What’s Pink, Green? Senator (Hillary) Clinton Hauling Gay Cash

Speaking for the second time this month in front of a predominantly gay audience, Hillary Clinton assured the crowd at a Gay Men’s Health Crisis dinner at Chelsea Piers that help was on the way.

She guaranteed her support of their issues “when I’m President,” and pointedly referred to a special AIDS grant she pushed through Congress for the first time “since the end of the last Clinton administration.”

The crowd laughed appreciatively at what was at once a well-worn bit about the Clinton restoration, and an acknowledgement of the influence of the gay fund-raisers and activists who may put her in the White House.

But Mrs. Clinton has stiff competition in her pursuit of influential gay Democrats. Unlike the election of 2004, when Howard Dean had the distinction of having fought for a civil-unions bill when he was governor of Vermont, the three leading Democratic candidates have virtually identical stances on the most visible gay issues. (Barack Obama, John Edwards and Mrs. Clinton are uniformly in favor of lifting a ban on gays openly serving in the military, but are all opposed to gay marriage.)

In a political climate in which Ann Coulter received applause for a “faggot” joke at a major conservative conference, and Rudy Giuliani’s strong record on gay rights is widely presumed to be one of his greatest liabilities, there seems to be a pragmatic contentment in gay circles with the top Democratic tier.

“I don’t think any viable, credible national candidate of either party is going to take a pro-gay-marriage position in this cycle,” said Ethan Geto, the gay activist who ran Howard Dean’s New York campaign in 2004.

Human Rights Campaign-Hillary Rodham Clinton

>>>Human Rights Campaign<<<

"The heroes are the folks that we probably won't see in Time or Newsweek", said Donna Red Wing of the Human Rights Campaign.... Maybe folks like Williamson Henderson, who was inside The Stonewall and arrested after the first night of the rebellion (sic).... He'll never forget the night he helped give birth to the Gay Rights movement. Stonewall helped unite Gays and lesbians, eventually growing into a powerful force, felt in all reaches of the national spectrum. "Stonewall was the first time I saw in a public way my GLBT community fighting back", said Donna. And, from the S.V.A.'s Jeremiah Newton: "Yes, we were part of the Stonewall Rebellion. Yes, we survived. Yes, we're still here.... It starts with one person standing up for their rights and the rights of their loved ones. That's Stonewall! It's an amazing, amazing story...." reflected Jeremiah. Do they consider themselves 'heroes'? "Well, I never regarded myself as one", Williamson said. "None of us regarded ouselves as 'heroes'. We were all victims of happenstance", he said. "But, after all these years, I think, yes, in fact, we are 'heroes'".

Obituary of Harry Hay's

Henry “Harry” Hay, the founder of the modern American gay movement, died on October 24, 2002 at age 90.

(snip)

Hay devoted his entire life to progressive politics, and in 1950 founded a state-registered foundation network of support groups for gays known as the Mattachine Society.

(snip)

Hay was also a co-founder, in 1979, of the Radical Faeries, a movement affirming gayness as a form of spiritual calling. A rare link between gay and progressive politics

(snip)

“Harry was one of the first to realize that the dream of equality for our community could be attained through visibility and activism,” said David M. Smith of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC. “When you were in a room with him, you had the sense you were in the company of a historic figure.”

(snip)

“Mattachine” took its name from a group of medieval dancers who appeared publicly only in mask, a device well understood by homosexuals of the 1950s. Hay devised its secret cell structure (based on the Masonic order) to protect individual gays and the nascent gay network. Officially co-gender, the group was largely male -- the Daughters of Bilitis, the pioneering lesbian organization, formed independently in San Francisco in 1956.

(snip)

Though some criticized the Mattachine movement as insular, it grew to include thousands of members in dozens of chapters, which formed from Berkeley to Buffalo, and created a lasting national framework for gay organizing. Mattachine set the stage for rapid civil rights gains following 1969’s Stonewall riots in New York City.

NAMBLA emerged from the tumultuous political atmosphere of the 1970s, particularly from the leftist wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Although discussion of gay adult-minor sex did take place, gay rights groups immediately following the Stonewall Riot were more concerned with issues of police harassment, nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas.

TIME
These are gloomy and uncertain days for conservatives, who—except for the eight-year Clinton interregnum—have dominated political power and thought in this country since Reagan rode in from the West. Their tradition goes back even further, to Founding Fathers who believed that people should do things for themselves and who shook off a monarchy in their conviction that Big Government is more to be feared than encouraged. The Boston Tea Party, as Reagan used to point out, was an antitax initiative.
But everything that Reagan said in 1985 about "the other side" could easily apply to the conservatives of 2007. They are handcuffed to a political party that looks unsettlingly like the Democrats did in the 1980s, one that is more a collection of interest groups than ideas, recognizable more by its campaign tactics than its philosophy. The principles that propelled the movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan's legatees. Government is not only bigger and more expensive than it was when George W. Bush took office, but its reach is also longer, thanks to the broad new powers it has claimed as necessary to protect the homeland. It's true that Reagan didn't live up to everything he promised: he campaigned on smaller government, fiscal discipline and religious values, while his presidency brought us a larger government and a soaring deficit. But Bush's apostasies are more extravagant by just about any measure you pick.
Set adrift as it is, the right understandably feels anxious as it contemplates who will carry Reagan's mantle into November 2008. "We're in the political equivalent of a world without the law of gravity," says Republican strategist Ralph Reed. "Nothing we have known in the past seems relevant." At the top of the Republican field in the latest Time poll is the pro-choice, pro-gay-rights former mayor of liberal New York City.....
Link: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1599374,00.html

From that letter, NOTE: Rev. Magora E. Kennedy STONEWALL Veterans' Association S.V.A. Chaplain

The Amsterdam News, a weekly New York newspaper, is leading the way with articles like "Black New Yorkers: 'Gayest great-grandmother in the country,'" (August 14, 2003) which profiles the life of Rev. Magora Kennedy, a former Black panther, a mother of 5 and grandmother of 15, and an out lesbian whose activism dates back to Stonewall. Special attention is also paid to youth issues in "Kids with gay parents talk about their families" (May 12-May 18, 2005).

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