When the Republicans Sweep in November, What is the Future of Gay Rights?

[Stardreamer]

The Tea Party will most likely have an effect similar to an actual third party that gathers a significant portion of the vote, the Democrats and Republican will start modifying their own platforms to draw the disaffected back. Expect shifts toward fiscal conservatism from both parties within the boundaries of their own ideologies.

 

[Kulindahr]

According to the NY Times, there are 138 Total Tea Party candidates running for House and Senate seats. 38 are African American, which is quite interesting for a group alleged to be racists. Of this total number about 41 are expected to actually get elected. That's less than 10% of the 535 members of both houses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/us/politics/15teaparty.html

So don't get your panties all in a bunch fearing a Tea Party deluge. If they govern like the Constitution says, there should be no real problem. If that doesn't pan out, it's unlikely the Senate will have 60 of either party that they need to move legislation. Failing that, we come to the weak link in the chain, Obama. He can't be counted on to stand with us. If he does, great. But I wouldn't get you hopes up based on his actions so far. After that, the courts are a crap shoot depending on which circuit you are going to.

Overall, I don't think it's going to make a whole lot of difference.

What about Asian-Americans?

 

[mbamike]

I will be voting on November 2nd. I will be voting for the Democratic candidates. I urge everyone who can to vote also. This is NOT the election to sit out.

 

[jackoroe]

Are you sure about this, Jackaroe? It doesn't sound right.

It was actually 37, mea culpa.

Despite allegations of racism in Tea Party organizations, the Republican Party, and conservative groups, 2010 has witnessed more black Republican activism than ever before. Thirty-seven African Americans in 16 states have been in contention for seats in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives this year.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/5030-tea-party-could-put-record-number-of-black-conservatives-in-office

 

[Stardreamer]

It was actually 37, mea culpa.



http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/5030-tea-party-could-put-record-number-of-black-conservatives-in-office

The Tea Party is not about race, yes there are racists and other extremist in their ranks but that going to be true of any populist grass roots movement like this, it going to attract wackos on the edges but it is about financial and small government.

 

[palemale]

The Tea Party is not about race, yes there are racists and other extremist in their ranks but that going to be true of any populist grass roots movement like this, it going to attract wackos on the edges but it is about financial and small government.

The problem is that the tea party movement has wackos at its core. The ones who aren't wackos are on the edge. Their just the cynical opportunists, like Dick Armey, who are trying to harness the movement to advance the traditional, know-nothing policies of the far right in America and the Republican Party. There is nothing new about tea party ideas.

 

[jackoroe]

The problem is that the tea party movement has wackos at its core. The ones who aren't wackos are on the edge. Their just the cynical opportunists, like Dick Armey, who are trying to harness the movement to advance the traditional, know-nothing policies of the far right in America and the Republican Party. There is nothing new about tea party ideas.

There is nothing new about the concept of limited government. It's spelled out in the Constitution. Both sides need to try and read the document. And then, God forbid, actually follow it's guidance.

 

[palemale]

There is nothing new about the concept of limited government. It's spelled out in the Constitution. Both sides need to try and read the document. And then, God forbid, actually follow it's guidance.

The problem with conservatives/tea partiers/Republicans is that the concept that the world changes is foreign to them. Running a modern government as if this was still the 18th Century will doom any chance of the United States having a stable and prosperous future. Of course, the Republicans want to run the country like a third world country, in the sense that we would have a crony capitalist system where certain corporations receive favored treatment in exchange for money to grease the wheels of the electoral system to keep in power those people who shower government largess on the favored corporations.

Haliburton is exhibit A of this phenomenon.

 

[jackoroe]

The problem with conservatives/tea partiers/Republicans is that the concept that the world changes is foreign to them. Running a modern government as if this was still the 18th Century will doom any chance of the United States having a stable and prosperous future. Of course, the Republicans want to run the country like a third world country, in the sense that we would have a crony capitalist system where certain corporations receive favored treatment in exchange for money to grease the wheels of the electoral system to keep in power those people who shower government largess on the favored corporations.

Haliburton is exhibit A of this phenomenon.

You fail to address the my main point. The Constitution is the governing document of the United States. Liberals and sometimes neoconservatives find it to be inconvenient, but it is what it is. If you want a more expansive Federal government, the Constitution prohibits it. Now you either change the Constitution so that we can allow the Federal government into every area of our lives, or we follow it and have a limited government. The people appear to be fed up with the idea to the Nanny State at the moment.

 

[palemale]

You fail to address the my main point. The Constitution is the governing document of the United States. Liberals and sometimes neoconservatives find it to be inconvenient, but it is what it is. If you want a more expansive Federal government, the Constitution prohibits it. Now you either change the Constitution so that we can allow the Federal government into every area of our lives, or we follow it and have a limited government. The people appear to be fed up with the idea to the Nanny State at the moment.

The Constitution has never been interpreted by the courts as prohibiting expansive government. That concept is a figment of the imagination of "flat earth" conservatives. Obviously, the founders wrote a governing document that would permit a government to adapt to changing times. There's a reason why our government is the world's oldest democracy.

 

[frankfrank]

According to the NY Times, there are 138 Total Tea Party candidates running for House and Senate seats. 38 are African American, which is quite interesting for a group alleged to be racists. Of this total number about 41 are expected to actually get elected. That's less than 10% of the 535 members of both houses.
.

Thank you Jack-o-Lantern (SORRY, temporary "suggested" name change, Halloween is nearly here, I couldn't resist) for the statistics...I've kept waiting for somebody to actually put all of this together. It's very easy to think that there is indeed a Tea Party deluge coming, from what's all over the media. And certainly the "38 are African American" would have been nothing that I could have come even close to guessing.

I don't always agree with you, of course, but I enjoy your posts greatly, as many are well thought out, and you're not just parroting "talking points" that are set by an agenda somewhere. This is one of the rare places I can come, and see viewpoints from all sides.

I will be voting on November 2nd. I will be voting for the Democratic candidates. I urge everyone who can to vote also. This is NOT the election to sit out.

DONE! Early voting is available in Illinois.

What about the Tenth Amendment?

This may be the most important Amendment in the entire document, but it is very rarely quoted by anybody. Thank you for reminding all of us.

 

[Kulindahr]

"I want small-government."


Translation: "Cut off the black people. They abuse it all anyway."

Sure. That's why 27% of the 'Tea Party' candidates on the ballot aren't white.


"I want small government" means wanting government like the Founders conceived -- where you could after a brief journey knock on the door of your representative and have a little talk.

The federal government is supposed to be a referee keeping the states from harmful competition, and handling one foreign policy for all -- and that's it. That's all that's in the Constitution.

Jackoroe is right: we've slapped on all sorts of things under the rubric of a set of phrases that are represented to mean the government can do anything it wanted. With the authority being smuggled in presently in the health care law, on top of what's gone before, the government could be argued to have legitimate authority in regulating penis length -- all that would be required is some vague link to "general welfare".

Social Security should have had an amendment to authorize it, along with the vast majority of what we have in D.C. But the great friend of Joe Stalin envied the latter's power and threw out the Constitution. Then he dragged in some puppets to authorize it. We're living in his legacy: intrusive, authoritarian statism with a veneer of democracy painted over the diminishing remnants of the Republic.

 

[Stardreamer]

I don't always agree with you, of course, but I enjoy your posts greatly, as many are well thought out, and you're not just parroting "talking points" that are set by an agenda somewhere. This is one of the rare places I can come, and see viewpoints from all sides.

One of the things that attracts me here to, most other political discussions I have been in are dominated by one viewpoint with just a couple of 'token' posters from the other side who are largely ridiculed and ignored. The same does happen here but its not as bad and there seems to be some thoughtful discussion of viewpoints once you get past that.

 

[Kulindahr]

One of the things that attracts me here to, most other political discussions I have been in are dominated by one viewpoint with just a couple of 'token' posters from the other side who are largely ridiculed and ignored. The same does happen here but its not as bad and there seems to be some thoughtful discussion of viewpoints once you get past that.

Even our best candidates for trolldom post things worth discussing once in a while. That helps.

 

[fasteddy]

Contrary to the silly postings by CowboyBob, no more is going to happen to gay rights under republicans than happened under democrats. Il Duce and his minions could have overturned DODT and the DOMA in the 1st half hour of the 1st day they took power. They didn't. Why???? Because they already had our vote and know that we think we have nowhere else to go and we are not a threat to their incumbency. We have placed ourselves in the bottom position for the democrats and then fail to get upset when they fuck us over repeatedly.

What many here don't realize is that tens of millions of Americans get through their day without giving a moments thought to gay rights. Both parties know that and one chooses to pander to us for our votes while knowing they will only give lip service ( and not the fun kind) and the other likes to use the extremes of our little community to also garner votes from the less than enlightened. I have just finished going through 8 months of meetings and events for a number of candidates I have been assisting in this election cycle. I don't think gay rights was a topic of more than 2 minutes of time for all the campaigns.


The problem with a "right" granted or bestowed by anyone but God or the U.S. Constitution is that is can be taken away by that grantee if they so choose. From a libertarian standpoint I see a better chance of a constitutional guarantee of our rights in the future than a legislative one. Many in the gay rights movement are ambivelent to that because they are more interested in a pat on the head and approval of being gay rather than the benign indifference a constitutional guarantee would give.

 

[fasteddy]

^^^

Factcheck (or perhaps amnesia on your part)

The House (yes the one which has all those horrible Democrats in it) already voted to repeal DADT and the Senate is poised to vote on the Defense Authorization Act, which as amended by the Senate Armed Services Committee (yes the one which has all those horrible Democrats in it) includes a repeal.

And I and most other gays who voted in 2008 never expected Congress to touch DOMA, and I won't for many years to come.

I'm well aware the house voted on it. I'm also aware they waited until there was no chance of it passing both houses. As I said earlier,(perhaps you missed that part) they could have repealed both in the 1st 30 minutes of the 1st day they held power but chose not to. In short, they fucked us again.

 

[Kulindahr]

Contrary to the silly postings by CowboyBob, no more is going to happen to gay rights under republicans than happened under democrats. Il Duce and his minions could have overturned DODT and the DOMA in the 1st half hour of the 1st day they took power. They didn't. Why???? Because they already had our vote and know that we think we have nowhere else to go and we are not a threat to their incumbency. We have placed ourselves in the bottom position for the democrats and then fail to get upset when they fuck us over repeatedly.

What many here don't realize is that tens of millions of Americans get through their day without giving a moments thought to gay rights. Both parties know that and one chooses to pander to us for our votes while knowing they will only give lip service ( and not the fun kind) and the other likes to use the extremes of our little community to also garner votes from the less than enlightened. I have just finished going through 8 months of meetings and events for a number of candidates I have been assisting in this election cycle. I don't think gay rights was a topic of more than 2 minutes of time for all the campaigns.


The problem with a "right" granted or bestowed by anyone but God or the U.S. Constitution is that is can be taken away by that grantee if they so choose. From a libertarian standpoint I see a better chance of a constitutional guarantee of our rights in the future than a legislative one. Many in the gay rights movement are ambivelent to that because they are more interested in a pat on the head and approval of being gay rather than the benign indifference a constitutional guarantee would give.

Good observations.

I've noted what I believe would happen if the Tea Party people got in power. The nice thing is, I can't actually conceive of them ever doing so. The handful who will get elected this time will be just enough to give the news media a fun time helping all of us laugh, as well as realize that these people don't really belong there. Next hand, I don't expect the voters to get dealt so many.

But they'll keep trying, so I keep my powder dry.

And I and most other gays who voted in 2008 never expected Congress to touch DOMA, and I won't for many years to come.

I don't expect Congress to ever touch DOMA -- they'll let the courts deal with it, so they don't have to take a stand, but have fuel for campaign speeches.

 

[frankfrank]

I'm well aware the house voted on it. I'm also aware they waited until there was no chance of it passing both houses. As I said earlier,(perhaps you missed that part) they could have repealed both in the 1st 30 minutes of the 1st day they held power but chose not to. In short, they fucked us again.

And if they had, the shrill screaming of the right-wing media would STILL be invasively prevalent.

(hypothetical) "The country was in a depression, and what was the most important thing to Congress? To pander to gay people. Those Democrats have such a warped sense of priorities."

On the other hand, the idealist in me wants to think that it would have therefore been done and gotten out of the way quickly, and we all would have had the better part of two years to see that the military, and traditional families and marriages, didn't suddenly disintegrate into a morass of dysfunction, either.

The reason that DADT hasn't been repealed yet, though, is because of Republicans...entirely. The repeal has nothing to do with recent Court decisions, or the Obama/DOJ appeal. The repeal was entirely in the hands of Congress, but the Republicans made sure that the entire Defense Budget bill didn't pass, rather than enhancing NATIONAL SECURITY AND MORALE by letting all people serve without having to live a lie. So of course it got removed.

 

[frankfrank]

What are you going to say when the Senate passes the defense bill and Obama signs it?

Will you post for us a picture of your face with egg on it?

Hey, I'd be glad to walk around for the next YEAR with egg on my face. There are times that I "wish by God" that I was wrong about something, and this is certainly one of them.

In other words, I'm not confident this will happen at all - the Republicans will be emboldened, if anything.

Though, in the Senate, it will only take a small number who might actually follow their consciences, knowing they're safely in office for as long as six more years (plus a few weeks).

I may not be confident, but I wouldn't want to put ANY money bets on any of this, either way.

 

[Kulindahr]

The reason that DADT hasn't been repealed yet, though, is because of Republicans...entirely. The repeal has nothing to do with recent Court decisions, or the Obama/DOJ appeal. The repeal was entirely in the hands of Congress, but the Republicans made sure that the entire Defense Budget bill didn't pass, rather than enhancing NATIONAL SECURITY AND MORALE by letting all people serve without having to live a lie. So of course it got removed.

Make that ONE Republican, mister John I-hate-the-Bill-of-Rights McCain.