SODOMY : Ex-Gay Lobbyists Visit Capitol Hill The shock of Ex-Gay Lobby Day was that out of 50 appointments on the Hill, nobody had ever heard of anyone changing from homosexuality," said Linda Wall, who most recently ran for state Senate in Virginia’s Tidewater area.
"As a former lesbian schoolteacher, I realized more than ever the importance of sharing my past life as a lesbian so others know that there is a choice. I also see how vital it is that we ex-gays be permitted a seat at the table of public policy making to assure the full disclosure of information pertaining to sexual orientation," Wall said.
In the end, cultural disputes and widespread dismay over the country’s moral state overshadowed the economic optimism that was expected to put Al Gore in the White House, allowing Bush to eke out a victory.
All this goes to confirm that, to borrow a title from an earlier First Things article, "It’s the Culture, Stupid" (April 1994).
As political scientist Walter Dean Burnham has suggested, such complex party coalitions are best described by geological metaphors. Today the ancient ethnoreligious bedrock of vote choice has been eroded by rising tides of disengagement, while simultaneously being fractured by the upheavals of cultural politics. Indeed, the religious formations we saw in 2000 have been developing for some time and have now solidified. This fact has vital ramifications for governance. In the future Republicans will remain solicitous of traditionalists, and evangelical traditionalists in particular, while Democrats will privilege the concerns of religious minorities, secularists, and modernists. Regardless of well-meaning admonitions to both parties to "move to the center," ignoring such large core constituencies would be political suicide.
What is needed is "bridging" social capital: activity that reaches beyond the religious group itself to work with others on causes that involve "loving thy neighbor," but are not purely sectarian in nature. Traditionalist Protestants and Roman Catholics are remarkably generous in donating their time and energy to worthy causes: we find (as Putnam did) that they are much more engaged on the whole than religious liberals or secular people. But they are also more likely to volunteer in ways that bond them with one another, serving the needs of people within the community of faith, rather than connect to the needs of others beyond the fold. In this respect, the declining number of mainline Protestants is particularly disturbing, for this group
Republicans Confident Gay Rights Issue Will Hurt DeanRichard White (search), a Republican state senator from Mississippi, said any candidate talking about gay rights might as well not even visit his state.
"The people down here, they are not going to put up with that kind of stuff," White said. "We're not prepared for all that in Mississippi or anywhere else in the southern states."
Mary Cheney ducks out of GOP gay group
Mary Cheney ducks out of GOP gay group Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, has resigned from the board of the Republican Unity Coalition slightly more than one year after taking on the largely honorary post with the gay-straight political alliance.
Cheney, who once marketed beer to the gay and lesbian community as an employee of the Coors Brewing Co. of Golden, Colo., has been one of the few key gay rights supporters with close ties to the White House.
A source close to the Cheney family said Mary Cheney's resignation from RUC will allow her to pursue business interests in her home state of Colorado, where she lives with her partner, Heather Poe. But some gay activists suggest that there may be more behind the decision, since it comes on the heels of protests from the religious right regarding pro-gay comments by GOP chairman Marc Racicot. "Leaders of the extreme right are demanding that the GOP back away from any association with the gay community," said David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C., gay rights group. "The Right is calling into question what little outreach the party had to gay voters at the crossroads of an election season. While I can't speculate on the reasons for her decision, Mary Cheney's departure definitely comes at an interesting time."
Poll: Pennsylvanians behind Santorum in gay issue
The vast majority of the state's voters -- 75 percent -- said Santorum should not resign as Senate Republican Conference chairman, while 58 percent said homosexuality was morally wrong, the Quinnipiac University poll said. [CNN leaves out the Quinnipiac also says ONLY 27% finds the behavior Acceptable]
If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."
Still, 55 percent approved of the senator with 33 percent disapproving of his performance and 12 percent undecided.
SODOMY : Santorum Crisis Exposes Republican WeaknessThe Rick Santorum controversy has illuminated a serious problem in the Republican Party: its leaders seem woefully ill-prepared to defend the pro-family position on homosexuality. As an attorney who trains pro-family activists how to debate this issue, I would like to offer my fellow Republicans the following advice.
First, don't dodge the issue in fear of political correctness or pro-"gay" media bias. Stand confidently upon the essential pro-family presuppositions that resonate with people of common sense: 1) normality is that which functions according to its design, 2) the heterosexual design of the human body and the natural family is self-evident, 3) respecting the design of life produces good results (conversely, rejecting that design produces bad results) and 4) simple observation validates these assumptions. No special education or "scientific" study is required.
SODOMY : Homosexual Agenda Unrelated to Civil Rights Movement, Conservative Blacks Insist
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