February 19, 2006
The decision to eliminate the "Director of GLBT Outreach" position at the DNC continues to make news. Bay Windows, New England's largest LGBT Newspaper, has this article (you have to page down a little). Gay City News, a NYC paper, has this article.
But the real discussion on the LGBTI Blogosphere. Check out Page OneQ and Pam's House Blend.
Posted by David at February 19, 2006 05:49 AM
It seems that Dean and the DNC's basic response is that integrating LGBT concerns into a broader structure will ensure that LGBT concerns are not marginalized. They also assume that the plethora of gay and lesbian staffers will keep our community's concerns front-and-center.
Historically, our community has never done very well when we have been "integrated". In fact, that route has led to more marginalization as we are continually asked to subvert our political interests in favor of a broader political agenda that is supposed to, somehow, someday lead us to equality.
Similarly, the DNC's demurring that so many of its satff are gay or lesbian smacks of the same logical lapse that plagues George W. Bush when he asserts his sensitivity to Africa-American interests because his Secretary of State is a black woman.
If the Democratic Party is not yet beyond the logical fallacy of "add gays and stir", then we are falling behind as a community and as a political movement.
Just arriving in the country, I now see that it seems the push for the progress of human civilization seems to be showing itself in the form of running from the fact that the human beings are no less human if they are gay,lesbian, or straight. Now, is not the time to pretend to be republican to get votes by selling out on our principles. Even though I am straight I can tell you that I do not agree with the military's current discriminative policy towards those with different sexual orientation. Since, I have now seen first hand life in the "regular day to day military" I know that current political thinking is now behind the times. The conservatives would have you think that they are with the mood of the people but there is a whole different reality in the military. Please stand firm for democratic principles we can still be liberal, conservative and progressive if we support equal rights for all human beings no matter what their sexual orientation.
I have just returned from Iraq and even though Mr. Hackett may not be from my branch of the service : I am mad as hell about what has transpired because he is a fellow soldier. The tactics that have been used against myself and other democratic candidates such as Mr. Pederson from Arizona, ever since we had announced our intentions to run for the U.S. Senate have taught me that our democracy is not always so democratic.
My family's benefits and income were threatened (and therefore they were threatened with being thrown out on the street) as well as myself being threatened with imprisonment in a federal pen for the rest of my life. Then just recently my state taxes were audited (supposedly) randomly while I was over in a combat zone and every penny was then taken straight out of my family's bank account. So, I have learned the hard way about so called American Democracy.
But I know one thing : They never should have attacked my family for now I will fight non-violently the fight to rescue the War on Terror from those who have hijacked it to enrich themselves and their corporate lackeys and who have therefore lowered the defenses of our nation. I will also demand that Mr. Murtha's plan on U.S. Soldiers being withdrawn be acted on with a quick reaction force being
I have just returned from Iraq and I still see the same lie being foisted upon you the American people. I have ridden first hand day by day either as gunner or driver in my Humvee for a year long tour of hell in Iraq where everyday you have to play Russian Roulette with your life. Imagine having someone place a 357 magnum pistol next to your head everyday and praying that it won't go off. Then you start to get a feel for what some of us soldiers feel who go out of the wire everyday in Iraq.
Of course you always hear that we volunteered to defend our country and place our lives on the line well that it is true but what we did not volunteer for was to be slaughtered like sheep. Here's an example of what I mean :
Anybody who drives down the roads of Iraq through its cities and villages will pass by whole stretches of road where slaughter markets for sheep rebound. The stench from these slaughtered sheep is so strong sometimes that it is all one can do not to vomit when passing them. The passerby will see these poor sheep writhing and twisting in pain as their throats are cut and it is truly a pitiful sight as they slowly die with no way to defend themselves as their blood drains out in the street.
Well, the reason I had to bring up that whole example is to dismiss the criticism that we soldiers should die like sheep. But that's not the way it's going to be told to you the American people. What I have just told you is only the tip of the iceberg if you knew everything you would even redouble your efforts to get my poor fellow soldiers out of this grand lie foisted on us by grand infamous liars.
I am not going to stand by as an American citizen and let this happen I will not be that citizen who says he was just following orders as the Nazi war criminals stated at Nuremburg. I am for fighting the War on Terror and not hijacking it to enrich my personal corporate donor friends and lackeys.
Our country is under attack from terrorist without and tyrants within.
Abraham Lincoln was right in his 1838 speech when he stated that the greatest danger that this country could face wouldn't be from the enemies outside of our country but from domestic tyrants inside it.
Of course now there are those fellow American citizens who wish to do those of us violence for telling the truth. If they carry out these acts of violence against us: the People who wish to bring back our soldiers from this lying hell in Iraq then they are no different from the foreign terrorist who tried to kill me and my fellow soldiers in Iraq. The only difference will be that they will have become domestic terrorist instead of foreign ones in the vein of Timothy McVeigh.
The people that I follow are those who made our country an even better democracy through non-violence and the fact that "Right" was on their side, people such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Caeser Chaverz.
I will be officially running for the U.S. Senate as of March 29, 2006 and I will not officially campaign for it until that date. As of now I am not a candidate but will be in 33 days. (unless of course there accidents that just happen to stop me along the way, you know what I mean : arrest, jack booted thugs at the door in the middle of the night.
my views do not represent the U.S. government nor the Department of Defense
Leonard Clark
Kindergarten teacher
and damned liberal
(always the damned liberal)
