The House bill does not allow for a path to citizenship for illegal women who have been abused and agree to cooperate with the police investigation of the crime. Moreover, it holds the cap on temporary visas offered to women cooperating in legal investigations to 10,000, below the Senate’s increased 15,000 level. Republicans say the citizenship provision is akin to amnesty for illegal immigrants, and expressed fears that the Senate bill will lead to an epidemic of immigrants staging elaborate fake domestic violence situations to get away from their non-abusive partners.Democrats, on the other hand, say that women fearing deportation may never come forward to take abusers off the street under the House bill.
The intent behind specifically naming lesbian, gay, and transgender victims is to prevent law enforcement from using the vague language in VAWA to exclude them from services. Studies have shown that these groups experience domestic violence at the same rates as the general population, but victims are far less likely to seek help.
The American Bar Association, Human Rights Watch, and leaders from 31 religious groups, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals, have all spoken out against the House’s bill. President Obama has threatened to veto the House bill, and now Congress needs to hash out a compromise between the two versions of the bill, ensuring that the debate will stay in the news.
By: Margaret Hartman, Daily Intel, May 17, 2012
Yep, “Call Him Cynical”: Rand Paul Rebuked For Gay Marriage Remark
Sen. Rand Paul, who said he wasn’t sure President Obama‘s views on marriage “could get any gayer,” was rebuked by an influential evangelical leader Sunday.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, appearing onCBS’ “Face the Nation,” strongly disagreed with the Kentucky Republican’s choice of words.
“I don’t think this is something we should joke about,” Perkins said. “We are talking about individuals who feel very strongly one way or the other, and I think we should be civil, respectful, allowing all sides to have the debate…. I think this is not something to laugh about. It’s not something to poke fun at other people about. This is a very serious issue.”
Perkins’ words were echoed by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on NBC’s“Meet the Press” Sunday.
“People in this country, no matter straight or gay, deserve dignity and respect. However, that doesn’t mean it carries on to marriage,” Priebus said. “I think that most Americans agree that in this country, the legal and historic and the religious union marriage has to have the definition of one man and one woman.”
Paul made his remarks during a meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa on Friday.
“The president recently weighed in on marriage and you know he said his views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical, but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Same-sex marriage surged to the forefront of political debate after Obama declared his support last week.
In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts — hastily arranged to quiet the fallout from Vice PresidentJoe Biden’s comments days earlier that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage — Obama said: “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” He also said it was “the golden rule, you know? Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.”
In response, likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney reiterated his belief that “marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.”
And Rand Paul’s father, GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, said the government should not make rules on marriage.
The libertarian view, he told Fox News, is, “Stay out of people’s lives. I would like the state to stay out of marriage…. Let two people define marriage.”
By: Morgan Little, The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012
“If Obama’s Fer It, I’m Agin’ It”: Obama’s Embrace Of Marriage Equality Is Very Smart Politics
In the case of Mitt Romney, when it comes to civil rights issues, he is not his father’s son.
His dad was a good guy—as Michigan’s governor, he marched for civil rights, embraced women’s rights and helped labor unions to obtain fairer treatment at the bargaining table in Michigan—and it was always reasonable to hope that the kid would inherit at least some honorable qualities.
But Mitt Romney’s response to President Obama’s announcement of support for marriage equality has been so tone deaf and exploitive that I suspect even George Romney would be disappointed in the kid. The presumptive Republican nominee for president says: “I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name.” And his campaign has indicated that it intends to make a big deal about the president’s shift in stance. Romney’s senior adviser, Ed Gillespie, says the Romney camp is prepared to campaign on the issue of enacting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
So one of the wealthiest and most elite men ever to seek the presidency of the United States will campaign on a promise to use the constitution of the United States to bar equal protection under the law.
This is not the way Romneys used to respond to the march of social progress.
When President John Kennedy clearly and unequivocally embraced the civil rights cause—by very publicly inviting the organizers of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to the White House—George Romney was the rising star of the Republican Party and a potential rival to Kennedy. Yet, he hailed the president for doing the right thing. Indeed, he prodded Kennedy to do a bit more.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, seems to be in the “If Obama’s fer it, I’m agin’ it” camp. And there are no signs that he will try to guide his Republican Party toward a moderate stance on what remains a hot-button social issues. Which, of course, explains why President Obama is likely to win the 2012 election over the lesser Romney.
Obama’s embrace of marriage equality, while typically tortured and over-cautious, was entirely appropriate morally.
It was also VERY smart politics.
National polling shows that most Americans favor marriage equality, but there remains a solid 45 percent that is opposed.
On the surface, that might seem like a serious concern for a politician who would prefer to be liked to everybody—or, at the least, most everybody.
But presidential politics is not a national affair. It is a series of state elections. And opposition to marriage equality is disproportionally concentrated in the south, border states and the interior west—where Obama is never going to win.
There are also pockets of significant opposition in some battleground states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. But, again, the most fervent foes of same-sex marriage have a lot of other problems with Obama. So his shift in stance is not pushing away many voters. Even among the older voters of Florida, who may not be all that comfortable with “the love that dare not speak its name” speaking its name, there are other priorities—like keeping Romney and Paul Ryan from bartering off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So Obama’s not risking much by endorsing same-sex marriage. But he is gaining a lot.
The greatest challenge for Obama’s 2012 reelection strategy is—or, perhaps we should say, “was”—a lack of enthusiasm among the young voters who got so excited about his 2008 campaign. And young voters like marriage equality, a lot. It polls over 70 percent, according to Gallup. Indeed, polling suggests that, among all the Republican Party stances that most trouble young voters, it is the GOP’s opposition to LGBT rights that most unsettled them.
Smart Republicans, and there really are quite a few of them, recognize this reality.
That’s why the party’s LGBT wing—and, yes, there are gay and lesbian Republicans—is objecting so loudly to Mitt Romney’s morally and politically inappropriate response to Obama’s statement.
Marriage equality has captured the nation’s attention, and the response to President Obama’s announcement is evidence of the tide turning in favor of equality for all. Log Cabin Republicans have long believed that supporting the freedom to marry is the right thing to do and the president’s joining this effort is in the nation’s best interest. That said, Americans can be certain that the president would not have made this decision at this time if it were not in his best political interests. In addition to energizing his base and distracting attention from a failed economic record, the trap is laid for any Republican who responds with intolerance,” said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “Already some in the GOP are taking the bait with former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie bringing up the twice-failed Federal Marriage Amendment and the unfortunate vote on Representative Heulskamp’s (R-KS) amendment re-affirming DOMA last night. Democrats are eager to fundraise off of this issue. It is in the best interests of Republican candidates to be measured and disciplined in response, recognizing that a generational shift has occurred.”
The Log Cabin Republicans are not always right.
But they are right on this issue. As Cooper says, “Governor Mitt Romney’s statement in opposition to not just marriage but civil unions jeopardizes his ability to win moderates, women and younger voters, especially as a large majority of Americans favor some form of relationship recognition for their LGBT friends and neighbors. Ultimately, the response of the Republican candidates this election cycle will determine not just endorsements by Log Cabin Republicans, but the votes of millions of Americans who are simply tired of the culture wars.”
Unlike George Romney, who embraced the future and urged his party to do the same, Mitt Romney is not just clinging to the past. He is presiding over a campaign and a party that appears to be intent on pretending that this is 1912, as opposed to 2012. That miscalculation is explains why the the Obama camp is so enthusiastically highlighting the president’s new position—and why savvy Republicans are so fretful.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 10, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 