Friday, July 17, 2009
News Karen Handel, gay marriage and some 'bring it on' nonsense
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 4:35 PM
Laura Douglas-Brown of the Southern Voice points our attention to Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel's rather blunt stance on gay marriage, expressed several months ago in her "bring it on" campaign video.
Surprise! The GOP gubernatorial candidate opposes the idea and will fight efforts to show respect to gay men and women who'd like to enjoy the same legal rights as straight people! Including divorce!
From SoVo:
Actually, Handel used to agree on more than that with gay voters. In her campaign and tenure on the Fulton County Commission, she was quite open to meeting with gay groups and talking to Southern Voice.That all changed when she ran for Secretary of State in 2006 and pandered to the far right of the GOP in a primary race that became a ridiculous contest to see who was the most anti-gay.
But despite our disappointment with Handel's flip-flop, we could at least laugh at the hyperbole of her hypocrisy.
SoVo digs into its blog archives and revisits Handel's 2006 Secretary of State race against Bill Stephens, in which one tried to outdo the other by showing how much they didn't read the newspaper.
Comments (17)
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As much as I support gay marriage, I can't stand the gay marriage movement. "Roar! I live in Grant Park, wear skinny jeans, and have 7 gay friends! Fuck georgians who don't support gay marriage! No, I really know any of them personally, but why would I? They live in Marietta and Macon, and fuck the suburbs. I mean, I do want to tell them what cars they can drive (for the enviornment, you know?!?) and spend my saturdays blogging how much I hate them, but they should respect our rights! Because they fucking should! I'm going to the Local...." That all might be true, but its a crappy way to run a civil rights movement. Good luck with all that.
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Sigh... I remember the good 'ole days. When Handel used to be a rational moderate. Now she's trying to be Sadie Fields Jr. To that, I say... bring it on. The hate stuff, intolerance rhetoric is an awfully big target. Who could miss?! (Other than DPG.)
I am in total support of equality across the board. Whether we are talking about racial equality, sexual equality, etc - but the fact is marriage is a religious institution - instead of pushing for another area of our lives to infiltrated and our individuals rights to be usurped by the blurry lines that church and state have drawn why not push for civil unions for both gay and straight couples - we no longer allow the government to define what love and relationships are.
I love your generalities, Adam. Handel is doing what she has to do to win, much like she did at the Fulton County office level: suck up to the constituency that will get her elected.
lol @ how adam has turned this from a "karen handel is a moron" monent to "adam is a moron with an ax to grind against skinny jeans" moment. well done, sir!
rptrcub - What you don't get is that generalities matter. Generalities influence public opinion, and public opinion influences voters. You change public opinion, you change the voters for gay marriage. Successful civil rights movements have recognized and utilized public opinion to their advantage. What made men like MLK so successful was his presentation of his movement as a sober, serious group, appealing to basic Christian sentiments. In contrast, the contemporary "gay rights movement" has a serious public image problem. When your typical Georgian from Jonesboro thinks about homosexuals, he thinks of "sinful" acts like pride festival and what is projected in movies. Is this fair? No. Does the GLBT community have the right to live how it wants? Absolutely. But they aren't winning any votes by forming an extremely insular community in midtown, throwing a decadent festivals (repulsive to sensibilities of the rest of the state), and bitching about "rednecks." That's not the way to win GA's hearts and minds. That's also why the judicial route to social change, as opposed to the legislative avenue, has been so attractive: The GLBT can let a court order win that battle for them.
Midtown is not the end all and be all of the gay community in Atlanta, outside of an alleged ghetto which becomes straighter by the minute (and that's not a bad thing in my opinion, either). There are quite a number of gay couples living all over the metro area, some openly, some quietly, who live their lives in a way that shows just how normal and absolutely boring we can be. I can count couples in Douglasville, Kennesaw, Smyrna, Lawrenceville, Stockbridge, and yes, Jonesboro where everyone knows it but they're not running around on rollerskates wearing tutus. We don't all bitch about rednecks. In fact, some of us ARE rednecks. If you think we're all insular, you've been around the wrong gays. I'm sorry you've had that experience. The best PR campaign would be for those ordinary, boring, workaday gays to simply be who they are and to tell their story.
rptrcub - I hope you're right that there are gay individuals/couples sprinkled throughout the greater metro area. It'd be a shame if the neighbor you lent sugar or gave a ride home to would also vote against your right to marry.
Adam & rptrcub - The last 8 years my hubby and I lived in metro Atlanta we were near Northlake Mall, ITP but within listenin' distance of the Perimeter. There was us at one end of our small street, and the lesbian couple at the other end. In fact, there were enough of "us" in the Tucker, Clarkston and Northlake areas to support The Stage Door in downtown Tucker, "The Little Gay Bar That Could": http://www.thestagedoor.biz/
Homosexuals have the same rights as normal men and women. Hands off marriage. Hands off orphans. Stop yelling and parading around in the appalling manner that you do and then you may deserve more respect.
@Exjupiter, how does your brain even process a statement like that? You go from one sentence saying that gay people have the same rights and then immediately bring up 2 rights they don't have and say they should be able to have those rights? And then after that sick display of hate you actually have the audacity to tell them to "Stop yelling and parading around in the appalling manner that you do"?
Outrageous, exjupiter is right! Orphans should remain orphans until the time that a straight, Christian, non-socialist married American couple legally adopts them. NOT A SECOND SOONER!
@Jason Pellet- 1. From the beginning marriage was not meant to give legitimacy to those that wish to practice sexual deviancy. 2. Children don't want to join in with that very same behavior. They want to be raised by a loving mother and father in a decent home. Ask a child which they would rather have.
Stop with the "hate" thing. It is an old "oh woe is me" defense. I do not hate those that practice homosexuality, I do hate the practice. If someone wishes the live in that manner so be it but stop trying to make everyone else accept it as normal behavior.
@Exjupiter: 1) I find it odd how much people like you think about the sex lives of other people. Missing anything in your life? 2) Yeah, and the gays are who prevents all those kids in foster care and orphanages from being adopted by a loving mother and father in a decent home. No child who needs adopted is going to care about their adoptive parents' sex life. Children don't care which sex organs of their parents interact; they want parents who care about them. Funny how that doesn't require a penis being inserted into a vagina. And of course every study that's ever been done has shown that children of gay parents grows up just as well adjusted as children of straight parents.
Being gay is a normal behavior, and even beyond behavior it's how many people are born. WTF is the "practice" of homosexuality that you hate so much and why do you hate it so severely that you would deny a child a loving family just to stick it to some gay people? Does the image of two vaginas or two penises together really bother you that much? Why do you even care? It's easy to say that you don't hate gay people now that it's 2010 and not as acceptable to come out and clearly state that belief, but honestly, nobody believes you, you hateful, ignorant, repressed bigot.
I've adopted several and I'm 100% straight. Being gay is not a right, it's not how you're born, it's a choice.
Of course anyone who says that is automatically responded to as a hater or closed-minded. Of course if I mention the Bible or what God said, then automatically I'm a religious nut or zealot.
I have neighbors who are lesbian and although I hate the sin, I love the sinners.
God said killing and stealing (among others) are wrong also. Should we therefore give the same rights to a murderer or thief as someone who obeys the law? What about a pedophile? Should a 40 year old man be able to marry a 10 year old girl and have the same rights? Why is that sexual depravity any less or any more okay?
It's all about selfishness...also a sin. You want what you want and to heck with what anyone else thinks or believes. You're making a choice, but yet you want the same rights as someone who is not making that choice.
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