Rights Foundation gives 2002 award to Hillary Clinton
BY JENNIFER MALONEY jmaloney@herald.com
U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of Congress' staunchest supporters of gay rights, was honored Saturday night with the Dade Human Rights Foundation's 2002 National Impact Award.
About 1,400 people paid $175 a plate at the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa in Hollywood to see the junior Democratic senator from New York and former first lady get her award.
''One of the pieces of unfinished business in this country is that we eliminate all vestiges of discrimination and bias and be sure that the laws fully protect all of us,'' she said.
The 8-year-old foundation, an umbrella group for local gay-rights organizations, recognized Clinton for various stands she has taken, including her support of extending benefits for Sept. 11 victims to gay partners and her cosponsorship of a bill that would prohibit discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. The bill has yet to gain enough backing to pass Congress.
''We have a long way to go . . . but we are making progress,'' she said.
Said MarkyG, a host on Miami techno-pop radio station Party 93.1: ``It's wonderful to have a role model, someone we can take pride in who supports us and who doesn't make you feel like second-class citizens. Hillary makes you feel just like everyone else.''
Also praising Clinton: Janet Reno, the former U.S. attorney general and gubernatorial candidate who attended the dinner and drew some of the crowd's loudest applause.
''She speaks volumes for Americans fighting against discrimination,'' Reno said.
Clinton thanked the crowd for helping defeat a Sept. 10 Miami-Dade initiative to repeal the county's gay-rights amendment that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Voters elected to keep the amendment.
The foundation -- which announced it's changing its name to the Gay and Lesbian Foundation of South Florida -- gave its Humanitarian Award on Saturday to Lee Brian Schrager, director of media and special events for Southern Wine and Spirits of America, the country's largest distributor of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages.
Southern Wine and Spirits has made donations to several South Florida gay and AIDS-related charities and was a major sponsor of the 2002 Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The award was sponsored by The Herald.
Former winners of the National Impact Award include House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and Miami's Billy Bean, a retired major-league baseball player who made national news by revealing he is gay.
Well, while I can then, I will speak the truth:
It is not OK to be gay. Quite the opposite; the gay lifestyle is morally abhorrent, destructive to health, and destructive to society.
God Bless America and the First Amendment.
Depends on how much power Americans give to the ACLU and the judicial system
"In reality they are the same thing,"
Of course....
"Hi, I'm Bob and I'm anal sex." "Uh....."
It should be noted,
Svend Robinson is a strong supporter of Arafat,
whom he has visited many times at government expense.
Fred Phelps, despite his never-ending hate talk, continues to aid the cause of the Gay-stapo immeasurably. It just never ends.
Even though he and his miniscule congregation have no influence whatsoever, that jackass and his "church" members are a weeping cancerous lesion on the American religious and political scenes.
Rushfeldt also recalled instances in which the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council rules have been used to censure programs addressing homosexuality. In 1997, the council ruled that the airing of a James Dobson "Focus on the Family" program, called "Homosexuality: Fact and Fiction," violated the requirement that opinion, comment, and editorializing be presented in a way that is "full, fair, and proper."
The rules are "so vague," said Rushfeldt, "that if somebody says something that hurts feelings it can be considered a violation of the broadcast standards."
That's not quite true. There was a complaint filed against Bill Maher for comments about Jesus Christ and/or God and Catholics and/or Christians that were broadcast on a Canadian comedy channel. That was OK with them.
Anyone who read the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council censure of Dr. Laura Schlessinger for her comments about radical gay activists knows how mushy the Canucks are about thorny issues of incorrect speech.
From the decision, filed February 2, 2000, but strategically released to damage her upcoming TV show (bold mine; the multiple italized words are theirs):
The hosts perspective is clear and unambiguous. Whether the terms she uses are "abnormal", "aberrant", "dysfunctional", "disordered", "deviant", "an error" or the like, her terminology is clearly pejorative. She is unhesitatingly critical, negative and unambiguous and her words are as critical and unrelenting as she can make them. In the end, she is utterly rigid about a fundamental issue which goes to the nature, the essence of gays and lesbians. It is the view of the Councils that the hosts argument that she can "surgically" separate the individual persons from their inherent characteristics so as to entitle her to make comments about the sexuality which have no effect on the person is fatuous and unsustainable. As the [Canadian] Supreme Court has said, where an identifiable group of persons is "defined by an innate or unchangeable characteristic", it will be protected by the human rights provision of the broadcasters Code of Ethics in Canada just as all Canadians are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The sexual practices of gays and lesbians are as much a part of their being as the colour of ones skin or the gender, religion, age or ethnicity of an individual. To use such brutal language as she does about such an essential characteristic flies in the face of Canadian provisions relating to human rights.
Whether or not Americans are so protected in their country is a non-issue for the CBSC. Gays and lesbians are so protected in this country. Whether it is or is not the case in the United States, gays and lesbians constitute a group benefiting from overwhelming judicial and legislative acknowledgment of gay and lesbian rights, not to mention popular support, under the human rights provisions in this country. The words of Supreme Court Justice La Forest cited in the previous paragraph from his opinion in Egan v. Canada [1995] 2 S.C.R. 513 were applied by him in the context of a decision on the constitutional validity of a statute challenged as being in breach of the Charters protection of individuals based on their sexual orientation. He also held:
I have no difficulty accepting the appellants contention that whether or not sexual orientation is based on biological or physiological factors, which may be a matter of some controversy, it is a deeply personal characteristic that is either unchangeable or changeable only at unacceptable personal costs. [Emphasis added.]
Since the sexual practices of gays and lesbians define them as homosexuals and are inseparable from their personas, any attempt by the host to justify her statements on the basis that she is speaking about the practices rather than the individuals must fail. In other words, the Councils have no hesitation in concluding that the statements are discriminatory vis-à-vis gays and lesbians on the basis of their sexual orientation. While there may be uses of the terms "abnormal", "aberrant", "dysfunctional", "disordered", "deviant", "an error" and so on which could, in some circumstances, be reasonable, their sheer weight in these programs and the hosts unremittingly heavy-handed and unambiguously negative characterisation of those sexual practices is abusively discriminatory and in breach of the Code.
How rediculous. Up is down. Black is white. Humans are just animals and animals are as important as humans.
The real "reality" is that the idea, the activity, and the person are 3 seperate things. For example, you can hate Islam, the idea, without hating Muslims. You can hate communism, the idea, without hating communists. You can hate the act of homosexuality without hating gays.
What should be prohibited is acting on that hate. I think that this prohibition already exists since assault, arson, vandalism, murder and incitement are already against the law. What the gay unions want is to prohibit the freedom of expression and the freedom to conceive and express ideas. That is deplorable.
They way people word statements certainly does reflect their core beliefs: government occured first and made people to govern. There appears to be more than one flaw in that concept.
the very words which may come back to her from God on judgment day.
Bible Quotes "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, |
That says EVERYTHING!!!!!!
When speech is outlawed, only outlaws will be able to speak.