Friday, June 12, 2009

G.O. Pink?



I think one of the Republicans makes a very strong point in the last minute of this clip.

He contends that gays should be interested in having their interests represented/courted by both parties, rather than having their support taken for granted by one party and ignored by the other.

Ultimately, I am suspicious of hegemonies of thought in any direction. I believe that this is the path to ignorance, intolerance, and ineffective solutions.

This is one of the reasons why I initially registered as a Democrat when I lived in Utah. I considered myself an Independent, but I was frustrated by the preponderance of Republicans in Utah that made the interests of Utah completely marginalized in the national political scheme.

A great example of this is the controversial establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. Democrats (Clinton in particular) knew they could make this "bold" move for the environment on Utah land because they had nothing to lose. Utahns elect Republicans and that is that. Republicans failed to rally behind dissident Utahns because they know that no matter what, Utah votes with the GOP.

*photo courtesy wildnatureimages.com

It is interesting to have lived in two places of extreme self-righteousness and moralism: Utah and San Francisco. I wonder if both Utah Mormons and gays are wedding themselves to a political ideology based on one or two social issues rather than considering whole platforms based on fiscal policy, foreign policy, and educational agendas.

While I, personally, consider myself a Democrat and find the present state of the GOP to be morally and ideologically repugnant, I would value seeing more gay Republicans. I know that in the diverse community that is the LGBT community, we cannot all possibly think the same way on education, taxation, state's rights, etc.

As for the GOP, I would expect them to welcome LGBT members. Any true Republican would find this Bush-Cheney era of invasive government and evangelical moralizing bizarre. As long as you're for free-market big business "capitalism", against big government, and love guns why should they care who you fuck?

So this weekend of L.A. Pride I am going to be on the look out for these Log Cabins dudes and dudettes (sic?). I really want to include some of them in my social circle. Maybe I'll invite some of them over for dinner. I am just glad we don't believe in having guns in the house, because Shane is going to be pissed!

2 comments:

Natalia said...

I completely agree. Not that I necessarily want there to be more republicans out there, but there is more to politics than who can marry whom. It is too bad that the majority of both democrats and republicans have a hard time seeing that.

John Quintana said...

Thanks, 'talia. Sigh. You're such a smart, sexy lawyer.