Carpenter is such a fool, that he imagines that there has ever BEEN a “marriage” of gay Republicans and the GLBT movement.

Such a “marriage” has been only in his fevered mind, while Republicans praised Scalia and kicked Log Cabin Republicans out of their conventions.

I can’t imagine how self deluded people like Carpenter have to be to get up in the morning, but I do know that the GLBT movement will not feel any loss if suddenly Log Cabin Republicans cease to be part of their “marriage”

Exactly. It’s politically naive for Republican gays to believe otherwise. The Republican Party is not likely to give up its southern base with its tens of millions of voters that made the GOP a majority party, just to gain, at best, a few million gay votes.

Consider the following quote from the book, The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba. (It’s a free download at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/)

“By most estimates the religious right constitutes about 40 percent of
Republican supporters nationwide, which means that most of the people who vote
Republican do not belong to the movement. But that 60 percent has almost no say in what the party does, because the 40 percent constitutes by far the largest organized block of voters in the party, and in the country.”

“How organized are they? After their leaders have decided who will run on the
Republican ticket in an election, religious fundamentalists donate money, work the phones for hours on end, canvass night and day, bring the candidate to their social groups, talk to their neighbors, and drop leaflets over and over again to win the race. After all, proselytizing is one of the things they do best, and politics is now directly connected to their religion. In fact political ‘education’ and ‘guidance’ come directly from the pulpit in many churches now.”

Actually, a smaller government in the past did no such thing. “Smaller government” from days past simply focused its resources on topics that the administration (feels is) felt was important.

For over 1000 years, the “smaller” governments persecuted gays and often tortured or executed them. One who does not study and understand history is doomed to repeat its mistakes and ills and become its victim.

I am apalled at the comments here that anyone in the LGBTQI community would defer their freedoms and liberties to any group or political party. Our “queer freedoms and liberties” have been hard fought with blood and guts and pain and anguish.

We have had to spend untold amounts of emotion, time and money to get our dire situations in front of the courts to overcome the “tyranny of the majority” and the evils of those in power.

We have had to live in fear and hiding to be able to keep our lives and hard earned possessions. Here is a list of unfair practices we still endure:

(1) We have to pay higher taxes as “legally unrecognized” couples and families.

(2) We have to pay higher taxes on our company benefits via our domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriages as unrecognized by 47 states and all same-sex relationships unrecognized by the federal government.

(3) We have to pay exhorbitant legal fees and attoney fees to draw up “specialized contractal instruments” to protect our homes, savings and our “unrecognized rights”, just to access our partners and children in times of distress, bad health and death.

(4) We also have to pay to renew these papers on a regular basis to keep up with the changes in laws, or suffer the loss of “what we thougth we were agreeing to in perpetuity.”

(5) We have to live with unfair laws that either indirectly or specifically target our same-sex relationships, such as unfair housing situations, personal discrimination or even FORCED separation at our end-of-life events.

(6) We have to endure our homophobic family members trying to or succeeding to break our wills, trusts and other contractual agreements. Even if they do not succeed, they requrie us to employ attorneys who charge large fees.

(7) We have to face the terror of verbal and physical attacks, some of which result in murder, and then are ignored by the legal system and police. Not all states have any or sufficient hate crime laws on the books, which sill includes the Wyoming where Matthew Shepard was murdered over 10 years ago.

(8) We have to endure “comdemnation” from about 95% of the religious organizations, who spout hatred and bigotry without apology. Does anyone remember when some paramedics, nurses, doctors and funeral directors would not handle a person who had HIV or AIDS? Well, it still exists in places in the US. We listened to it being called the “gay plague”, even when a majority of cases were (and still is) among hetersexual people.

(9) We have to endure banishment, neglect and disregard from famly and friends when we come out and begin truthfully living as designed by our DNA.

(10) We seldom have any support from some in the medical and health care community. They quietly refer us to another provider, and even hear lectures about how their religious beliefs (which are a choice!) superceed our right to decent health care.

I am sure there are many other items to add to this list. Please feel free to enumerate these and others.

Anyone who disagrees with these truths surely has their head in the sand and must be purely materialistic.

As for me, being human and being treated fully humanely, from birth to/though death, trumps all other ideals and philosophies.

These ideals MUST transcend politics, and superceed all religions or other belief systems.

I don’t agree with gay Republicans on 95% of the issues in play right now. Those that are closeted and working against our interests like Senator Craig should be drawn out into the spotlight, but those choose to work from the inside of the Republican party (however much I may disagree with their strategy) and don’t support measures that work against our families, should at least be given a safe haven for open conversations.

We are in this together however much some people may want to deny it. Enough of the attacks Wayne. This election year has gone negative enough already without you adding more fuel to the fire. Are you going to follow Obama’s example of reaching out or Palin’s example of divisiveness?