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Loading ...Pelosi compares health care anger to Milk murder
09.17.2009 4:12pm EDT
(Washington) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the anti-government rhetoric over President Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is concerning because it reminds her of the violent debate over gay rights that roiled San Francisco in the 1970s.
Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results.“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, suddenly speaking quietly. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening” and created a climate in which violence took place, she said.
Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted of the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.
During a rambling confession, White was quoted as saying, “I saw the city as going kind of downhill.” His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time. White committed suicide in 1985.
Pelosi is part of a generation of California Democrats on whom the assassinations had a searing effect. A resident of San Fransisco, Pelosi had been a Democratic activist for years and knew Milk and Moscone. At the time of their murders, she was serving as chairwoman of her party in the northern part of the state.
On Thursday, Pelosi was answering a question about whether the current vitriol concerned her. The questioner did not refer to the murders of Milk or Moscone, or the turmoil in San Francisco three decades ago. Pelosi referenced those events on her own and grew uncharacteristically emotional.
“I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made,” Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume,” she said.
“Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe,” she added. “But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.”
Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for examples of contemporary statements that reminded the speaker of the rhetoric of 1970s San Francisco.
The public anger during health care town hall meetings in August spilled into the House last week when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama, the nation’s first black president, during his speech. On a largely party-line vote, the House reprimanded Wilson.
I’m white and gay and not a racist. When the family rates for the government health option are denied to you because we won’t be considered a “family” per DOMA, perhaps Ms. Pelosi will pay for your health insurance premiums because she’s done nothing else to help the gay community.
Yodafriend, one day you too will be elderly and there are a lot of older people who don’t fit the stereotype you mentioned and there a lot of good southern people who are a lot warmer, sweeter, friendlier and a heck of lot nicer than some northerners I’ve met.
I should know, some of them are my own relatives from different states of the south.
We already know about the bad southerners. There are good southern people too. Why don’t you mention them?
Yodafriend, be careful with generalities. You said “Most of “White America” are racist. . .you have to realize that the elderly people still living cannot believe that the election happened fairly. They are mad, and hateful, and pissed that the country is being run by a “BLACK MAN.”
At age 76, I qualify as “elderly” and I am NOT “mad, hateful, and pissed” that Obama won. I voted for him and rejoiced when he did win. If you had said “some” elderly people, I would have agreed with you, but there are a lot of us out here who don’t fit your stereotype.
igub,
I believe that you are refering to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That is how I am going to refer to her.
The people who work every day in Congress are more aware of whether something like DOMA will get sufficient votes and pass in this Congress where the health care debate, the economy and the war in Afghanistan are the largest topics of the day than those who have not spent one working day there. Health care alone (I heard on TV during the debates) is about a sixth of the total US economy.
Barney Frank listed DADT repeal as by this doable amongst other gay issues he mentioned that he would take on as he believed the votes were there for them, whereas DOMA wasn’t quite there yet.
DOMA of course is the crown jewel at it is the legal rationale behind so many other federal level antigay laws. Once you do away with the federal level of DOMA, the rest like no federal recognition of foreign and domestic marriage equality from our border, airport and seaport customs booths, to our social security administration, and everything else of a federal nature would soon be cleaned up.
>So, this chick who has done NOTHING to repeal DADT or DOMA now wants to trot out the gay card? Give me a break.
“Enough about me. What do you think of my *dress*?!”
People who can’t put down their own agenda long enough to see an important bigger picture are part of what’s wrong with American political discourse today.
1) Health care reform is a huge issue that affects everyone, including gay people, and 2) Putting a monkey wrench into the Infuriated-Anti-Government-Racist-Hate approach that the far Right is using right now can only *help* the gay-rights movement in the long right.
It’s connected. Being so myopic about gay rights hurts us more than helps us, IMO.
The AP sure are experts at mis-identifying the actual content of articles. Pelosi did not compare anger over health care to the murder of Harvey Milk. What Pelosi did was refer to the climate which precipitated the murder of Mr. Milk. She hardly even referred to the murder itself, she never mentioned names, so why are so many people (both left AND right) getting upset about it? Maybe because she was right about the potential that words have to create reactions, and that scares a lot of people. Pelosi’s statements were a call to personal responsibility, not merely a condemnation of hate-speech.
I guess if this story proves anything, it proves that people will rise to protest whatever they can. A person in a high position in the government calls for personal responsibility and the overwhelming reaction is to call her names. What a sad state of affairs.
Also, I sincerely want to know why it wasn’t appropriate to bring up the political and social climate that helped lead to the assassinations Harvey Milk and George Moscone. So Pelosi isn’t personally repealing DADT and DOMA as I write these words. Does that really mean she’s completely worthless to GLBT people. If so… my goodness… what hope is there for this “community?”
As a white male, I agree with you Yodafriend. I strongly believe that all of these republican supported town hall disruptions are the result of deeply seated racism. If Obama had been 100% white, I think there would have been less of the hateful vitriole. These psychopaths just can’t get over the fact that an African American beat the crap out of them in the November 2008 election. They are seething. So let them continue with the hate, they’ll only push their party even further into political exile where they belong, permanently.
Very real and very scary. And why examples are needed are beyond me and stupid. Just look at the last 90 day of political news or videos.
igub, you make no sense.
Although this is not a “gay” story, the concern is about the violence people are protesting at the Health care summits in their hometowns. I do think that she shouldn’t have brought up, the story of Harvey Milk, but she is just trying to prove a point, that the violence we are seeing in America is going to explode with these angry idiots.
The only reason she brought up the story of Mayor Moscone, and Harvey Milk, is because she was there and saw what happened on a personal note. This article shouldn’t have been brought up on this “365 Gay news website”,but that was the first thing that she had experienced with violence in the media.
I do wonder why America is so hateful towards the president, but then again, he is a black man, who is running the country. Most of “White America” are racist. Before you bite my head off at that comment, you have to realize that the elderly people still living cannot believe that the election happened fairly. They are mad, and hateful, and pissed that the country is being run by a “BLACK MAN.”
I grew up in the south, and there still are people down here that hate minorities, and shoot and kill people because their skin color is darker. I date interracially, and prefer black men, but I have also been chased down for the person I was dating, and called all sorts of names by people, much less some of them were gay. It’s a terrible thing that happens here in the south, and although it happens in other places around the country, they’re still dumb people down south. Anyways, this has nothing to do with the story, so sorry for speaking my mind.
So, this chick who has done NOTHING to repeal DADT or DOMA now wants to trot out the gay card? Give me a break. If she were so worried about us, she’d work to repeal DADT or DOMA.
They need a fricken’ example?
How about:
The abortion MD that was shot & killed.
All the other Nurses and staff at planned parenthood’s that have been killed in bombings.
All us Queer’s that are shot, mugged, raped, tortured just because who we are.
Matthew Sheppard.
If any democratic senator yelled out “You Lie” during a Bush II address of a joint session of congress in 2005 they would have been brought up on treason charges.