Thursday, April 24, 2008

Obama vs. Clinton on Gays

Others continue to note the difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when it comes to even being willing to utter the word "gay." As I have said repeatedly, we are totally invisible in the Clinton campaign except for when Hillary does an interview with gay media outlets which I suspects she believes will remain "under the radar" vis-a-vis the main stream media. Or when she is seeking our money. Obama, on the other hand continues to take a far different approach as these highlights from a post by Andrew Sullivan reveal:
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This morning I saw an excerpt from Obama's concession speech in Indiana where he said the following:
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"Or this time, we can build on the movement we've started in this campaign – a movement that's united Democrats, Independents, and Republicans; a movement of young and old, rich and poor; white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American, gay and straight."
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I have two comments about this: First, I cannot recall a politician ever speaking after a loss, proclaiming that he wants to bring together gays and straights. That is amazing. Can you imagine Hillary ever saying anything like that to a national audience, especially after a defeat?
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Second, the "gay and straight" portion is not included in the text of the speech on Obama's website. This means either 1) the campaign removed those words from the edited transcript or 2) (more likely) Obama's inclusion of "gay and straight" was impromptu. It wasn't included by the speech writers, but he included it at the spur of the moment. If this is true, how amazing it is that there is a politician who is willing to stand up for us gay Americans who have been ignored for so long.
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Yet many gays continue to blindly - and in my view very foolishly - support Hillary. If she cannot bring herself to say the word "gay" in a public forum, how can they possible trust her?

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