It makes me cringe to know that such an ignorant little man will be leading our country for the next four years. I don’t see how President George W. Bush can call himself a compassionate conservative when he aims to hurt 10 percent of the population.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, GLAAD, and other gay organizations have been fueling the anti-Bush fire since the beginning of his campaign. Their most successful anti-Bush advertising has been the publicizing of his shackling, hurtful policies toward gays and lesbians.
He opposes same-sex marriage. He does not even want to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The Dallas Morning News quoted him saying, “”I believe children ought to be adopted in families with a woman and man who are married.””
He supports the military’s “”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”” policy, as shown by his cabinet nomination of Gen. Colin Powell, who was the creator of that policy. He opposes hate-crime legislation, which would be used for such cases as Matthew Shepard’s.
Dubya’s most eloquent statement is the following as collected by The Dallas Morning News: “”The next president must fight against discrimination, but I think we can do so without special treatment of people.”” It’s interesting because the context in which he says this regards employment nondiscrimination. With that statement, he decided to solve the problem of discrimination against gay and lesbian employees by ignoring it.
His policy is repulsive when it comes to AIDS and health care. Bush is an opponent of funding for AIDS health care. During his term, the Texas Department of Health began a name-reporting program for people with HIV (see http://www.planetout.com for information). That it is possibile to find out if someone has a disease is a complete invasion of privacy.
With that information, one would think that all openly gay people would have voted for Al Gore in the past election. However, according to www.Planetout.com, 25 percent of openly gay voters voted for Bush.
Planetout columnist Michelangelo Signorele stated that this is a ceiling not a floor, because no one knows how many gays were unwilling to declare their sexuality at the polls. Considering that so much of America consists of little backwater towns in the middle of nowhere, that is a low, low ceiling. Obviously, if you lived in one of those towns, you might not be comfortable with your homosexuality.
One might ask, why would anyone who is gay vote Republican to begin with? Some have suggested that the absence of a positive progression of gay rights legislation by the Democratic president in the last eight years has caused many frustrated gay Democrats to vote Bush.
The same-sex marriage bill was not passed and the “”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”” military bill was. This caused a lot of frustration. Currently, there is even a small contingent of gay Republicans called the “”Log Cabin Republicans.””
A lot of older gays and lesbians could have voted Republican for economic reasons. Many gay and lesbians couples are known as DINKs, or “”Double Income, No Kids.”” They do not have the tax advantages that come with marriage, so they would want to be taxed as little as possible. Because these couples don’t have kids, they have a larger amount of disposable income and therefore want less of it taken away. Republican emphasis on low taxes for those in higher tax brackets would benefit most DINKs.
Many say that blatant discrimination and the predicted sinking economy will contribute to a quick four-and-out for Bush. This would possibly cause the next president to be Democrat. Supposedly, Dubya will leave such a bad taste in voters’ mouths that they will be eager to elect a Democrat, preferably Hillary Clinton, for the following eight years.
Bush will hurt gays in ways that have yet to be discussed. The obvious way he will affect gay rights is with his appointments to the Supreme Court. The less obvious way he will affect gay rights is his thousands of appointments in the executive branch. Those thousands of appointments will be little personal additions to the federal government, and each one will have its own effect on the workings of the government.
The most representational gauge of how things will go between Bush and gays for the next four years may be seen in how the Bush administration handles Linda Cheney, the out-lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Or rather, how it does not handle her. Whenever the media asks a member of the Bush administration about Linda, the reply is “”no comment.”” I can assure you that will be the reply for the next four years concerning gay and lesbian issues.
No comment.
