Frustrated

I'm frustrated with Barack Obama. I'm not happy with Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, but I'm not frustrated with them. I am frustrated with Obama.

The CNN debate the other night, which featured YouTube questions, posed a couple of direct and simple questions about same-sex marriage to the Democratic presidential candidates.

One of the questions was from the Reverend Reggie Longcrier, a pastor from Hickory, North Carolina: "Most Americans agree it was wrong and unconstitutional to use religion to justify slavery, segregation, and denying women the right to vote. So why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay Americans their full and equal rights?"

Not all of the candidates got to answer each question -- as I understand the format, each question was answered by three of the candidates, in rotation, and Obama, Edwards and Richardson spoke to this question -- so I didn't get to hear Hillary Clinton's answer. But I did get to hear John Edwards' and Barack Obama's answers.

Edwards went slick at the beginning of his answer, agreeing that it is wrong for "any of our faith beliefs to be imposed on the American people when we're President of the United States" but then went on to talk about his "enormous personal conflict" on the marriage question, which he has said, at other times, is faith-based, and then talked about his "journey on this issue" and his "tremendous personal conflict".

Fair enough, I guess -- Edwards is one among millions of Americans who are, in good faith, making a "journey on this issue" -- but as lawyers would say, Edward's answer was non-responsive. I've watched Edwards enough on C-SPAN to know that his immediate response to any tough question is to agree and then walk his way out of the issue, leaving you wondering how much the Bible he's selling really costs, once you add in everything that comes along with it. Edwards, whatever you make think of him, responded true to form, and he does seem to be making progress on his journey. So I'm not frustrated.

But Obama is a different story. His answer dodged the question almost entirely. Obama ignored the question's reminder that interracial couples like his parents were denied the freedom to marry in many states when Obama was born into this world.

Obama, in fact, ignored the question of civil marriage entirely, speaking instead of marriage as a religious matter: "Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to recognize marriage or not. But in terms of, you know, the rights of people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those critical civil rights that are conferred by our government, those should be equal."

I've been around this track before with Obama, and Obama hasn't moved an inch in his thinking since the last round in April. He's still stuck on religious marriage, without seeming to even realize that "rights of people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those critical civil rights that are conferred by our government" are conferred by civil marriage, not religious marriage.

Reverend Longcrier's question was fair, and it goes to the nub of the issue.

Gays and lesbians, like African-Americans in an earlier time, have been battered bloody in the last decade by "faith-based" politicians. We've had enough of it, and that's a fact.

I can deal with Edwards' line of thinking, because he's obviously thinking, even if he is slick. Obama, on the other hand, seems stuck in the tired old groove of the faith-based, the idea that civil marriage and religious marriage are identical, and that's not going to cut it with me.

I know Obama. He was my neighbor and Illinois State Senator years ago. He has a first-rate mind, and ferocious analytical skills. He can think outside the box, and often does. That's why I have an Obama sticker on my truck. But he is going to have to apply his mind to this issue, or the sticker is coming off.

The simple fact is that I'm not willing to put a Democrat in the presidency for eight years who is going to spend those eight years insisting that civil marriage is sacred. It isn't, and I've heard enough of that nonsense in the last eight years.

Bill Richardson, by the way, probably gave the most honest answer to the question. After doing a body dance of avoidance, he finally said that he wanted to work for "what is achievable". It was as honest an answer as we are likely to get from a politician. But it doesn't cut it, either. Hanging around waiting for the people to come around is something I understand in our political process, but it isn't leadership. Bill Richardson just tagged himself the new Tommy Thompson.

A remarkable tapestry ....

A young man named William Sledd posted a video in early June inviting other U Tube members to post video responses about Gay Pride Month.

The result was about 300 testimonies about Gay Pride and civil rights, coming from across the spectrum.

I clicked through a few dozen this morning. The sum was a tapestry of young people, straight and gay alike, delivered with a range of emotion, skill and creativity.

It is remarkable. The young people who posted these videos are the future of the gay and lesbian movement for equality, and I'm heartened.

I invite you to take a look and do your own clicking.

Mildly Peeved Crimes

Focus on the Family released a video yesterday that likens hate crimes against gays and lesbians with road rage.

The following is the transcript of the video:

Hi I'm Stuart Shepard, this is Stoplight.

So-called hate crimes legislation would add extra penalties if someone is convicted of a crime that is "motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived... sexual orientation (or) gender identity... of the victim."

But ya know what, I don't think that goes far enough, liberals are missing a terrific opportunity here. Why stop at just hate crimes? Congress really needs to pass something for "Just Really Hacked Off Crimes."

This is the guy who has actual or perceived thoughts about the driver who sees this sign [gestures to highway merge sign] and thinks it means drive really really fast and then cut in at the last minute, making all the other drivers stomp their brakes.

Or how about "Mildly Peeved Crimes?" This is the guy who has actual or perceived thoughts about the guy in the drive through who seems to have problems understanding the nuances of "no onions."

And what I think is the most dangerous one of all: "Totally Ambivalent Crimes". This is the guy who doesn’t have any actual or perceived thoughts about you at all, he just wants to punch you in the nose.

Ok, you get the idea. Judges have enough work to do just figuring out who did what to whom, without having to figure out what "who" was thinking when they did "what" to "whom."

If we’re going to have equal justice for all, it needs to be based on what "who" did. Which shines the light on a simple truth; hate crimes legislation is not really about hate or crime. What it’s really about is getting the federal government to grant civil rights status to a particular behavior. Which is the off-ramp that leads to the end of marriage and family.

[Ending jab, standing again in front of merge sign on highway] Hey, a little red sports car—cuttin’ in front of a semi—talkin' on her cell phone...

Stuart Shepard is a more obvious jackass than James Dobson, but his point is well taken. Focus on the Family endorses the idea that hate crimes committed against gays and lesbians are a lark.

The reality of hate crimes is a bit different, which goes without saying.

Take this story from a recent edition of "The Facts", a newspaper covering Brazoria County, Texas:

A man accused of killing a Pearland flight attendant confessed to going to a known gay bar to pick out a target, then going home with him and stabbing him with a knife.

Terry Mark Mangum, 26, of Cypress was arrested in June on a murder charge and was indicted Thursday by a Brazoria County grand jury. He is accused of killing Kenneth Cummings Jr., 46, in Cummings’ Pearland home June 5, then cleaning up the blood and driving to a ranch owned by Mangum’s grandfather outside Poteet to bury his body.

When told about his indictment, Mangum told The Facts through a pane of glass and a phone in a stall at the county detention center that he would plead guilty to the charges against him. "I did it," he said. "Bottom line is I stabbed him in the head with a knife." ...

Mangum, who sounded energetic and upbeat, said he met Cummings at a bar in Houston that is a known hangout for homosexual men, and that he was carrying out God’s judgment and "sacrificing" Cummings’ body. Mangum said it was "my belief of God judging him," and Cummings "just happened to be the one that I bumped into." Asked if he was targeting Cummings because he was a homosexual, Mangum said, "that was the goal."

That's the reality. Hate crimes are not "Mildly Peeved Crimes", and none of us need a jackass from Focus on the Family telling us different.

So I have a suggestion for Focus on the Family, if they think that hate crimes are such a lark. Why don't they start lobbying to remove "religion" from the pending hate crimes legislation.

Tucker?

If I needed any proof that the silly season is upon us, the flap over Tucker Carlson's most recent riff on Barack Obama proved the pudding.

I like watching Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC. Tucker is a right-winger, but unlike so many born with two or three right wings, he's smart and funny.

Tucker's also something of a fop. He still sports the curly locks that mothers cry over when they take their sons to the barber for the first time at age three, his clothes are what were called "snappy" in a simpler time, and, of course, he wears that ridiculous bow tie. Tucker, in short, is just about the last guy on earth you'd expect to engage in contact sports, much less swill bad beer and belch. He's much more the kind of nerdish cutie that attracts the grandmother crowd.

So it was odd, indeed, to hear that Tucker has been making fun of Barack Obama for being a wimp. But that's Tucker's latest trick, apparently. On a show last week, Tucker got after Obama for starting a book club: "Well, everybody knows that a book club is no place for a man. So why has Barack Obama suddenly turned into Oprah?" A bit before that, Tucker to Obama's "rhetoric" as "kind of wimpy" and said that Obama "seems like kind of a wuss."

Oh, really, Tucker?

Fat Heads and Fat Asses

Nothing the Bush administration touches isn't politicized, apparently.

The hearings over James Holsinger's controversial nomination for Surgeon General this week have made it clear that even our nation's health isn't beyond Karl Rove's reach.

I wondered, like a lot of people, what in the world possessed Bush to nominate Holsinger, a peculiar fundamentalist who seems obsessed with homosexuality and once started a Kentucky trailer church with an "ex-gay" ministry. After all, Holsinger's primary contribution to science seems to have been an sophomoric paper he wrote for the Methodist Church titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," which portrayed homosexuality as unnatural and dangerous, and had all the scientific validity of a study by Paul and Kirk Cameron.

I wondered because it would seem that just about the last thing that the Bush administration needed right now, with approval ratings in the toilet and the Iraq disaster on its hands, was a heated battle over a man like Holsinger.

I wonder no longer. The previous Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, spoke out this week. After I read what he had to say, Holsinger's nomination made perfect sense, at least from the skewed perspective of the Bush administration.

Carmona, in a nutshell, testified that on public health issues ranging from stem-cell research to sex education, Carmona had been instructed to spout Religious Right orthodoxy or shut up.

According to Carmona, "I was told to stay away from those [controversial issues] because we've already decided which way we want to go."

For example, with respect to the Bush administration's pretense of soliciting scientific advice on stem-cell research, which Carmona confirmed was not serious, ""I was told to stand down and not speak about it. It was removed from my speeches."

As was the case with stem-cell research, Carmona testified that he was muzzled about the dangers of second-hand smoke, about health issues relating to global warming, and, no surprisingly, about the idiocy of "abstinence only" sex education.

Carmona testified that he was even urged to stay away from the Special Olympics because the Kennedy family was involved: "I was specifically told by a senior person, 'why would you want to help those people?'".

Listen to Carmona, and it becomes quite logical -- Holsinger was nominated so the Bush administration's policy of opposing science on health care issues would not be inconveniently questioned by a Surgeon General who took science seriously.

Holsinger's nomination is before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and he is scheduled to testify this week. He is going to face hard going, needless to say. He will, no doubt, try to edge away from his "faggot, faggot" history and try to focus his testimony on his advocacy of reducing childhood obesity. He probably won't get away with it.

But if he does, and his nomination is confirmed, he better watch his step. The Bush administration's endorsement of diet and exercise for obese kids will go the way of sensible sex education policies the minute that Karl Rove realizes that the Religious Right has as high a proportion of fat asses as fat heads.

Maybe they ARE serious ...

The three leading Democratic candidates for President, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, are about to make history.

On August 9, the three will participate in a nationally televised forum, held before a studio audience and broadcast live by Logo and LogoOnline, addressing gay and lesbian issues.

It is a first for American politics -- until now, presidential candidates have spoken to gay and lesbian audiences, when they spoke to gays and lesbians at all, only at fundraisers, occasional interviews with the LGBT press, and through policy statements.

I'm not leaping up and down with joy, by any means. Words are words, after all, and action is what counts, but I'm encouraged.

Maybe this time around, Democratic politicians are serious about the gay and lesbian vote.

Rhetorical Excess?

The Christian Right's attempts to demonize gays and lesbians hit new lows the other day, when the Family Research Council published a "study" by Paul and Kirk Cameron asserting, among other things, that gays and lesbians have a lifespan that is about two decades shorter than straights, contribute to society less by having fewer children, and deprive straights of medical care because of HIV/AIDS and drug problems. The "study" goes on to beat the demonetization drum by asserting, without any supporting evidence or reasoning, that "... gay rights reduces the constitutional rights of assembly, free speech, and parental control of non-homosexuals."

As support for equal treatment of gays and lesbians under the law grows, the Christian Right has become more and more shrill in rhetoric. As support for the extreme views of the Christian Right has diminished among the general population in the last few years, the FRC and the other voices that emerge from the closed circle of homophobic thought have taken up a new tack -- that equal treatment for gays and lesbians under the law will somehow deprive Christians of their constitutional rights -- that hate crimes legislation, which requires a criminal act -- beating the crap out of a gay senior citizen, for example -- to come into play, will somehow prevent Christian preachers from ranting on and on about "abominations".

I suppose that it is inevitable that the Christian Right, which has no respect for freedom of speech and wants to eliminate the right for their opponents to speak clearly as part of their thrust for a theonomy in the United States, makes no distinction between actions and speech, but I think that this latest tactic of the Christian Right is more dangerous than the garden-variety dreck put forth from the pseudo-research of defrocked "scientists" like Paul and Kirk Cameron.

It is relatively easy for ordinary people to see that the Cameron brothers' garden-variety dreck is dreck, because direct observation, which contradicts the Cameron brothers, is available to all. It is less easy for ordinary people to understand constitutional rights.

I've given up hope that the Christian Right, locked in fear and unreasoned hatred, will moderate any time soon; I simply hope that the level of rhetoric, as it becomes more shrill and less reasoned over time, will not lead the Christian Right to violence.

Silly Season

I think that the "Silly Season" -- the time of year when too many people had a touch of heatstroke and craziness abounds in the news -- has arrived a bit early this year.

Leaving the question of whether or not George Bush will pardon Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart unmentioned, and in addition to the nonstop Harry Potter movies on television this weekend, here are a few examples of the "Silly Season" at work:

Come to the Florida Wacko-shine Tree


Florida, the home of the late and unlamented Anita Bryant, has spawned Bill Smatt, a right wingnut who has pissed off his neighbors and City Hall by posting a huge sign across the entire front of his yard proclaiming "God created Adam + Eve, not Adam + Steve".

Smatt's right about that, of course. God created Adam and Yves, not Adam and Steve.

Smatt, as you all know, is the guy who actually wrote a book proclaiming that George W. Bush is the Messiah. I kid you not.

The book, "The Messiah: The Chosen One; Republican; Hon. George W. Bush, President of the United States of America", sells on Amazon for $45 and is a must read for anyone who has insomnia -- at least that's what I've been told. It is likely to become a cult classic eventually, right up there with "Reefer Madness", so you might want to snatch up your copy now. Or not.

In addition to holding strange religious views, Smatt makes a habit of posting huge signs. When he lived in Miami's Belle Meade area in 1998 he hung a banner across his fence reading "Belle Meade, City of Sodom and Gomorrah. Vengeance is Mine Sayeth the Lord."

Smatt is one-upping himself this time around, though. He's running for Mayor. Smatt says if elected mayor he will shut down Miami Beach's domestic partner registry, clean up the gay club and beach scene in Miami Beach and ban skimpy bathing suits for men and women.

Chains, chains, chains?

If Smatt's saga isn't weird enough, try this one: The City of Keizer, Oregon, is taking heat for installing a group of cement posts designed to protect pedestrians from cars, because a number of city residents think that the posts look like, uh, a big fat dick.


The City installed 52 of the posts at a busy intersection at a cost of $20,000.

Rather than just accepting reality and painting the posts fleshy pink, with perhaps a touch of vermilion on the cap, City Manager Chris Eppley said that the city is -- again, I kid you not -- looking into retrofitting the posts with metal collars and chains that run between them, which they hope will change the look.

Well, it sure will, I'll say that ... Chains and collars, indeed. Hasn't anyone in Keizer heard of the leather scene?

I've got an idea for Keizer. Change your name to Keister and be done with it.

Brownback on the Damascus Road

Speaking about keisters, Sam Brownback wrote a book recently, "From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion", in which he confesses that he harbored a "hatred" of Bill and Hillary Clinton until he experienced a religious awakening in the mid-1990s.

"I was considering what I should say when I confronted all the anger that I held for the Clintons. I thought, I hate them for what they are doing to the country and I feel justified in hating them for it." Brownback went on to say that he spotted Hillary Clinton in a crowd at a National Prayer Breakfast and, speaking directly to her, said he "realized that those thoughts of hatred were wrong. I apologized to her for them. I don't know what she thought, but I believe it made a difference."

Well, yeah. Ever since his conversion experience -- a defining moment if I ever heard of one -- Brownback has given up on Bill and Hillary as the bogeyman, and fixated on gays and lesbians.

Speaking of Dubious Conversions

Poster children for the "Ex-Gay" movement seem to come and go with distressing regularity, spotlighted by the Religious Right after miraculous conversions from "homosexuality", pounding the tub and raising money for a while, and then quietly coming to the conclusion that their conversion wasn't, uh, as complete as it might have been.

The latest "Ex-Gay" superstar is Michael Glatze, the founding editor of the now defunct magazine "Young Gay America".

Like most other "ex-gays", Glatze isn't content to sit down and think about it for a while, as Saint Paul did after his conversion. Instead, he is, all of a few days into his new life, writing opinion pieces for World Net Daily and peppering gay blogs with e-mails touting his conversion.

I don't doubt the sincerity of Glatze's conversion. I do, however, wonder about its staying power. What do you suppose the odds are that Glatze, like John Paulik and so many others, will wish that he'd taken the time to think about things before being co-opted by the Religious Right's hype machine?

Glatze is doing what is called "Two-Stepping" in AA -- jumping right from the First Step ("We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ...") to the Twelfth Step ("... we tried to carry this message to alcoholics ..."), without working any of the ten steps in between. As anyone who has ever achieved long-term sobriety in AA will tell you, it is working the ten intervening steps that create the "spiritual awakening" that is essential to long-term sobriety.

As is the case in AA, religious "conversions" that ignore the hard work of change are shaky at best.

Old Dog, Old Tricks

The Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, renamed the "Wisconsin Family Council" last March, finally got around to revamping its website in the last couple of weeks.

The new website, apparently intended to give the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin a friendly face as the newly incarnated "Wisconsin Family Council", is a hoot!

The website has a new look and feel, to be certain. The WFC has a snappy new logo and a new slogan ("Dedicated to strengthening and preserving marriage, family, life and liberty in Wisconsin"). And although Julaine Appling's staff photo remains the "iron lady" image used on the old website, her bio page has been updated to tout her "graduate-level course work at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee", and highlight her "B.A. in Humanities, a B.S. in English Education, and a Master of Science in Educational Administration and Supervision", with nary a mention that her degrees come from Bob Jones University, a bastion of Christian opposition to racial equality and a monument to homophobia.

But in other respects, the WFC's new website didn't fall far from the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin's tree.


The website's page on "Sexuality", for example, maintains the Institute's obsessive preoccupation with gays and lesbians (despite the lead in which promises "Below you will find informative studies, newspaper articles and unique FRI-WI findings that focus on topics ranging from homosexuality and same-sex marriage, to abstinence and more"). "Sexuality", as far as the website is concerned, is "Homosexuality". The "Sexuality" topic contains fourteen articles trashing gay and lesbian equality in various ways, and nothing else -- not a single article or a single word spoken about heterosexuality. As far as the Wisconsin Family Council is concerned, apparently, straight folks don't have sex.

All in all, it isn't much of a surprise, I guess. The Family Research Institute of Wisconsin may have a new name and a new website, but the fine Italian hand of Julaine Appling is still the Institute's guiding hand, and it doesn't look like things are going to change much any time soon.

Oh well, it is tough to teach and old dog -- no offense, Julaine, it isn't a personal remark -- new tricks. And even harder, apparently, to teach the Religious Right that there is more to talk about when it comes to families than "faggot, faggot".

Republican Miss the Money Shot

In politics, as in porn, the money shot is important. And the Republican presidential timber doesn't seem to be doing too well in that department. Maybe they need a good fluffer.

While Democratic presidential candidates set new fund-raising records (Obama $31 million, Clinton $27 million, for example) last quarter, the Republican presidential candidates lagged behind. Rudy Giuliani raised $15 million for his presidential primary campaign, Mitt Romney $14 million, and John McCain $7 million -- roughly the amounts raised by second-tier Democratic candidates.

Overall, Democrats combined have pulled in $159 million in fund-raising cash during the last six months and Republicans raised $96 million.

The disparity exists, as well, in the number of donors. Obama's campaign has received donations from over 250,000 people so far, while Romney's contributor base is 80,000 and McCain's 70,000.

This does not bode well for Republicans, and it is just as obvious at the local level.

Our county's Democratic party organization marched in the Witwen Independence Day parade yesterday -- by a fluke, we ended up the fourth or fifth group in the pack, within sight of the colors -- and during the mile or so we walked, the crowd, in this rural county which has seen its National Guard more or less constantly deployed during the last few years, was remarkably friendly, bantering and clapping all along the route. Believe me, that's not the normal scene around this area.

I've got an Obama sticker on my truck and I'm surprised by the number of people who want to talk about him, and who think that he might be just what we need in the White House. I know Obama -- I worked on his early campaigns for the Illinois State Senate and I've met him a number of times -- and I know enough about him to know that the people in our county are right to be interested in him, because he is smart and thinks outside the box. I'm convinced that he would be a good President, but the response I'm seeing just isn't normal.

I don't know whether Democrats will actually win the Presidency in 2008 -- we have a remarkable, almost other-worldly ability to shoot ourselves in the foot in Presidential races -- but the Republicans can't count on the White House in 2008, and that's a good thing.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidates are falling all over themselves appealing to "the base" -- folks from the Religious Right who don't give a tinker's damn about whether the country is headed to hell in a hand basket so long as gays and lesbians are kept in second-class citizenship.

And because no Republican can hope to win the primaries without "the base", the Republican clones are acting as if the Republican primaries are contest to see who can "faggot, faggot" more loudly than the others.

Mitt Romney, for example, boasted that if Massachusetts elected him to the Senate in 1994, he'd do more for gay people than Ted Kennedy. This year, Romney is endorsing every anti-gay policy that comes along, sight unseen. Rudy Giuliani was gay-friendly as mayor of New York City -- he famously went to a fundraiser in drag -- but he now waffles on civil unions. John McCain who prided himself on thinking outside the box in 2000, now thinks that DADT is "working fine". We don't even have to get around to folks like Sam Brownback and the others in the field, who are rabidly anti-gay for the most part.

I think that the Republican clones, slavering over "the base", are at risk of alienating the Republican mainstream, not to mention the independents.

The country as a whole is coming around on equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians, and Republicans seem to be moving in that direction, as well.

A poll released last week by GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio shows that self-identified Republican voters support basic rights for gay and lesbian citizens. Among the poll's findings:

(1) ENDA -- 77% of Republicans believe an employer should not have the right to fire an employee based solely on their sexual orientation.

(2) DADT -- 49% of Republicans believe gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the U.S. military, while 42% are opposed.

(3) MARRIAGE -- 43% of Republicans support either marriage equality or civil unions, while 51% oppose all recognition of gay and lesbian relationships.

Overall, Republicans seem to be moving away from "faggot, faggot" -- 53% of respondents agreed that "the Republican Party has spent too much time focusing on moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage and should instead be spending time focusing on economic issues such as taxes and government spending." When asked "What issue do you think best defines the Republican Party today?" only 5% said "traditional marriage/family values."

Meanwhile, the Republicans are losing the voters. In 2000, Democrats and Republicans were more or less evenly matched in terms of party identification. According to a March 2007 Pew poll, just 35% of likely voters identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning this year, while 50% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.

So while the Republican clones are out-phobing each other, support for the GOP is waning and the Republican rank-and-file are moving away from "faggot, faggot". No wonder the Republicans need a fluffer to get the money shot.

The Republican clones, chasing "the base" in a bald-faced attempt to win primaries, don't seem to be aware that the ground is shifting beneath their feet, both within their party and outside it. And that is good news for Democrats -- Republican pimping to the Religious Right is going to make the job of appealing to the general population much tougher in November 2008.

We hold these truths to be self-evident ...

On this Independence Day 2007, at the dawn of the two hundred thirty-second year of our nation's independence and the first Independence Day after amendment of the Constitution of Wisconsin, I would remind my fellow Wisconsin citizens that gays and lesbians in our state have lost, through an unjust amendment to our Constitution enacted by a biased and fearful majority, the right to petition our legislature and our courts for redress, denying us the most basic freedom of a free people.

It would be wise to remember that no citizen is free unless all citizens are free, that no citizen is equal unless all citizens are equal, and that no citizen enjoys the fullness of citizenship unless all citizens enjoy the fullness of citizenship.

Count on it ...

I went down to the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in Milwaukee on Friday and Saturday.

The convention, like all conventions, was something of a zoo -- too many people in too small a space, wandering around.

The halls were filled with folks hawking the various presidential candidates and vendors selling every kind of button, bumper sticker and political doo-dad that you could imagine, folks were caucusing in various rooms for various reasons, and the convention floor was the usual collection of people milling around.

Friday night wasn't much -- inspirational political speeches from Wisconsin's Democratic Senators, Representatives, and state elected officials. Governor Doyle was, of course, the keynote.

I went to the convention with one primary objective -- to make sure that the resolution passed at the Second Congressional District calling for repeal of Wisconsin's anti-marriage amendment made it into the party platform. I was the unofficial floor manager for the resolution.

In the end, the resolution passed without a dissenting voice, but I was, along with other gay and lesbian delegates, prepared for a fight, and we worked during the course of the day to minimize the chances that there would be a floor fight.

Gay and lesbian delegates were motivated by a lot of talk recently from Democratic politicians in the state to the effect that the days of "God, Guns and Gays" -- the agenda of the Republican right which has dominated the state in recent years -- are behind us now and the state can get on to working on real issues. Well, maybe, but as long as that amendment sits in our constitution, there is one real issue that gays and lesbians can't forget -- we are second-class citizens in this state without any way to obtain equal treatment under the law. We need to make sure that our straight allies don't forget that simple fact, and we don't intend to let them forget.

Governor Doyle's keynote was a good example of how easy it is to forget. During his speech, he listed a long list of Republican political sins in our state, including the introduction of politically divisive issues -- read the amendment -- for political gain. He then went on to talk about the tremendous victories of the Democratic Party in the 2006 election. What he failed to say -- and it was noticed by every gay and lesbian delegate in the hall -- was that we lost a big one in the amendment fight, and we must continue to fight for equal treatment of all citizens until the amendment is overturned and relegated to the scrap heap of history.

So we fight on.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has a LGBT Caucus. We met and coordinated during the convention, but more important, we coalesced for the future.

Our intention is to make the LGBT voice in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin as strong as the voice of gays and lesbians in the DFL of Minnesota.

Our party platform says: "Our Constitution guarantees that we are all equal regardless of race, color, religion, actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, age, occupation, national origin, physical disabilities or appearance, or political beliefs. We fight to ensure that these basic civil liberties are forever preserved."

For gay and lesbian Democrats, those aren't just words. We intend to make sure that our party honors them.

We are also painfully aware that the citizens of Wisconsin amended our constitution last year to deny gay and lesbian citizens of our state equal treatment under the law, mocking the idea of civil liberties for all. We will remember, even if straight folks try to forget.

We are going to fight until we enjoy equal citizenship in Wisconsin, regardless of the lies of the Christian Right, regardless of the unwarranted fears of timid straights, regardless of the cost to us and regardless of how long it takes.

Count on it.