Proud Parenting

LGBTQ Parents - Lesbian Moms & Gay Dads

GOP seems ready to move along with other issues

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House Speaker John A. Boehner (R) showed little interest in making an election-year debate out of President Obama’s support for marriage equality. Republican leaders have tried to keep their robust conservative flank in Congress focused on economic issues that are most important to voters, rather than the social issues that have defined the party in the past. Asked if a “same-sex” marriage plank should be included in the Democratic Party platform, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority leader, was quick to say: “I’m sure it will be.”

[WPHL]

Lawmaker says he’s gay; denounces school bill

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A Republican Missouri House member has publicly announced he’s gay and is calling on GOP leaders to end legislation that would limit discussion of sexual orientation in public schools. Rep. Zachary Wyatt (pic), Kirksville, held a Capitol news conference at which he said he was disclosing his sexual orientation for the first time. Wyatt and several other lawmakers denounced a bill that would prohibit teaching, extracurricular activities or materials that discuss sexual orientation unless they relate to the scientific facts about human reproduction. The bill appears unlikely to pass before the session ends, but has generated attention. Republican Rep. Steve Cookson sponsored the bill and says he won’t withdraw it.

[FOX2now.com]

Giuliani says GOP should stay away from marriage controversy

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Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani believes the Republican Party should stop fighting marriage equality and focus on fiscal policy. “We’d be a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He’s considering a run for the GOP presidential ticket in 2012, and has long supported civil unions. Although he said he believes marriage should be limited to a man and a woman, he can “live with” the legalization in New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. A Democrat and Independent in the 1970’s, and a Republican since the 1980’s. He served two terms as Mayor of NYC, having run along Republican and Liberal lines. He was credited with initiating improvements and with a reduction in crime pressing the city’s quality of life initiatives.

[via WPXI Pittsburgh]

Huckabee compares gay parenting to experimentation: ‘Children are not puppies’

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Former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee shared his ignorance and bigotry about gay parents with a College of New Jersey student publication.

From HuffPost:

“I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family,” Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, said.

“Children are not puppies,” he continued. “This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”

Huckabee was similarly dismissive of same-sex marriage and even civil unions, which he called “not necessary.”

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” Huckabee said when asked about same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

Sarah Palin and Evangelicals: Landmark gay parenting book is immoral

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A recent report in The New York Times emphasizes Gov. Palin’s relationship with religious extremists.

The Times says she “…tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.”

According to the report, Palin took direction from the extreme religious right.

Laura Chase, Palin’s campaign manager during her first run for mayor in 1996, finds effects of the relationship “disturbing”.

Chase recalls, “…in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book Daddy’s Roommate on the shelves and that it did not belong there.”

Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand same-sex relationships, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Palin read it.

The baffled campaign manager said, “Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff. It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

Republicans are becoming more open to marriage equality and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples

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According to new surveys, Republicans are becoming more open to marriage equality and civil unions.

A CBS News/New York Times poll released Monday found that 49 percent of the delegates to the Republican convention support allowing same-sex marriages or civil unions. Prior to these results, a similar CNN/Opinion Research Poll – conducted in May – found that nearly half of delegates surveyed supported either same-sex marriages or civil union. Twenty-four percent supported same-sex marriages, while 27 percent backed civil unions. Forty-three percent backed neither option.

Meanwhile, our friend Joan Garry offers a detailed list of John McCain’s views on GLBT issues in a piece at The Huffington Post, including:

  • “I don’t believe in gay adoption.”
  • “I believe that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is working in the military.”
  • He voted against adding sexual orientation to federal hate crimes legislation in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
  • And he voted against extending the Civil Rights Act to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Out of touch with research and professional opinion. John McCain says, “I don’t believe in gay adoption”

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John McCain – the presumptive Republican presidential nominee – said in an interview with The New York Times [published Sunday] that he opposed allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.

An estimated 65,000 children have been adopted by gays and lesbians. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Social Workers, among other groups, have expressed support for gay adoption.

Ignoring research and professional opinion, McCain said, “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption.”

When asked in the interview if he opposed gay adoptions even if the alternative was that the child remain in an orphanage, Mr. McCain – who, with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter – said that he wanted to encourage adoption and make the process easier, but that adoptive parents should be mixed-sex, traditional couples.

His statements were criticized by a number of gay rights organizations, so his campaign clarified his remarks.

“John McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue,” Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “He was not endorsing any federal legislation.”

“Senator McCain’s expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible,” Mr. Bounds said in the statement. But the statement added, “He recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.”

A leading social conservative group, the Family Research Council, said, “[the] remark only muddies the waters. It’s incumbent on mother-father families to step up so that no child faces a dilemma like this. At the same time, abandoning the mother-father model has a cyclical impact by weakening the traditional family unit. The McCain campaign should not fall into this “lady or the tiger” trap and should emphasize the need to rebuild the natural family.”

Source: The New York Times

The Christian right is losing it’s grip on the GOP. No longer forceful, they’re considering a third-party effort.

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The Sacramento Bee reports on a curious development within the GOP voting block. Evangelicals aren’t getting the attention they’re use to from right wing politicians.

Some pundits believe the war – and shifting priorities since 9/11 – has taken attention away from religious conservative worries like abortion and marriage equality.

But high-profile evangelist dinosaurs like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell are becoming ineffective compared to new preachers such as Joel Osteen and Rick Warren, who ignore partisan politics or are willing to embrace Democrats.

As a matter of fact, Warren hosted a fundraiser for Democratic candidate Barack Obama at his California church. He cites AIDS, poverty and illiteracy as top issues. Not gay marriage or abortion.

All of the top Republican candidates skipped a values forum in Florida organized by some of the country’s top social conservatives, including Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum and Don Wildmon of the American Family Association.

The Christian Coalition was once a powerful force within the GOP but now it’s budget has dwindled from $26 million in 1996 to about $1 million today. Its new director wants to expand to issues beyond abortion and marriage. And state chapters in Alabama, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio have parted ways with the group because they believe it’s now too liberal.

The candidates have revealed their positions on gay issues. They all are against ending the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military and against same-sex marriage. Romney and Huckabee would amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage; Giuliani, McCain and Thompson would not. Romney, Giuliani and Thompson are in favor of allowing domestic partnerships. But Thompson would amend the Constitution to allow states to ignore gay marriages that took place in other states – to block judges from imposing marriage equality without state legislative approval. McCain, Thompson and Huckabee are against protecting lesbians and gays with federal hate-crimes law. And they and Romney oppose passage of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

One staunch conservative is even considering switching teams because of the murky waters.

Richard Land, a Tennessee evangelist and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said,

“If the Republicans are foolish enough to nominate a pro-choice candidate, they give the Democrats a license to go hunting evangelical votes.”

On the other hand, threatened that the Republican party might choose Giuliani as its presidential nominee, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him.

The group making the threat includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians. Almost everyone present expressed support for a written resolution that says “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

A third-party run would be a long shot, requiring millions of dollars and challenges to ballot access. Such a bid could prove disastrous for the GOP by splitting the vote.