Current Events Watch

Six of the eight Democratic presidential candidates had the first debate in history dedicated solely to queer issues for an LGBT audience and panel. It wasn’t really a debate, I guess, it was a forum, called The Visible Vote 08. It was kind of like a gay Oprah show.

Great idea, because I’ll tell you, if you win over us gay folks, we’re a loyal bunch, and we will turn out in droves on election day. Sure, we’re a low percentage of total voters. But I’ll guarantee it is worth it. There’s a pathetically low number of the other registered voters who bother to show up at the polls. We will be there en masse, though, because this group of Dems is willing to pay attention to our issues and concerns. It’s not that we don’t care about other issues, but we have questions that need to be answered about where the candidates stand on our community’s issues as well.

By the way, Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd declined to appear. Scheduling conflicts. I’m sure the other six, who did show up, have busy schedules, too, though. I would wager that if Biden or Dodd were courting the Hispanic vote, the black vote, or the Union Labor vote, they would find a way to resolve that scheduling conflict. Oh, that’s right, they’ve already found the time to do that.

I watched the forum on Logo last night, and notice they have posted the videos on their website if you’re interested. It was great, and I admire the candidates who agreed to come and address the questions and to let us know where they stand on the issues. They all did well, in my opinion, except for Bill Richardson. He actually seemed a little uncomfortable, particularly when he was asked whether he believed one is born homosexual or if it is a choice, and he blurted out that he thought it was a choice.

Dude. You should think before you speak when you’re being grilled by a gay panel, in front of a gay audience, all who know that that’s not true. The answer didn’t go over very well, but at least he was there, and he seemed to recover fairly nicely.

By the way, the gay panelists asking the questions were outstanding, too. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, singer Melissa Etheridge (love, love, love her!), and Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese. Melissa’s questions seemed the toughest to me, but maybe that’s because sometimes lesbians scare me, and I wouldn’t want to be interrogated by her for fear of giving an unacceptable answer! I love you, Melissa. I just wouldn’t want you angry with me.

I’ll also need to humbly retract what I said about Dennis Kucinich in a previous post about the YouTube debates. I said:

“Dennis J. Kucinich, he just needs to stop. Of course, there are the others, he just came to mind because he’s so tiny and for some reason I remember his name. No offense to tiny people.”

No, he doesn’t need to stop after all. Not only from his responses to the issues addressed last night, but on other issues as well, he makes sense and seems to not dodge questions or avoid being up front about where he stands, as much as some of the other candidates. He is also only one of two candidates who support gay marriage. The others all apparently support civil unions, with partner’s rights. Well, is it the same? To our community, no, it’s not. And only Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel support full marriage rights for same-sex couples, so I give them much credit for that. I appreciate the other candidates’ reasoning for civil unions instead of marriage but, well, not so much.

Who knows, I might just vote for a tiny person after all. Black, female, or tiny, it’s kind of a draw at this point.

In the end, all did well, and it was outstanding to see the LGBT community’s issues publicly addressed by the candidates for the first time in history.

On a final note, the Republican candidates were invited to participate in a similar forum, but they all declined. Hmmm.

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