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Will Fox let Karger debate?

I love the audacity of Fred Karger. There’s something just delicious about a gay man running for the Republican Party presidential nomination. But when he polls higher than Rick Santorum, it just makes me giggle. From the August 2-4 Harris Poll:

If you are a registered Republican or Independent, which of the following candidates would you be most likely to support for the Republican nomination for President in 2012?

Base: Registered Republican/Independent

16% Mitt Romney
10% Ron Paul
10% Michele Bachmann
6% Herman Cain
4% Newt Gingrich
2% Tim Pawlenty
2% Fred Karger
2% Jon Huntsman
1% Rick Santorum
1% Gary Johnson
1% Thadeous McCotter
1% Buddy Roemer
46% None of these

Admittedly Fred is a novelty candidate. His chances of winning the Presidency of the United States are rather slim. And there is some merit to those who want to limit debates to “legitimate candidates” so as to give Americans a choice without adding the clutter of wacky nutjobs. Declaring that you are running for President does not and should not give you immediate access to a national audience.

But Fred, though a novelty is serious. And he’s not just some loon. He has significant political experience (this is his tenth presidential campaign), far more than Herman Cain, and his views on fiscal policy are mainstream Republican. Additionally, his social policies could position him as the only fully supportable candidate for the not-insignificant percentage of moderate Republicans.

And Fred is treating his campaign as real. He has done more real face to face campaigning than many of those who are considered legitimate and is beginning to catch the attention of political writers seeking an amusing that doesn’t center around the latest banal utterance of Michele Bachmann. And when readers find out that Fred was a successful high-level Republican political consultant whose most significant differences with the party are over social issues, his message can resonate.

But neither the Party nor the media hosting debates want anything to do with Fred. The Party wants to avoid the issues that he will bring up, and the media wants to keep the Party happy. Fox News, of course, wants both.

But Fox has a problem. They are finding it difficult to define the rules for inclusion in such a way as to keep people like Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty in, but to keep Fred out.

And Fred is demanding that they play be their own rules. He has sent a letter to Fox to inform then that as he is registered with the Federal Election Commission and has gotten on average 1% of the last five national polls, that he therefor qualifies to be included in next Thursday’s televised debate.

I suspect that Fox will just ignore Fred. Santorum will we there and maybe Huntsman and Johnson, but there will be no place for a marginal candidate such as Fred (though I think more Americans would vote for Karger than Santorum).

But I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that he is granted the position that he has earned and to which he is entitled.

First, I think that Republican voters need to hear what Fred has to say. One of the Party’s biggest problems is that when they get together, no one is willing to challenge – in language that Republicans understand – the presumptions that are not only illogical but are in conflict with core principles.

But even more importantly, Fred represents one of cherished myths of our country: Anyone, anyone at all, can be President. It doesn’t matter how rich you are or how many powerful people you know, if you stand up and tell the truth and follow the rules and can somehow convince enough people to support you, you have the chance at the office as any other citizen.

And I want this myth to be true. I want for the outsider to at least be given the same chance as the power broker. Sure criteria have to be met. But if he can meet it – and Fred has – then it is intensely UnAmerican to deny him his voice.

For every little boy or girl who has been promised this possibility, this chance to compete for the nation’s highest office based not on who they are but on what they can do, I hope Fox keeps its word and plays fairly and lets Fred Karger join the debate.

UPDATE:

The answer is in. No, of course Fox News will not let Fred debate. (Des Moines Register)

Michael Clemente, vice president of news for the network, said Karger doesn’t qualify.
…
Clemente said each of the polls cited by Karger are either online, interactive or out of date and do not qualify for the purpose of meeting the debate criteria.

Well, yes and no, Mr. Clemente.

Two of the polls included by Fred are “online, interactive”. Fred included, as his basis, two IBOPE Zogby International polls.

However Mr. Clemente’s insinuation that these polls are fluff and nonsense is dishonest. These are not American Family Association polls that can be freeped, or even a newspaper’s “poll” of its readers. These are polls which seek to measure the views of a statistically valid representations of the electorate:

IBOPE Zogby International conducted an online survey of 1,103 likely Republican primary voters. A sampling of IBOPE Zogby International’s online panel, which is representative of the adult population of the U.S., was invited to participate. Slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, and education to more accurately reflect the population. The margin of error is +/- 3.0 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. The MOE calculation is for sampling error only.

And if these are pish, pish, not worth a mention, then why did Fox News not mention that when reporting the results of zogby polls?

But there was one poll listed that Clemente may have some basis for finding flawed: a Fox News Poll from April 28. I have to assume that Clemente knows more about that poll than we do.

And the final poll was one in which Fred got less than 1% and is immaterial. I can’t think of a reason to consider a McClathy-Marist poll invalid, but fine toss it out. Give him a zero. He still averages 1% and is qualified.

Fred does have an issue: he can’t force pollsters to include him. Those who want to make the gay guy invisible can simply not include him as an option. But behind Clemente’s deceptive position remains one truth: whenever Fred Karger is included in a poll, he does better than Rick Santorum. And unlike most of the other second-tier candidates, Fred’s numbers are increasing.

So Fox News’ and Michael Clemente’s “explanation” reek of exclusion and arrogance. Freg Karger isn’t being excluded due to the type of poll, he’s being excluded because they want to shut him up.

NOM’s Marriage Pledge: A Self-Inflicted Wound

The National Organization “for” Marriage wants Republican presidential candidates to sign a marriage pledge. Bachmann, Santorum, and Romney have complied.  That’s a NOM victory, of sorts, though we already knew Bachmann and Santorum are anti-gay, and Romney would likely sign anything that won him primary votes.

Really, though, NOM has shot itself in the foot.  This pledge actually destroys their favorite PR strategy.

From NOM's homepage

See, when state legislatures pass marriage equality, NOM shouts, Let the people vote! NOM’s campaign to repeal New York marriage equality is called Let the People Vote.  They’ve mounted a new website called Let the People Vote.

But with this pledge, in a few short phrases, just five simple points, NOM has made it easy to show they don’t give a damn about that at all.

The last one, Point 5, reiterates NOM’s usual rhetoric:

Five, advance legislation to return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.

Typical NOM: the people should decide this, not their elected representatives.  Okay.  So what?

The problem is in Point 1:

One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

Here’s the hypocrisy: when a Constitutional amendment goes to the states for ratification, the people don’t get to vote on it!  

Article V of the  Constitution allows states to ratify an amendment through either:

• The state legislature — which is exactly how New York passed marriage equality.
• A state convention called for that purpose — which means electing delegates to vote on the amendment.

In neither case do the citizens of a state get a direct vote on the amendment.  The Constitution does not permit it.

Let’s compare two facts, then, statements that cannot be disputed.

1. NOM claims to champion the right of citizens to vote directly on same-sex marriage in their state.
2. NOM is working to make sure that citizens in every state will never be allowed to vote directly on same-sex marriage.

I’m tempted by the obvious conclusion:  NOM is a bunch of lying liars. But there’s another possibility.  NOM’s president Brian Brown is, after all, a colossal screw-up.  Perhaps he doesn’t know his Constitution very well. Perhaps he doesn’t realize what his master plan entails.

I suggest we tell him.

Sadly, I’m blocked from posting on NOM’s blog.  But perhaps you’re not.  Perhaps you can go there and ask:

If NOM supports the right of citizens to vote directly on SSM, why is it pushing a Constitutional amendment which citizens are Constitutionally forbidden to vote on directly — an amendment that would  prevent citizens from ever voting directly on SSM?

You can add a link to this post, but that might get you banned.

Let me know if they allow your comment.  I doubt they’ll answer our question.  But at least they can never say they didn’t know.

And if you like, send this message to Joe Solmonese and any of our other talking heads who go up against NOM on cable news.  Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown should never again be able to say, “We think the people have a right to vote on this,” without hearing back, “Then why are you working to make sure they can’t?”

Maggie Gallagher Pines for Pawlenty

These eyes are for Pawlenty.

She also has designs on Perry. National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher appeared on CBN to discuss NOM’s marriage pledge which has already been signed by Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachman, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The wide-ranging pledge (CBN’s interviewer strangely called it “narrowly-written”) calls on GOP presidential candidates to:

• Support the Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court,
• Apply a marriage litmus test for judges and the attorney general,
• Appoint a presidential commission to investigate so-called “harassment” of traditional marriage supporters,
• Demand that marriage be put to a vote in the District of Columbia.

Gallagher expects Texas gov. Rick Perry to sign the pledge one he officially announces his candidacy. But one major holdout,  Minnesota gov. Tim Pawlenty, has Gallagher pleading for his support:

Well we will certainly offer the opportunity to Governor Rick Perry and any other major candidates who step into the race. We understand that before you’re declared candidate it would probably not be appropriate to start signing pledges. The big question is what’s going to happen with Governor Tim Pawlenty, who explicitly declined to sign NOM’s marriage pledge this week. We’re hoping the governor changes his mind because we think it’s pretty peculiar for governor Pawlenty, who has been a champion for marriage in Minnesota, to refuse to do the same for the people of America.

Gallagher is counting on victories in passing anti-marriage amendments in Minnesota and North Carolina, and expects a rollback on marriage in New Hampshire in January.

Click here to read the full transcript.

NOM Astroturfs Online Support

Louis Marinelli, who used to be the Social Media Manager for the National Organization for Marriage and the group’s Facebook page owner, reveals NOM’s “astroturf” campaign to make NOM’s so-called grassroots support appear larger than it really is:

Waiting for a bus.

Social media manager for the National Organization for Marriage, Louis J. Marinelli, the then 24-year-old behind the “Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman” page, was asked to put together a “SWAT team” of people to comment in favor of NOM’s content and opinions. “There was a system where we would track what they did and they would accumulate points…. We were working on a program where they would redeem those points for prizes,” said Marinelli.

The group also planned to create media teams in key 2012 election states who would be asked to take online actions as well as attend events or write letters to editors, according to Marinelli. When he resigned on April 7, he said about 15 people were on the online astroturf team.

A measure of NOM’s actual support can be seen in the massive turnout for last year’s bus tour, where pro-LGBT advocates often outnumbered NOM supporters by a wide margin.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, August 5

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Response to “The Response”: Houston, TX. Tomorrow, Houston’s Reliant Stadium will be the site for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Day of Prayer he’s calling  “The Response.” The rally, which is being sponsored by the SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group American Family Association, will feature virtually every anti-gay extremist this side of Westboro Baptist, including Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins, Rev. John Hagee (he declared that the anti-Christ would be “a blasphemer and a homosexual”) five senior staff members of the dominionist International House of Prayer (members of which have endorsed Uganda’s “Kill-The-Gays” Bill), and “prophet” Cindy Jacobs (she declared that birds were dying in Arkansas because of DADT repeal). A coalition of groups, including GetEqual and other LGBT organizations and affirming churches will hold two rallies tonight. The first one is from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Mount Ararat Baptist Church, 5801 West Montgomery Rd., Houston, TX. The second rally this evening is from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Tranquility Park in downtown Houston. There will also be an all-day rally at Reliant Stadium tomorrow, beginning at 8:00 a.m.

TransOhio Trangender & Ally Conference: Columbus, Ohio. TransOhio will host it’s fourth annual conference beginning today and through the weekend. Over 250 participants are expected to attend and participate in more than seventy workshops on such issues as health and safety, sex and sexuality, legal issues, family issues, religion and spirituality, education and culture. The conference takes place through Sunday at The Ohio State University’s Multicultural Center and Student Union.

Sweat for Equality: Arizona. Most communities in the lower elevations of Arizona have had solid triple-digit temperatures now for a couple of months. It’s the time of year when we carefully plan our movements, from an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned mall. But beginning today, seventeen Equality Walkers will walk 99 miles, representing the 99 years since Arizona’s statehood, in a state without marriage quality. The walkers will walk through eighteen cities and nine counties, and will follow the following route:

Friday, August 5th — Parker
Saturday, August 6th — Yuma
Sunday, August 7th — Casa Grande, Eloy, and Arizona City
Monday, August 8th — Tucson
Tuesday, August 9th — Nogales and Sierra Vista
Wednesday, August 10th– Bisbee and Tombstone
Thursday, August 11th — Safford, Thatcher, and Pima
Friday, August 12th — Clifton and Duncan
Saturday, August 13th — Florence and Queen Creek
Sunday, August 14th — Phoenix

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Leeds, UK; Oakland, CA (Black Pride); Reykjavik, Iceland; Salem, OR; Stockholm, Sweden; and Windsor, ON;

Also This Weekend: Summer Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; and Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Clinton Forbids Denying Security Clearances To Gays: 1995. President Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order officially banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in granting security clearances. For decades, federal agencies routinely denied security clearances to gay people on the assumption that all gay people were subject to blackmail. But a GAO study found that eight government agencies had already stopped using homosexuality as a reason for denying clearances, including the Defense Department, State Department, the FBI and the Secret Service. A 1953 Executive Order signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower included “sexual perversion” as a basis for firing from the federal workforce. That ban was lifted in 1975, but policies regarded security clearances remained vague. Clinton’s Order established uniform standards for granting security clearances, and it added sexual orientation to the non-discrimination clause. This Executive Order came two years after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was passed by Congress.

The Family “Research” Council’s Robert Maginnis denounced the move, saying that “in all healthy societies, homosexuality is recognized as a pathology with very serious implications for a person’s behavior. … Even more importantly for security concerns, this is a behavior that is associated with a lot of anti-security markers such as drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity and violence.” FRC hasn’t changed much since then. Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA), who was never at a loss for words when it came to outrageous statements, called gay people “promiscuous by definition,” and said that Clinton’s action was “something else he didn’t have to do that’s gotten in our face. I wouldn’t trust them with a $5 loan, let alone the nation’s secrets.”

Smashing the Stained Glass Closet

Rev. Gene Robinson Elected Episcopal Bishop: 2003. Overcoming eleventh-hour charges that he had sexually harassed a parishioner — charges which were withdrawn with regrets from the person making them — senior bishops at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention voted 62 to 43 with two abstentions to approve Rev. Gene Robinson’s election as bishop of New Hampshire. The election ended months of emotional debate, threats, and bizarre charges. One charge was that a web site run by a youth advocacy group that he supported had links to porn sites. The Boston Globe investigated, and found, that, yes, it was possible to find explicit photos from that web site, but it would take seven clicks outside of it to get there.

At issue was the fact that Robinson was not celibate and had been living with his life partner since 1988. During committee hearings leading up to his confirmation, Robinson said that his relationship with his partner was an essential element in his own spiritual life. “‘What I can tell you is that in my relationship with my partner, I am able to express the deep love that’s in my heart,” he explained. ”And in his unfailing and unquestioning love of me, I experience just a little bit of the kind of never-ending, never-failing love that God has for me. So it’s sacramental.”

When Robinson’s election was finally confirmed, about thirty delegates walked out, and opponents called the election “a step toward moral disintegration in America. Anglican leaders in Asia and Africa immediately denounced the decision and threatened schism.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Please tell me that this isn’t going to be OUR strategy

Today the anti-gays begin gathering signatures on their petition to overturn California’s law requiring inclusion of GLBT contributions in the education curriculum.

And also today I heard a radio advertisement warning that you shouldn’t sign petitions. Because then they have your address and you could be a victim of identity theft. “They even have my signature” says the newly incensed woman. And then they go for the real danger:

I read that the names and addresses on petitions were sent to other countries, including India! Who knows what they did with it!

This is, of course, nonsense. Without giving your social security number there is not much threat of identity theft. Even from those nefarious Indians.

A San Diego Union Tribune reporter followed up and discovered that “Californians Against Identity Theft” are a project of a construction workers labor union. There are several signature campaigns to limit the exposure to guaranteed pension benefits that can come from public funds and, in some cases, require public employees to contribute to their pensions.

But considering EQCA’s shift in identity away from a gay organization and towards a progressive coalition agenda, this doesn’t give me comfort. So please, will someone please tell me that this incredible stupid, fraudulent and xenophobic ad is not part of our strategy?

UPDATE:

Ugh. An email from EQCA was in my inbox.

We’ve seen these campaigns before.

So we know that our opponents are spreading lies and using the usual scare tactics to misrepresent the FAIR Education Act and collect signatures for their effort to overturn it at the ballot box next year.

Extremists are also pushing a broad anti-progressive agenda, including ballot measures for next year, that will harm our fight and the work of important coalition partners.

Working in close collaboration with our partners, including Service Employees International Union, we are fighting back.

So I guess that, yeah, EQCA is has aligned our community with this crap. I especially love the comment about “spreading lies and using the usual scare tactics.”

What, are they saying that the FAIR Act is sending their children to India? And who know what the Indians will do with them!!

Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for judicial appointments

NOTE: The header, which originally said “Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for Supreme Court nominees”, was revised for accuracy.

The National Organization for Marriage is bragging that Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney have signed their pledge:

I, ______________, pledge to the American people that if elected President, I will:

One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

Two, nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and to applying the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint an attorney general similarly committed, and thus reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.

Three, defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court.

Four, establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.

Five, advance legislation to return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.

Most of this is just a declaration of personal anti-gay animus and is neither a pledge of intent or likelihood.

There is almost no chance at all that two-thirds of each house of Congress would vote for a Federal Marriage Amendment and that likelihood decreases significantly with each passing year. By the time that the 2013-2017 Presidential term begins, it doesn’t matter what a President might “support”, it isn’t going to happen.

Also by that time, it is likely that the constitutionality of DOMA3 will have progressed out of the initial federal court hearings and on to appeal. And having declined to defend the law, the Justice Department cannot decide to step in and resume authority once a new Attorney General is in the office. At most, the Attorney General could file an amicus brief, which any of these nominees could do on their own today.

As for establishing a presidential commission to look at how gays are harassing and threatening homophobes, that would be political suicide. Not only would it appear to oh, just about anyone, as homophobic and an abuse of power, but it would be embarrassing to NOM when the commission released its report. The boycott of El Coyote may sound like a “threat” to NOM’s target audience, but “the gays didn’t eat there after the owner gave to Prop 8” is going to sound like a statement of the obvious to the rest of the country.

Equally stupid would be an effort on the part of the federal government to interfere with the District’s Human Rights Act so as to exclude gay people. That is the only mechanism by which legislation could “return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote” on limiting any of the District’s provisions based on sexual orientation. Only two Senators and 37 members of the House were willing to sign on to an amicus brief arguing that the Human Rights Act didn’t cover gay marriage. Even fewer would sign on to legislation to amend the “The Human Rights Act” specifically to exclude gay people from coverage.

Now none of this is to say that Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum would not try to do all of the above. They live in a bubble in which the things that they say actually make sense and where people admire them and their values. But both are wackadoodles with no chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney, however, is a credible candidate. And he should have thought a bit more before signing onto this pledge. Because he just made a declaration that has potential to negatively impact his campaign.

No, it was not the wacky appeal to ancestor-worship that has our “Founding Fathers” writing the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Palinist history is about symbolism, not fact, so this is not much of a liability to Romney at this stage.

Nor is it unusual for Republican nominees to declare their support for a commitment to constraint and to oppose those who “legislate from the bench.”

But this pledge goes way beyond such language. And by signing, Mitt Romney took the unusual step of declaring that his judicial nominees must reject the idea that the US Constitution protects the marriage rights of gay people. Mitt Romney announced that he has a litmus test.

In practice, litmus tests for judicial nominees are complicated.

An administration makes judicial appointments that it believes share its ideology. But the nominees themselves are bound by professional ethics from declaring their position on matters that are expected to appear before them. And most aren’t much favorable of the notion that your whim is to be followed rather than their consideration of the facts, weight of precedent, or argument of the litigants.

But regardless of whether or not litmus test questioning occurs in private, declaring a litmus test for judicial nominees, especially this early in a political campaign, is not wise. And at some point, a reporter is going to ask Romney the unanswerable question, “Considering Ted Olson’s legal stature and established conservative credentials, would his support for same-sex marriage disqualify him from an appointment to the federal bench?”

Sao Paulo’s legislation: Straight Pride or Hate Pride?

I support straight pride.

Heterosexuals have made many contributions to society, have unique attributes that deserve acknowledgement, and should never be made to feel shame for their orientation. If straight folk feel insignificant or have experienced discrimination, then by all means celebrate and find pride in your identity. Set up panels to discuss opposite-sex attractions and explore them and think about what it means to be straight. Embrace your heterosexuality.

And there’s even a benefit for non-straight people: people who are truly comfortable with their sexuality tend to be tolerant of those with different sexuality. Those who are brave enough and curious enough to try and understand what motivates their desire and to truly understand their attractions seem to develop a respect and even advocacy for others in the process.

But, of course, that it not what those who say that they want Straight Pride mean at all. They don’t want a festivity of heterosexuality or a discovery of its meaning and celebration of its culture. It isn’t Straight Pride that they are seeking, but Anti-Gay Pride. It’s not love for heterosexuals that they seek to express, but hatred and contempt for gay people.

As is evident in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (AP)

The city council of South America’s biggest city has adopted legislation calling for a Heterosexual Pride Day to be celebrated on the third Sunday of each December.

Are they seeking to celebrate straight conformity with signs extolling family dinner or straight abandon like a second Carnival? No. Their reasons don’t even mention heterosexuality.

The legislation’s author, Carlos Apolinario, said the idea for a Heterosexual Pride Day is “not anti-gay but a protest against the privileges the gay community enjoys.”

As an example, he mentioned how Sao Paulo’s huge gay pride day parade is held every year on Paulista Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in this city of 20 million people, while the March for Jesus organized by evangelical groups is not allowed on the same avenue.

Oh… so this isn’t about straight pride at all, just anti-gay resentment.

This legislation must be signed by the Mayor to go into effect. But I don’t much care if they get their Straight Pride day. They can even close Paulista Avenue and make it theirs for the day.

Obviously it isn’t a good thing when the city council of the largest city in South America endorsed homophobia. But I have no fear about comparing Gay Pride to Anti-Gay Pride in Sao Paolo. Show the world which parade that city’s residents endorse.

Because the thing about events is that it can be fun to join someone in celebrating their uniqueness and love for their community – be it St. Patrick’s Day or the Lotus Festival or MLK Day or Gay Pride or even a March for Jesus, I suppose. And in Sao Paulo about three million people show up at Gay Pride to watch the floats, dancers, and marchers and to enjoy the fun and celebration.

But days to celebrate hate just don’t put a smile on your face. An Anti-Irish Day Parade would not be much fun at all and I doubt that a Stomp on Lotus Festival would get beyond the planning phase.

Sure some Eastern European cities have had anti-gay marches and there are always those donkey people in Jerusalem, but the Anti-Gay Pride Parade just doesn’t seem to promise the sparkle and flash that Parada do Orgulho LGBT de São Paulo brings. Besides, what would they do for floats? Straight go-go dancers often aren’t and the straight version of drag tends to be pro-gay anyway.

The Alliance Defense Fund Lies to its Base

This week I came across an article so very lame there seemed no point in in debunking it. Then I saw it was from the Alliance Defense Fund.

Oh geez.

These folks are co-counsel for ProtectMarriage.com, the group defending Prop 8 in Federal court. I’ve already written about their ridiculous notion that Christian state employees in New York state don’t have to abide by the law. Basically, they’re the country’s chief anti-gay legal group, and while it pains me to take them seriously, they are a genuine threat.

The new article is called, Games the left plays with polls about same-sex ‘marriage.’ It’s egregious because the author, Brian Raum, claims to tell the truth about a gay-positive poll when in fact he merely lies about it.

Brian is complaining about a survey from Harris Interactive (HI) that shows strong support for marriage equality. He thinks HI stacked the deck:

Harris Interactive purposely oversampled those who engage in homosexual behavior, thus guaranteeing the results would not represent the overall American sentiment, but rather would be skewed to reflect the views of those seeking to further the homosexual agenda. (To the credit of Harris Interactive, they admitted the oversampling in the fine print at the bottom of their survey results, albeit in a place few will see, and even fewer will care to search for.)

How significant was the oversampling? Consider this: those who identify as homosexual only constitute 1.4 to 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the Harris Interactive poll, they constituted a sample of well over 14 percent. With this distortion understood, it’s no wonder the poll showed that “‘49% of all U.S. adults…support the right for same-sex couples to marry,’ [vs.] 41% who oppose the right, and 10% who are not at all sure.”

In other words, Oh my gosh, no wonder the survey’s so gay-friendly — it has 10 times as many homosexuals as it should!

So much wrong here.

Sampling and weights

Brian doesn’t understand the difference between sampling and analysis. A sample might have too many or too few gays, straights, Protestants, Catholics or whatever. Pollsters compensate by weighting their data to get the right proportions when they do their analysis.

In fact, by applying some basic algebra to HI’s results, you’ll find they weighted LGBTs as about 7.7% of the adult US population. A bit high? Perhaps. But nowhere near the 14% Brian wants us to believe.

Brian ought to understand this difference between sampling and analysis — certainly if he’s going to earn money writing about this stuff. That brings up the usual question: incompetence or rank dishonesty? Hard to know.

What’s the right weight?

Brian wants us to think 1.4 -1.7% would be an appropriate LGBT weight, based on CDC figures. But he’s, er, mistaken. Those numbers just cover the Ls and the Gs (1.3% of all women for lesbians and 2.3% for gay men). What about the Bs? Bisexuals add another 2.8% for women and 1.8% for men. Now we’re looking at 4.1% for LGB.

But there’s more.

The CDC also lists “Something else” and “Did not report.” No way of knowing exactly what that means, but I can tell you this: 9.7% of women declined to say they were straight, along with 9.8% of all men.

In other words, according to Raum’s own source, HI’s LGBT weight should be at least 4.1%, and possibly a good bit higher. Once again, incompetence or rank dishonesty? Hard to know.

Oh, and one more delicious bit: Antigays love to say there are no homosexuals, just homosexual behavior. You see that in Brian’s wording: “Harris Interactive purposely oversampled those who engage in homosexual behavior…” But the CDC measures that, too. 3.2% of those self-identified straight men have engaged in homosexual behavior, along with 9.0% of straight women. Using Brian’s criteria actually bumps up our numbers even further.

I truly hate this no-homosexuals-just-homosexual-behavior meme, so I love watching it turn around and bite Brian in the ass.

What if we only weighted LGBTs at 4.1%?

Brian’s implying Harris Interactive counted ten times as many LGBTs as it should have. What a conspiracy! The truth is not so ominous. Let’s go to the lowest possible extreme and assume HI should have used a 4.1% weight. How much difference does that make?

Not much.

A bit more algebra says instead of 49 – 41 result favoring marriage equality (plus 10% undecided), we’ll get a 48 – 43 victory,  (total percentage not equal to 100 due to rounding). That difference is basically insignificant in the world of statistics.

Poor Brian. All that work debunking the poll, and it amounts to nothing. Incompetence or rank dishonesty?

Does Brian care?

Brian is just wrong, wrong, wrong in this article. The irony is that he’s trying to expose “games the left plays with polls about same-sex ‘marriage.” Combine all his falsehoods with his ballsy assertion of setting the record straight, and you have to wonder if the truth really matters to him. Is it paranoid to think he’s happy lying to his own base as long as it fires them up? Could a strategy like that even work?

A hint appears in the comments section of his article at TownHall.com. One fellow, Lon, pointed out Brian’s confusion over sampling and analysis. Here are the two responses Lon got back:

And you are not up-to-speed on research rules.

Lon the fraking loon of TH grunts again………………………

Another commenter, Jeremy, explained, “Over-sampling gays doesn’t guarantee results skewed in their favor. He probably thinks it means over-representing.” Simple, direct, civil, and true. Jeremy got one response:

Thanks.

We needed input from an intellectually-challenged gay.

Now we have it.

They don’t care. Lying to your base, it seems, works just fine for anti-gay activists. As long as anti-gay is your only moral value.

Last Known “Pink Triangle” Holocaust Survivor Dies

Rudolf Brazda, who is believed to be the last surviving gay Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 98. The Berlin branch of the Lesbian and Gay Association said that he died on Wednesday. He died peacefully in his sleep in a nursing home, where he resided since last June.

Born in 1913, Brazda grew up in Meuselwitz near the Czech border, where he frequently ran into trouble with local authorities over his homosexuality. Meuselwitz later became the site for a subcamp for the Buchenwald concentration camp. Brazda spent three years from 1942 through 1945 at Buchenwald, after having been convicted of homosexuality by the Nazis as a “repeat offender.” After the war, he moved to the Alsace region of eastern France. Last year, he co-authored Itinerary of a Pink Triangle about his internment, forced labor, beatings, and harassment. The book is not yet available in English.

During the Nazi regime, an estimated 54,000 men were arrested by the Nazis under Paragraph 175, the criminal code which outlawed male homosexuality. Upwards of 15,000 of them were sent to concentration camps, where it is estimated that approximately 60% died. The end of the war meant liberation for the much larger interned populations of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and other undesirables, but allied forces often returned gay men to post-war prisons to continue to serve out their terms. Homosexuality wasn’t formally decriminalized in Germany until 1994.

Brazda’s funeral will be held on Monday. In accordance with his will, Brazda’s remains will be cremated and his ashes placed alongside those of Edward Meyer, his life partner of more than 50 years who died in 2003.

Earlier this year, Brazda was awarded France’s Legion of Honor. An interview with Brazda was posted on YouTube last October.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, August 4

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Leeds, UK; Oakland, CA (Black Pride); Reykjavik, Iceland; Salem, OR; Stockholm, Sweden; and Windsor, ON;

Also This Weekend: Summer Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; and Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Catholic Ex-Gay Conference: Mundelein, IL. Courage, the Roman Catholic ex-gay group, operates at a considerably lower profile than does its Evangelical counterpart, Exodus International. And unlike Exodus, Courage generally emphasizes Catholic teachings of chastity and downplays (but doesn’t discourage) change in sexual orientation. But it is no less active or ambitious. Today marks the start of a four day Courage Conference at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. This year’s conference is dedicated to Fr. John F. Harvey, the group’s founder, who died last December. Harvey’s writings were a mix of conservative Catholic sexual theology, a simplified understanding of out-dated fifty-year-old Freudian psychology, and deeply flawed social “science” (including citing discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron). The inaugural Mass this evening will be celebrated by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. Also speaking at the conference is Richard Fitzgibbons, a member of NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Committee and the Catholic Medical Association.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
California’s Prop 8 Declared Unconstitutional: 2010. It’s hard to believe that only a year has passed since the initial euphoria over Federal Judge Walker Vaughn’s decision declaring California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The judge’s findings were far-reaching, saying that Prop 8 could not withstand any level of scrutiny under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The case is now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who are struggling with the issue of who, if anyone, has standing to appeal the case since the state of California isn’t interested. The Ninth has punted that question to the California Supreme Court because it involves the interpretation of California law. The California court will hold oral arguments on the matter on September 6.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Scott Lively: Marriage Equality is “Sign Of The End Times”

Could it be... Satan

Guess what folks. We’re the chosen people!  Or, rather more precisely, “God has chosen rampant homosexuality to be a key warning sign for judgment of the world as a whole, and not just of individual nations,” says Scott Lively. One proof is with the rainbow itself:

In Chapter 9 God made an everlasting promise never again to destroy the earth by water, and said “I set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.” hereafter, fire was always the symbol and means of God’s wrath…

Did you also catch the spiritual significance of the rainbow in this context? Why has the homosexual movement chosen the rainbow as its symbol? I think they are deliberately flaunting their sin under God’s nose while holding up the reminder that He promised not to destroy the earth by flood again. They are proclaiming “See, God, you can’t stop us!” which was the exact sentiment expressed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick when he signed the first “gay marriage” policy in the nation into law: looking up at the sky he said something to the effect of “See, nothing happened.”

So, it’s Satan, definitely Satan, who is is behind all this. There is no other possible explanation:

I have made this point before, but it bears repeating. I am 53 years old. When I was born homosexuality was illegal throughout the entire world. In the space of just half a century this tiny 1-3% of the population have made themselves a global political power with greater influence in the courtrooms and legislatures of the world than the Church of Jesus Christ. This astonishing transformation surpasses that of Darwinism, Marxism, and even Islam in its speed and breadth of reach. To my thinking, this can only have been accomplished by the god of this world (Satan 2 Cor 4:4) who knows his time is short and is making his move. What is more alarming is the shocking apathy of the church, which I take as a sign of the apostasy warned about by Jesus in Matt 24:12. The “love of most” for the truth of God truly has grown cold.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, August 3

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Leeds, UK; Oakland, CA (Black Pride); Reykjavik, Iceland; Salem, OR; Stockholm, Sweden; and Windsor, ON;

Also This Weekend: Summer Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; and Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Michael Hardwick Arrested: 1982. It all started in July, when Michael Hardwick threw a beer bottle into a trash can outside of an Atlanta gay bar. A police officer cited him for public drinking. He went to court the courthouse, payed the $50 fine, and thought nothing more of it. For some reason, his payment wasn’t recorded correctly, and when his court date came and went, a warrant was issued for his arrest. On August 3, a police officer went to Hardwick’s apparent to serve the warrant. The police officer entered the apartment (accounts differ on how he got in), and discovered Hardwick and another man engaged in oral sex, which Georgia defined as “sodomy” under the law. The officer announced that they two were under arrest. Hardwick shot back, “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

The arrest was humiliating for the two men. Hardwick recalled that the police officer brought them to the police station, he loudly made sure everyone there knew that he had arrested them for “cocksucking,” and that they should be able to find plenty of what they were looking for in Atlanta’s city jails. Hardwick posted bail within the hour, but was detained for twelve hours near other criminals who had been told why he was there. Hardwick had never fought for gay rights before, but that moment changed him. “I realized that if there was anything I could do, even if it was just laying the foundation to change this horrendous law, that I would feel pretty bad about myself if I just walked away from it.”

After the local district attorney decided not to press charges, Hardwick decided to Georgia attorney general Michael Bowers in federal court to overturn the state’s sodomy law. The ACLU agreed to take the case on Hardwick’s behalf. The case ultimately made it to the Supreme Court. But in a surprising move, the Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law. Surprising because the Court had built a solid case history upholding the rights to privacy for heterosexuals to engage in private, non-procreative, non-marital sexual behavior in the privacy of their bedrooms. But for gay people, that same right to privacy vanished. It wouldn’t be until 2003, when the Supreme Court decided that Bowers v. Hardwick “was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today,” that sodomy laws were overturned nationwide in Lawrence v. Texas.

[Source: Joyce Murdoch & Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court]

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Taking the NAACP seriously?

Last Monday, the NAACP held its first ever town hall meeting on LGBT issues as part of their Annual National Convention. No More Downlow was there.

The debate got heated when the current NAACP CEO Benjamin Jealous is asked by our executive producer Earnest Winborne, “How can the LGBT community take the NAACP seriously, when its current board members are out saying that gay rights are not civil rights” – referring to current NAACP board member Rev. Keith Ratliff recent statement “Gay community stop hijacking the civil rights movement.”

Mr. Jealous responded saying the gay community should take the NAACP seriously because the NAACP was there with the Human Rights Campaign helping to pass the Matthew Shepard / James Byrd Hate Crimes Bill. The NAACP were champions of fighting Prop 8 in California as well as fighting alongside the LGBT community in Maine, Massachusetts, in Washington D.C. and in Maryland, and in other places. Jealous also said the LGBT community needed to do more ground work in the black community and not come late in the game with an expectation. He also said the black community needed to be treated with the same respect as the other allies of the LGBT community

Rather than discuss Ben Jealous’ answer, I want to make three observations.

One: I may be mistaken, and I am no weather-vane for any social trends, but I believe that I have seen a change in the way that bloggers, writers, and commentators within the black community have been discussing gay people and, more importantly, responding to those who do make slurs. I’ll leave it to those who have a better sense of the community, but it may be that a breakthrough is coming.

Two: The problem is not limited to a lack of support for gay issues in the African American community. Equally concerning are issues of racism and exclusion in the gay community. We, all of us, whatever race, ethnicity, religion, orientation, gender, or whatever need to look more for ways of seeing each other as “just like me” instead of letting our insecurities drive us into looking for differences and ways to separate. But we must also be careful that “just like me” doesn’t erase concern for each others’ real and unique challenges.

Three: In this discussion, let us never forget that “they” are already “us”. We have strong intelligent effective gay men and women who are not always valued due to prejudices that we may not even know we hold. Those who walk with a foot in two communities because of their race, religion, political ideology or other separation deserve respect. They’ve proven themselves and fought for our community and often been rewarded by being treated as the scapegoat. We, as a community, have to stop that.