Romney Pledges Heterosexual Supremacy

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signed a pledge from the National Organization of Marriage to affirm his support for heterosexual supremacy in America. This entails:

1. To support and send to the states for ratification a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
2. To do vigorously what President Obama has refused to do: defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.
3. To appoint to the Supreme Court, and as his or her Attorney General, only those who support the original meaning of the Constitution and who will, therefore, not invent a right to gay marriage.
4. To establish a presidential commission to investigate the increasing reports of harassment and threats to supporters of traditional marriage.
5. And to give back to the people of D.C. the right already guaranteed in the Charter which Congress gave them: the right to vote on marriage via the referendum process.

Where to begin? I guess let's address them one at a time. The Federal Marriage Amendment didn't get out of the U.S. House of Representatives when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate majority in July 2006 and popular support was below 50%. Why would anyone expect a measure to divorce the estimated 100,000 same-sex married couple in the country to be more successful in 2013? It takes a vote of 2/3rds of BOTH Houses of the Legislature and then ratification of 3/4 of the states to be enacted. In 220 years the document has been Amended 27 times, and 10 of those happened within the first 5 years. A federal marriage amendment is not going to happen!

The second item (to defend DOMA) is obvious, but by the time a Republican could become President on January 20, 2013, the Defense of Marriage Act may already have been struck down by multiple federal appellate courts and perhaps even the U.S. Supreme Court.

The fact that Romney, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum signed the third item should mean they are immediately disqualified to serve as President. They are basically saying that they will have a particular litmus test for Supreme Court nominees (and Attorney General).

The fourth item is just sheer buffoonery. As the discriminatory position of heterosexual supremacists to envision a society in which heterosexuals have more civil rights than non-heterosexual becomes more and more a repulsive position to a greater majority of American voters, the supremacists have begun to claim that any opposition to their radical ideology in verbal or written form is "harassment" or "intolerance towards religion." The idea of a President Commission to explore harassment and threats to people who have been publicly calling for LGBT people to have less rights than other Americans is simply laughable.

The fifth item is just obnoxious. Marriage equality has been legal in the District of Columbia since March 4, 2010 after a measure was approved by a near-unanimous vote of its law-making body in December 15 2009. After filing multiple lawsuits in order to force a vote of the majority on the rights of the minority despite explicit provisions in the D.C. Charter which prevents such inimical actions, those attempts came to an ignominious end with a Supreme Court refusal to hear their appeal on January 18, 2011.

It should be interesting to see which other Republican presidential candidates are willing to sign NOM's pledge to heterosexual supremacy. I presume Rick Perry will be next in line to add his name to this foolishness.

Celebrity Friday: Luis Lopez, Latino LGBT candidate for AD-45

Luis Lopez is an openly gay, Latino candidate for the 45th
 Assembly District, which is located in Los Angeles

Luis Lopez, a friend of mine, is running for a state Assembly seat in California (he would actually represent the 45th Assembly district in which my house and work is located).

Recently, Luis won the endorsement of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the national organization devoted to promote the election of openly LGBT candidates.

Also, this week The Advocate ran an article called "The Other Gay Contenders" which includes Luis:

Sacramento politics are not for the faint-hearted, but Luis Lopez just may have the chops to effectively take on such an unwieldy beast. Running next year to represent California’s 45th state assembly district, Lopez currently serves as a planning commissioner for the funky, diverse L.A. neighborhood of Silver Lake, where he lives with his partner. Lopez, 38, is also part of a parks oversight committee for his city, co-chaired his neighborhood council, and started a Latino LGBT political action committee (his full-time job is as a communications director for a health center).

Aside from that impressive resume, Lopez has some powerful friends who will help him when he faces a primary in June. Jackie Goldberg, a lesbian who represented the Democrat-friendly 45th district from 2000 to 2006, is supporting Lopez in his race, and Lopez’s good friend, John Perez, the out California Assembly speaker, will likely endorse him as well. It’s not yet clear who Lopez will face off against as the current assemblyman, Gilbert Cedillo, is termed-out next year and possible candidates are still coming forward.

“We need to look at leaders who’ve earned the respect of their peers,” Lopez says. ”People who are respected can move an agenda along—there were many times when my colleagues on a given board haven’t agreed with me, but we were still able to make decisions.”

Protecting labor is paramount to Lopez, who grew up in East Los Angeles and started working not long after his mother passed away when he was eight. Voters in his district, which stretches from Hollywood to Chinatown to East L.A. and includes thousands of diverse gay people, are inline with his platform, he says.

I strongly encourage all MadProfessah.com readers, especially if you live in the 45th Assembly District to support Luis Lopez.