Senate holds first hearing on inclusive ENDA

The Senate held the first hearing on inclusive ENDA legislation yesterday. It's nice that the Senate records and posts the video so everyone can watch the hearings.

I read a few outrageous examples over at Bilerico on why ENDA matters. It is way past time to provide the civil rights protection of allowing us to work without fear of being fired simply for who we are.

One way, of course, to prime the pump for legislative change is to write "Letters to the Editor" and demand change. I plan on writing one, myself. Read More...

Amazing video by young gay kid who "gets it"

NOTE FROM JOHN: Watch this, now. Quite powerful.

How can anyone argue against this amazing video I just saw posted over at David Mixner's site? Answer: They can't. He understands "tyranny of majority by ballot box" and lack of support by progressive organizations. Why doesn't the DNC?

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Former Miss California no longer invited to hatefest this evening in NJ

It really is unfair. So, she's had a boob job, posed semi-nude, and did a solo sex video. I mean who hasn't done all those things and then put themselves on national TV as a paragon of Biblical chastity? Joe My God has the story. A very nice way to end a really bad week. Read More...

HRC says don't question whether our national political leaders should have spoken out about Maine and Wash state

Who does HRC work for any more? The gay community or the Obama administration?

How many ridiculously inappropriate emails do we need to get from HRC president Joe Solmonese before someone on the board of directors, or some big donors, gives a call and says "enough." Remember Joe's last email, where he said that Obama had until 2017 to make good on his promise, so we all might as well just shut up until then?

But to send out an email suggesting that we shouldn't question why our national leaders abandoned us yet again, and to send it on the day that we catch our leaders lying to us, or at best seriously misleading, is beyond bizarre. Here is what Solmonese just sent out to HRC's list:

After Maine – and after Prop 8 – the most tempting and brutal word is "if."

If the ads had been more aggressive. If national political leaders had spoken out. If.

Maine was not a photo finish but it was close enough to make us wonder. "If" beckons....

For a lot of people in the community and our supporters, Tuesday's results feel like a good reason to throw up our hands and say forget politics. It's also tempting to find someone to blame, or a missing piece, that pesky "if," to cling to.

I'm not asking you not to. I'm telling you that we can't....

When we come into the office on Monday, let's leave "if" behind us, and focus on "when."

Tell me that the DNC and the White House didn't put HRC up to this? Rather than a statement from HRC asking why the DNC and the White House didn't do squat to help our community in Maine and Washington state, why a top DNC official is attacking our community for simply asking that our leaders keep their promises, HRC is sending out emails telling us to stop asking about our national leaders' lack of action.

Then there's this little gem as well in the email:

Yesterday the Senate held its first hearing on a fully-inclusive ENDA and the chief civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice testified for the bill. That is this administration speaking out and telling Congress to move ENDA. Our work won us a fair-minded DOJ...

Ah yes, that fair-minded DOJ. The one that keeps defending DOMA in court, as they did last week. The one that compared our relationships to incest and pedophilia, and still no one has taken responsibility or even bothered to apologize. That fair-minded DOJ, the head of which, Eric Holder, was asked not once, but twice, about the battle in Maine and twice gave horrible answers, including the outrageous claim that he just wasn't very up on the topic. You know, he's only the nation's top law enforcement official and he was only visiting the state a week before a huge election in which the number one topic was the repeal of marriage equality.

Fair-minded DOJ simply because one attorney showed up at a hearing and read a statement.

HRC and the Obama administration ought to just get a room. Read More...

Adam Bink: DNC Treats LGBT Community As Awkward Party Crasher

Adam was contacted by yet another DNC official who told him the same lie that the DNC inadvertently contacted Mainers and asked them to help Corzine in NJ. When in fact, the DNC Treasurer has now admitted that Mainers were intentionally included an email blast nationwide to help Corzine. Then why lie about it?

I spoke with another DNC official today after my piece on the OFA's fuckups/refusals to help, and that official told me "Some Mainers inadvertently got the email, but it was not sent to our Maine list." I was also told that this was a "glitch", and the quote above confirms that. Okay, one might think, a glitch is your system has a few people with the wrong zip codes in them, so they get a blast meant for someone else. Whoops. Fine. That's not actually what happened. What happened, per Tobias' e-mail, is the DNC did a large e-mail blast on this, and wanted to make sure Mainers didn't get that e-mail, for fear that the gays might find out and ask, how come we didn't get this kind of help?

It's kind of like being forwarded a party invite the host doesn't want you to come to, and when you show up, everyone gets silent and it's a-w-k-w-a-r-d. The party, in this case, was electoral help, and OFA wanted to make sure people didn't find out it was being grossly insensitive by not extending an invitation to the gays in Maine. Awesome.

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Pam is ticked

From Pam Spaulding:

Shut the gAyTM down; only give directly to candidates and organizations you believe are truly working in your best interest. Not a penny to the DNC; it's the only leverage you have as an average citizen. The big donors in our community have to take a stand on this kind of nonsense, otherwise, they are enabling this kind of treatment of our community. It's party-building at our expense each and every time, as we watch windows of opportunity close. The thought of a halt to the cash flow will stop this BS pronto, if only to make them listen for a goddamn minute before stepping on the gas to run over us again.

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Dan Savage: "President Obama is a fierce advocate of gay rights the same way I'm a ladies' man. He isn't, and I'm not."

Wow. Dan went on Olbermann last night, and was absolutely amazing. Interestingly, the first part of the segment shows Marc Mutty, the chairman of the anti-gay forces in Maine, who also works for the Catholic church up there. Had I met Mutty as a stranger on the street, I'd have been absolutely positively convinced that he was gay. I'm not saying Mutty is gay at all - I have no idea what his sexual orientation is. I just find it queer that so many of these anti-gay activists, like Mutty and Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council, among others, set off my gaydar to such an extent. It's just interesting.

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DNC caught lying again about their actions in Maine on election day

Ben Smith over at Politico reported the latest DNC statement about their actions, or non-actions, in Maine during the election this past Tuesday. You'll recall that a large number of Democrats were outraged that the DNC's OFA not only didn't do anything to help fight the repeal of gay civil rights in Maine this past Tuesday, but in fact, the DNC actually sent an email to Mainers asking them to help Jon Corzine get re-elected in New Jersey. There's also growing outrage over evidence that the DNC lied to the gay community when explaining its actions.

The DNC is now claiming that their generic get out the vote email to Mainers, which mentioned nothing about ballot measure 1 (to repeal marriage equality), and nothing on TABOR (a Grover Norquist initiative), actually contained language urging Mainers to vote for progressive causes and candidates.

The thing is, it didn't.

Here is what the DNC told Ben Smith yesterday, in response to this article, that:

In Maine there were over a half dozen ballot initiatives and referendums, and local municipal elections at stake and OFA sent an e-mail to thousands of activists encouraging them to vote in support of progressive causes and candidates. There were some Mainers who received an erroneous e-mail regarding the New Jersey Governor's election - that e-mail was not intended to downplay the significance of Maine's local elections.

And here is the email in question. Where is the reference to "go vote for progressive candidates and progress causes"? It's not there. So why is the DNC telling Ben Smith that it is?

From: "Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com" info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: From: "Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com" info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Get out the vote in Maine

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
Subject: Get out the vote in Maine

XXXX --

One year ago, we made phone calls, went door to door, and proudly cast our ballots to elect Barack Obama and bring real change to this country.

Tomorrow is Election Day once again in Maine. It's as important as ever for you to get out to vote. And just like you did last year, bring friends, family, and co-workers with you when you go to the polls.

(Click here to find your polling location.

On Election Day last year, we knew that victory was just the beginning -- that the hardest work was still ahead of us. We didn't build this movement for a single election or issue.

And we know -- now more than ever -- that our voices and votes are critical to continuing this movement for change and in shaping the outcome of the issues that are most important to us like health insurance reform and creating jobs to turn around the economy.

So please remind friends and family to go vote and bring them with you to your polling location tomorrow.

Thanks,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Also, there were no Democrats on the ballot, than mayors and local officials. There were no statewide candidates up for election because it was an off off-year. Read More...

DNC Treasurer blames Aravosis for gay community anger at DNC/Obama

DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias joined in the comments section last night of John's latest post about the DNC's, and White House's, growing gay problem. And he wasn't very happy.

The post is about a leaked email from Tobias to DNC funders, in which Tobias admits that the DNC intentionally included Mainers in a mass email blitz to help NJ Governor Jon Corzine's re-election, rather than asking Mainers to help defeat ballot measure 1 which successfully repealed marriage equality for gay couples in that state. Previously, DNC officials had claimed that the emails were sent to Mainers as a "glitch."

The DNC's Tobias, a series of 11 comments spanning into the early hours of the morning, blames John for the increasingly strained relationship between the gay community and the Democratic party:

As these comments show, you are being quite effective in turning people against support of the Democrats. That, by definition, helps the Republicans.

That's priceless.

So, John is to blame for the Obama administration's infamous DOMA brief last June comparing same-sex relationships to incest and pedophilia. Right. I remember how hard John worked on that brief. Oh, right, it wasn't John who wrote that brief. Obama's Department of Justice did, and Obama's press secretary said the President stands behind it.

And I suppose it's John's fault that President-elect Obama invited famed homophobe Rick Warren, who was an outspoken supporter of Prop 8, to give the invocation at the inauguration. And, John also invited homophobe Donnie McClurkin, who calls himself an "ex-gay" (i.e., he's been "cured" of his homosexuality), to campaign for Obama. And, don't forget how John was responsible for removing the gay rights promises from the White House web site, which then substituted the "repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to "changing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in a sensible manner."

It was also John's fault that Senator Durbin said this week that the Senate may not take up the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" next year, even though our community has been repeatedly told that early next year DADT will be repealed, as the president promised. And, I'm pretty sure it was John who told the White House not to mention Maine and Washington in Obama's speech to HRC a few weeks ago, even though activists begged the White House to help. And, John told the DNC not to help in Maine and Washington State (which had a domestic partners measure on the ballot). And John probably wrote the OFA email to Maine telling people to vote, but not how to vote on major gay rights and labor issues. Then, he came up with the bright idea of asking Mainers to call New Jersey, and ignore their own state, despite the importance of the marriage equality referendum in Maine.

I believe John also wrote the talking points for all the generals who have gone on the Sunday talk shows to subtly suggest they are not planning to lift a finger to get DADT repealed. That would, of course, include the time that John forced the Army Secretary to suggest that segregating gay soldiers, separate but equal style, might be an acceptable alternative to fully repealing DADT.

Tobias is the top-ranking gay official at the DNC and his comments really gave us some insight into the way that organization thinks. He blamed Aravosis for turning people against the DNC. Apparently, in the world of Andy Tobias and the DNC, John's gay civil rights advocacy is helping the Republicans. All we're asking is for Obama to keep his promises to the LGBT community. All we've done here at AMERICAblog is report whether or not those promises have been kept. All of you can -- and do -- draw your own conclusions as to who is to blame for the bad blood between the Democratic party and the gay community. The White House and the DNC think that we're the problem for wanting our rights and wanting Obama to simply keep his promises.

So, I guess John was also helping the Republicans when:

- Back in the 90s, he helped sailor Timothy McVeigh (that's his real name) take on the Navy after AOL outed him;

- He launched Matthew Shepard Online Resources a decade ago -- it would now be called a blog -- and helped explode the Matthew Shepard story worldwide;

- He launched StopDrLaura.com and, along with activists around the country (and in Canada), got Dr. Laura kicked off the air;

- He took on Mary Cheney with his DearMary.com Web site, and only a few months later the Cheneys were suddenly opposed to the Federal Marriage Amendment.

- He took on Microsoft in spring of 2005 and Ford Motor Company in December of 2005 over their anti-gay positions, and won;

And that's just a sample.

There's a reason that John has been named in the past as one of the 50 most powerful gays and lesbians in America, and it's not because he "helps" Republicans. It's because he has a long record of successfully helping gay people fight for their civil rights. Even when it makes Democrats uncomfortable.

It's outrageous for the DNC to attack someone with John's record on gay civil rights, when their record has been abominable. (And for the record, John has never been sued for being anti-gay -- the DNC can't claim the same.) If the DNC is worried about anyone "helping the Republicans," they need only look in a mirror. No one has done more to push the LGBT community away from the Democratic party than the Democratic party itself.

The DNC and the White House see the gay community as an ATM. Well, the GayTM just ran dry. Read More...

A Victory in Washington State: Approve 71's "lead now appears insurmountable"

Congrats to everyone in Washington State. Our side won:

Washington state voters have approved Referendum 71, keeping a law that expands state benefits for registered same-sex and some senior domestic partners.

The tally Thursday afternoon saw the vote to approve R-71 widening its lead 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent.

That lead now appears insurmountable.

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Leaked email proves DNC misled gay community. DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias admits DNC intentionally asked Mainers to help Corzine, after DNC denied it.

I think we just caught the DNC lying to the gay community about the election in Maine. And an email from DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias, which we quote below, proves it.

Joe broke the news on Monday that the DNC's "Organizing for America" group, formerly known as "Obama for America," contacted Mainers by email, urging them to vote on Tuesday, but without mentioning what the election was about, nor which way to vote. Among the measures up for a vote was ballot measure 1, the repeal of gay marriage in that state. A number of us were concerned as to why the DNC wouldn't inform gay voters that 1 was on the ballot, let alone not urging them to vote "no."

Shortly thereafter, a second Mainer received another email from the DNC's OFA. This one urged her to call five people in New Jersey, in order to help Jon Corzine's re-election for governor. This was disturbing for a number of reasons. First, why would the DNC ask Mainers to help out in New Jersey, while not asking Mainers to help on "1" or any other ballot measures in their own state? Second, the email was proof that the DNC was in fact doing more than sending generic "get out the vote" messages to advocate. In states they deemed worthy, they were actually organizing for specific things on the ballot. Marriage in Maine simply didn't pass muster.

That's when I received a call from a senior DNC official. Part of the call was off the record, and I will respect that confidence, even if I was misled (more on that below). A portion of the call was on background, meaning I was permitted to report what I was told, without saying who exactly told me. I was told in that call that my story about the Corzine email was flat out wrong. I was told, verbatim, that "the DNC did not send an email to our Maine list asking them to make calls in New Jersey."

Shortly after I received that call, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post's Plum Line contacted the DNC about this story, and the DNC refused to comment. That struck both Joe and me as odd, since the DNC had only half an hour before given me a comment. Why the sudden clamp down? Did they know that they had misled me, and didn't want to mislead any other journalists?

Subsequent to the DNC's claim that they hadn't intentionally contacted Mainers, a second Mainer got a DNC/OFA email asking him to call five voters in New Jersey to help Corzine.

We now know that what I was told was untrue. Or at the very least, it was purposefully misleading. Mainers were intentionally included in a broader email blitz that the DNC did, nationwide, to help Corzine's race. We know this because DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias admitted it in a lengthy email message to DNC donors yesterday. Here is an excerpt of Tobias' email to the donors - an email sent a good 30 hours after my conversation with the DNC official:

1. An email went out asking activists to make calls to New Jersey. It was insensitive not to omit Mainers from that email. I apologize that no one thought to do that. I can’t imagine it could have cost No On One even a dozen votes, but I still wish someone would have thought of this in time to catch it. Mistake noted.

2. A different email went out to Mainers urging them to vote. As the only thing of substance anyone was voting on in Maine was Question One, and as Democratic activists vote our way, this was a small but positive effort to be helpful.

I would have liked to see that email discuss No One One directly, in case there may have been an email-enabled Organizing for America activist someplace in Maine who did NOT know where Maine Democrats stood on this issue. (Out of the country without Internet access until the night before the election?) But I’m told there was concern that advocating specifically for a ballot initiative, whether LGBT or otherwise, would set a precedent for every other ballot initiative. Bureaucracies are nervous about setting precedents.

My analysis of the email, after the jump...

A few points here:

1. Tobias admits that Mainers were included in the nationwide Corzine email blast. The quote given to me by the DNC official was intended to convince the gay community that no such email was sent, at least not willfully. That was untrue. Tobias' quote also proves that I was lied to, or at the very least intentionally misled, in the off the record part of my phone call with the DNC about this issue as well.

2. Tobias confirms that Mainers did receive a get out of the vote email from the DNC/OFA (this was not disputed by the DNC). And to his credit, Tobias states that he wishes the email had mentioned No on One, the pro-gay campaign fighting the marriage repeal effort.

3. The notion that mentioning "No on 1" in the Maine GOTV email would have had little to no effect is absurd. If Democrats in Maine know how to vote on the anti-gay ballot measure, and thus don't need guidance, then Democrats in New Jersey equally know to vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and thus need no coaxing from the DNC and OFA.

And what's more, Obama won Maine in the 2008 presidential election by 58% (421,923 votes) to McCain's 40% (295,273 votes). We lost marriage equality in Maine by 53% (299,483 votes) to 47% (267,574 votes), or by 31,909 votes. If Obama won Maine with 421,923 votes, and we only needed 299,484 votes to win on gay marriage repeal, then something is wrong here. A lot of Obama voters, 122,439 to be exact, did not turn out and vote, period. So it's obvious that not all Democrats in Maine already knew to vote and which way to vote. They didn't vote at all.

But more to the point, would the DNC have us believe that the aggressive intervention of the DNC and the President could not have helped sway the President's own voters to get out and vote against ballot measure 1, when they otherwise sat home? Clearly President Obama was able to motivate these extra 122,439 people a year ago, but we're to believe that he couldn't motivate them today? We only needed 26% of those people to turn out and help us. We got none of them. And we'll never know if the fierce advocacy of the DNC and the President would have helped, because they didn't even bother trying. And then they tried to mislead us, to boot.

4. And finally, the DNC has concerns about getting involved in local ballot initiatives? Why? They did it last year under Howard Dean, when they donated $25,000 to the coalition fighting Prop 8's repeal of gay marriage. President Jimmy Carter did it in 1978, when he came out against the Briggs Initiative, that would have banned gays and lesbians from being teachers in California. But regardless, why does the DNC (and the White House) have a problem getting involved when a core Democratic constituency is having its civil rights taken away by the far-right base of the Republican party? We were promised that this administration would be our fierce advocate. Now all we get are excuses.

And the DNC and the White House wonder why they have a growing problem with the gay community.

PS I think the labor movement might have a problem with the DNC's assertion that nothing else of substance was on the ballot in Maine. In fact, conservative activist Grover Norquist was trying to pass his TABOR proposal, the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Read More...

Mixner says the GayTM is closed

David Mixner:

How can we have any dignity, honor or pride in ourselves if we validate this continued process of ballot box terrorism? How can we stand tall next to each other if we explain away another's cowardliness? How can we allow people to dehumanize our relationships and our very integrity if we give people passes to sit out the battle for our very freedom? No longer are political timelines a reason for delay, no longer are incremental approaches acceptable and no longer can the political process expect us to be patient and wait our turn. Our turn came long ago and there will be no more waiting.

...As so many others have said, "The Gay ATM Machine is closed." Not one penny more for those who are fair weather friends, who ask us to delay and who insist patience is a virtue in the face of injustice. I was astounded a few weeks ago in Washington when all my liberal friends were urging me to support the Democrat Owen in upstate New York who won election on Tuesday. When I responded that he was strongly against marriage equality and opined that they shouldn't be supporting him, it was quickly pointed out to me that the Human Rights Campaign was supporting him. Well, you know what? I don't care. If we support people who are against full equality, how can we expect others to do differently? No more excuses. Stop it. Close the checkbooks to those who are not fully on our side.

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