While I would agree that Obama probably needs some of the homophobic preachers on his side to win the election, I still don’t get why the dems think it’s OK now to support faith-based initiatives now. Typically, they just end up being ways to filter taxpayers’ money into pet projects run by Christian churches. Other religions are generally ignored and even so it’s a grave step of ignoring the first amendment anyway.

Justifications for harsher punishments for hate crimes focus on the notion that hate crimes cause greater individual and societal harm.

In Wisconsin v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously wrote that “bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest…. The State’s desire to redress these perceived harms provides an adequate explanation for its penalty-enhancement provision over and above mere disagreement with offenders’ beliefs or biases. As Blackstone said long ago, ‘it is but reasonable that, among crimes of different natures, those should be most severely punished which are the most destructive of the public safety and happiness.”

When the core of a person’s identity is attacked, the degradation and dehumanization is especially severe, and additional emotional and physiological problems are likely to result. Society then, in turn, can suffer from the disempowerment of a group of people.

Trace,

Your question as to why Obama allows a few anti-gay religious people to support him can best be summed up by realizing Obama cannot win this election without winning in key battleground states which requires some support from religious Americans in those states. Among the states in play are Colorado Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. The White Catholic vote is very much in play especially in places like Pennsylvania. While conservative Evangelicals will never vote for Obama, he can win over moderate and liberal Evangelicals, Catholics and even some conservative mainline Protestants.

Obama has also publicly disassociated himself from McClurkin’s anti gay remarks and repeatedly speaks about LGBT equality before conservative black religious audiences. No other presidential candidate has done this. Prof Kmiec is campaigning for Obama because Kmiec believes Obama’s election will lead to fewer abortions. Kmiec knows Obama is strongly pro-chioce, but thinks Obama’s emphasis on personal responsibility will lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies. All major pro-choice and LGBT groups (except Log cabin) are enthusiasctcally supporting Obama. Just because a few religious homophobes support Obama is no reason not to vote for him. Obama is not going to change his public positions on either choice or LBGT rights as prominently outlined on his website and as he stated on the nationally televised LOGO debate, or he risks being branded a fickel flip flopper in 2012.

Obama also has to overcome the absurd charges by the McCain campaign and McCain supporters that Obama pals around with terrorists, is an Arab, is a stealth Muslim and worse. Of course he needs to reach out to the majority Christian population in battleground states to get elected. Obama is our friend and we need to now give him the benefit of our votes unless and until he proves otherwise.

I also want to respond to your posotion on ENDA but will leave that to amother day.

Finally, as I wrote earlier, compared to McCains cast of horrible supporters, Obama’s is small time.

That said, for the people who advocate for those ideas, it’d be much easier to pull the Republican party back in that direction than it would be to pull the Democratic party towards it, so I imagine to them it seems like a better use of time and energy to go after the GOP.

It’s called a “deal-killer”.

Whatever biases the fool may have had to motivate the action are irrelevant. The only legally significant detail is whether the crime in question was indeed committed.

I’d like to also point out that the AFA has not been entirely sucessful in its bigoted campaign. Its attack on P&G was a complete and utter failure by any measurement.

T’s opinion: I’ve been called an imposter before. Apparently some people (yourself included) can’t even fathom that another lgbt individual might have different political views than them.

Coty Smith: Republicans aren’t rich. Neither major party really correlates well to the purported class struggle. There are rich republicans, but there are also rich democrats. There are an overwhelming number of poor and middle class in both parties.

LCRs are, like other republicans, as quite varied by social class. Support of the ideas of limited government and free markets isn’t a rich vs. poor issue.

The fact that Democrats often propose policies that might be economically advantageous to the poor does not mean that the poor themselves always go out and vote for Democrats.