Tourism

Curious reasoning. The government of the Federal District of Mexico City states that gay weddings will stimulate tourism.

Bodas gay promoverán más turismo: GDF

House Votes to Expand Hate Crimes Definition

The measure was named in part for Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student murdered in 1998.


The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.

Democrats hailed the vote of 281 to 146, which brought the measure to the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.






Representative John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, voiced opposition to the measure.





Republicans criticized the legislation, saying violent attacks were already illegal regardless of motive. They said the measure was an effort to create a class of “thought crimes” whose prosecution would require ascribing motivation to the attacker.

Thought? Aren't all crimes that are outlawed as hate crimes the same? How does anybody know that a crime was perpetrated against a black person because the person is black and not another reason? Because the victim was black and the crime seems to have been committed precisely for that reason. Same with gays. Republicans, most, anyway, do not want to vote for anything connected with gay, to stay on the good side of the extreme right-wingers who demand such behavior.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, called the legislation radical social policy. “The idea that we’re going to pass a law that’s going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking, I think is wrong,” Mr. Boehner said.

Another enlightened view of Mr. Suntan.

Republicans were also furious that the measure was attached to an essential $681 billion military policy bill, and accused Democrats of legislative blackmail. Even some Republican members of the usually collegial House Armed Services Committee who helped write the broader legislation, which authorizes military pay, weapons programs and other necessities for the armed forces, opposed the bill in the end, solely because of the hate crimes provision.

“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a senior Republican member of the committee.

The military bill has yet to be approved by the Senate. But the hate crimes provision has solid support there, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the overall bill outweighed his own objections to including the hate crimes measure.

Mr. Obama supports the hate crimes provision, though the White House has raised objections to elements of the bill related to military acquisitions. If signed into law, the hate crimes legislation would reflect the ability of Democrats to enact difficult measures with their increased majorities in Congress and a Democrat in the White House.

“Elections have consequences,” Mr. McCain said.

McCain can speak clearly.

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, said the measure could inhibit freedom of speech and deter religious leaders from discussing their views on homosexuality for fear that those publicly expressed views might be linked to later assaults.

“It is just simply wrong,” Mr. Pence said, “to use a bill designed to support our troops to reverse the very freedoms for which they fight.”

Democrats, however, noted that the bill would specifically bar prosecution based on an individual’s expression of “racial, religious, political or other beliefs.” It also states that nothing in the measure should be “construed to diminish any rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Amazing how two sides can see the same thing so differently.

Can't he do everything?

Obama under pressure: There will always be a fly in the ointment for Obama
by Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian Sunday June 21, 2009, 12:03 am

You can hear a faint buzz of dismay any time President Obama falls to behave precisely like a liberal superhero.

Leave it to a fatly buzzing fly to embody the peskiest part of President Obama's job: No matter what the president does, the media will overplay it and someone will find fault with it.

I agree with this columnist, entirely. I've been feeling much the same way recently: now that the president has been in office for five months, liberals are complaining that he isn't doing what they expect of him, the way they expect him to do it. How quickly some forget how it was to have a righ-wing republican in office instead of middle-to-left moderate-liberal, the latter much more likely to do things that will please liberals than the former ever was or would be.

This leaves self-described independents, who now make up the majority of the electorate, with the tough job of assessing Obama fairly as politics heat up and expectations for an economic recovery intensify.

First, a quick recap of Flygate. The cable news network CNBC interrupted its more serious coverage last week to air a long clip of Obama killing a bothersome fly with a single dispassionate slap. Along the bottom of the screen crawled this headline: "BREAKING NEWS: PRES. OBAMA SWATS FLY DURING CNBC INTERVIEW AT WHITE HOUSE."

Is there any doubt that media outlets concentrate on the trivial?

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals swiftly reproached the president. While conceding Obama's impeccable record on animal rights, the activists said he should set a better example and vowed to send him a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher.

Oy.

Picture the laughs heard 'round the world if Obama strapped a bug catcher to his belt, next to his Blackberry. Now imagine the snorts of derision if the president -- the same man trying to be tough on North Korea -- couldn't manage a show of force against a fly.

The fly incident is only the silliest example of backbiting. Civil rights groups glower that Obama isn't in lockstep with them on Guantanamo detainees. Gay-rights groups fume that Obama did not include health benefits last week when he extended, by executive order, partnership benefits to gay federal workers.

They want their way, and only their way.

Never mind that Obama's trying to untangle a mess at Guantanamo without making new ones. Never mind that he supports extending these health benefits; he simply believes the change should happen through Congress rather than by executive fiat.

Which is the correct way to do it, contrary to what the previous administration was wont to do.

So Obama gives 90 percent and gets chided for falling short of 110. That's politics.

Dummies. They should consider the alternative.

Meanwhile, critics on the right pin the entire federal deficit on Obama, capitalizing on voters' growing concerns about government debt. The critics buzz around, complaining about turtle tunnels in Florida and other pork projects in the stimulus bill. They grouse that Obama has been too busy nationalizing the auto industry to do much to create or save jobs.

Double dummies. All the right wing is doing is pointing to what isn't happening, gnawing at the margins, and trying to create issues, knowing how to play to the media (the same outfits that covered Flygate).

Again, it's fair to call up the truth squad.

Just think how desperate Oregon and Washington would be without the federal stimulus money, which Obama got through Congress within a few weeks of taking office. Picture unemployment and poverty rising yet higher if countless additional teachers and other state workers had lost their jobs.

As bad as things are now, they're a picnic compared to life without the extra stimulus money, aka deficit spending. This money is keeping us from spiraling into a second Great Depression.

Speaking of deficits, The New York Times recently analyzed the $2trillion swing from the Clinton-era surpluses to today's deficits, using budget numbers and official projections from 2001 through 2012. The recession itself accounts for more than one-third of the shift. Policies from the Bush era, including tax cuts, new Medicare drug coverage, the Iraq war and the bank bailout, account for more than half of the shift.

The stimulus bill accounts for just 7 percent.

Even if it were more, it is what is needed to be done.

Obama's agenda on health care, climate change and education? Just 3 percent. (That's assuming Congress finds ways to pay for most new programs, always a big "if" no matter who's in charge.)

Obama's approval ratings remain high. The guy doesn't need defending. The public still trusts him enough to be patient, even as the job outlook stays bleak.

Still, our patience will wear thin eventually. As the debts of the past come due, we'll be tempted to blame Obama for the entire cost rather than admit complicity over the years.

Then we'll start needling Obama to fix the deficit without cutting any programs, raising taxes or touching entitlement spending. Meanwhile, we'll expect the president to solve North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan in his spare time.

Whatever the task, the eye of the camera will never go away.

Neither will the irritable buzz of the nearest and smallest fly.

-- Associate Editor Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian; susannielsen@news.oregonian.com

Do they get it?

Cause Célèbre is the designation of a column in the LA Times entitled: Obama's choice of Rick Warren to lead prayer dismays Hollywood liberals.

Cause Célèbre is defined as an incident that attracts great public attention. Great must be taken in context in this case: these are Hollywood liberals who are upset about the passage of Proposition 8 in California this past Election Day. Prop 8 bans gay marriage, and Rev. Rick Warren supported it openly and strongly.

From Hollywood's perspective, there's a cloud over Barack Obama's inaugural. Now the question is whether the weather that day will simply be overcast or stormy.

He has disappointed, even enraged, Hollywood types by selecting Warren to say the lead prayer at the Inaugural.

"Barack Obama is a very smart student of history," said longtime celebrity publicist and gay activist Howard Bragman. "He saw that Bill Clinton did damage to his early presidency by appearing to pander to the gay and lesbian community. Obama has chosen a different tack.

I'd say that analysis is spot on, to a degree. Obama is a great student of history, indeed, and I'd say his studies go beyond 1993.

"What he didn't realize was how much untapped energy there was in the gay and lesbian community because of the passage of Prop. 8," said Bragman. "Obama didn't realize, after all the support he got from the gay and lesbian community, we feel betrayed right now."

Actually, I'd say that Obama took a calculated step in inviting Warren: he is appealing, even pandering, to evangelicals, reaching out to them in a concrete way. Perhaps what gay Hollywood types fails to understand is that Obama will say and do things without checking with them or assessing how they will react to it.

Democratic political consultant Chad Griffin, who this week was named by the Advocate, America's leading gay publication, as one of its People of the Year, thinks that it's up to Warren to let Obama off the hook and withdraw.

That assumes that Obama is on the hook with others than activist gays and Hollywood liberals. There are many other constituencies in the country beyond those two groups.

"Rick Warren needs to realize that he is further dividing us at a time when the country needs to come together," said Griffin, whose Hollywood clientele includes Rob Reiner, Michael King and Steve Bing. "I think he needs to gracefully step aside."

Nonsense. Griffin needs to accept that his agenda is not the most important agenda.

As for Obama, Griffin said: "He has a long history of standing up for and defending equal rights. I believe and hope that calling on Warren was just a innocent mistake by the transition team."

Innocent mistake? More a calculated step. And by inviting Warren he has scored points with a constituency, evangelicals, that did not support him greatly in the election. That's being inclusive, rather than divisive.

Warren has his own history with liberal Hollywood. He was instrumental in encouraging support among evangelicals for the Al Gore-inspired, Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

I have never heard of an evangelical doing such a thing.

True Love

Some people get quite very upset about gays and lesbians getting married: the sanctity of marriage beseiged by fags and lesbos. It is such an emotional, passionate gut-level issue that having any sort of rational discussion between disgreeing parties is nigh impossible. I don't see what is wrong: if people love one another, and want to get married, so what?

And then there is a perfect picture of what gay marriage is all about, really: two people in love. This is that picture.

Del Martin, 87, center left, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, center right, are married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom , center, in a special ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco, Monday, June 16, 2008.

If this isn't love, what in the world is?

a kiss is just a kiss ... or is it?

This again proves the case: can't make this stuff up.

Most of the time, a kiss is just a kiss in the stands at Seattle Mariners games. The crowd hardly even pays attention when fans smooch.

But then last week, a lesbian complained that an usher at Safeco Field asked her to stop kissing her date because it was making another fan uncomfortable.

The incident has exploded on local TV, on talk radio and in the blogosphere and has touched off a debate over public displays of affection in generally gay-friendly Seattle.

Someone wasn't watching the ballgame.

"Certain individuals have not yet caught up. Those people see a gay or lesbian couple and they stare or say something," said Josh Friedes of Equal Rights Washington. "This is one of the challenges of being gay. Everyday things can become sources of trauma."

As the Mariners played the Boston Red Sox on May 26, Sirbrina Guerrero and her date were approached in the third inning by an usher who told them their kissing was inappropriate, Guerrero said.

The usher, Guerrero said, told them he had received a complaint from a woman nearby who said that there were kids in the crowd of nearly 36,000 and that parents would have to explain why two women were kissing.

Parents would have to explain to kids? Well, yes; the problem is?

"I was really just shocked," Guerrero said. "Seattle is so gay-friendly. There was a couple like seven rows ahead making out. We were just showing affection." On Monday, Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale said that the club is investigating but that the usher was responding to a complaint of two women "making out" and "groping" in the stands.