Reply #17: IMO, McClurkin has become the GLBT "terra" card.

[Barack_America]

My biggest regret about the McClurkin issue is that it has become a "terra" issue. It has thoroughly prevented productive discourse about GLBT issues pertaining to this election (i.e. what will be done with DOMA, DADT, etc.)

Obama was WRONG to let McClurkin speak in SC.

--but--

Hillary has also endorsed Rivers and used his church for a fundraiser.

Sen. Clinton's position on gay rights came under scrutiny on Jan. 19, when she traveled to Boston to speak at a fundraiser for two "faith-based" youth-outreach organizations headed by Eugene Rivers III, a minister and strident opponent of gay marriage. Rivers, who is black, opposes gay-rights groups' use of the term "civil rights" to describe their fight; as the Village Voice has reported, Rivers regards homosexuals more as sinful hedonists than as a group whose rights are being violated.

A week before the fundraiser that Clinton attended, Rivers said in a speech: "Frequently, same-sex couples wanting to marry are white lesbians who seek the accoutrements of family life and the proverbial white picket fence. From their positions of socioeconomic privilege, they insist that their desires must be viewed as rights instead of preferences." Sen. Clinton's appearance at Rivers' fundraiser prompted criticism from some gay-rights advocates. In a letter to the Boston Globe, Sean Cahill, a policy director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called her appearance "disturbing."

Clinton's decision to endorse Rivers' work is of a piece with her recent political calculation. As her husband did before her, Hillary is skillfully mining centrist political ground in search of her political fortune. In the same way that she's reached out to conservatives on abortion, the speech at Rivers' group was a way of signaling that she's at least open to other views on social issues.

Rivers, who is a Democrat, says that he thinks Clinton's strategy is clever. "She doesn't share my view on gay marriage or gay rights, but we didn't talk about it because that was not the reason she was there," he says. He adds: "I think what Hillary Clinton actually wants is a more open-ended, less-polarized discussion of the issues. She understands you are not going to win presidential elections by taking a hard, non-negotiable line on these issues . You might be elected president of San Francisco, or you can be president of the lower east side of Manhattan or of Paris, France, but you're not going to get elected president of the United States."

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/04/15/finkelstein/

Let's face it folks, neither of our candidates are perfect. Can we get back to discussing where they stand on GLBT rights issues and how to ensure that they fight for them?