THE LIST: White House outs gay ABC reporter
James Nimmo
Subject: THE LIST: White House outs gay ABC reporter
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In This Issue: July 23, 2003
• 1. White House Tries to Muzzle ABC With Smear Campaign
• 2. Military: Okay to Criticize Clinton, But Not Bush?
• 3. Washington Post Publishes Lesbian Wedding Announcement
• 4. DontAmend.com Update - Lots of Articles Posted Online
• 5. Urban Outfitters Prez Big Santorum Donor
• 6. Correction re Pat Robertson's Shrinking Brain
• 7. Do Religious Bigots Want Gays Jailed or Not?Hi Philippe. The big story this week is the White House's attempt to smear a gay reporter when they didn't like what he had to say about the plummeting morale of our troops in Iraq. More on this in my first piece below. But don't forget to watch "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" which will be on NBC this Thursday, tonight - yes, it's regularly on Bravo, but NBC wants to give it a bigger audience by putting it on after Will & Grace. I personally loved the show, so give it a look and see what you think.
JOHN
1. White House Angrily Outs Gay ReporterABC News reporter Jeffrey Kofman ticked off the White House bad this past week. You see, the reporter (whom I know) had the audacity to interview some US soldiers in Iraq and find out that their morale absolutely sucks. The White House reaction was reportedly harsh and swift.
According to Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, the White House communications office contacted him to let him know that Kaufman was both gay and a Canadian, and the White House source reportedly pointed Drudge to an Advocate article online that confirmed Kofman was gay. Yep, a story ran on ABC that the White House didn't like -- instead of responding to the story or God forbid exploring whether there was some merit to it and seeing what they could do to IMPROVE morale of the troops, they avoid the issue entirely and attack the reporter on a personal basis.
There are several annoying parts to this story:
1. Since when is it ok for the White House to "out" people they don't like? They're the ones who always tell us they don't want to know our sexual orientation (Don't Ask, Don't Tell), so why are they trumpeting this reporter's private life? If that's the standard this Administration has, then I'm sure there are lots of Bush appointees who have private lives that would make even better fodder for public conversation.
2. Kofman is hardly closeted about being gay or Canadian.
3. Since when is being gay or Canadian a sign that you hate America, and why does the White house believe that gays and Canadians are, nudge nudge wink wink, anti-American?
4. Since when is it anti-American to let us know that some of our soldiers in Iraq feel the White House has abandoned them? Strikes me that Kofman is a hero for coming to the aid of our men and women in uniform, and the real anti-American cad in this whole affair is a White House who likes to suck up to troops when there's a good photo op on an aircraft carrier, but then ignores their concerns when the cameras are turned off.
5. And finally, the White House summarily dismissed the entire issue, saying it would be totally inappropriate "if" true. The White House then said that they had no way to trace an anonymous tipster. Really? Since when doesn't the White House have a record of phone calls and emails going out of the building? After all, Ollie North got caught 14 years ago (or so) by the emails he wrote from the White House. We're to believe that the ability to track such technology has gotten worse in 14 years? And most importantly, has the White House even tried to find out who did this?
This is Jeff Kofman's report that so angered the White House:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030716_2ndBrigade.html
Read more about the Kofman smear here:
http://globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030718.ukoff0719/BNStory/National
And here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/opinion/20DOWD.html
2. Okay to Criticize Clinton But Not Bush?Apparently, the White House is now considering whether to punish the soldiers who spoke their mind about how they're being treated by the president. "None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the Secretary of Defense or the President of the United States," General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, told ABC News. Two thoughts:
1) It's funny how when everyone in the military, from Colin Powell on down, savaged President Clinton over gays in the military in 1993, that was a-okay. But when President Bush takes some knocks for his Iraq policy, when soldiers are being shot dead every day, now heads need to roll?
2) The moral of the story: When soldiers tell the truth in wartime, they need to be punished. But when their commander-in-chief lies about that same war war, it's "just sixteen words."
More on the controversy surrounding these soldiers:
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030716_Abizaid.html
3. Washington Post Publishes Lesbian Wedding Announcement
(Source: Washington Post, July 23, 2003)
The Washington Post today printed on its "Engagements, Weddings & Anniversaries" pages its first marriage announcement of two gay people, in this case lesbians Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch. According to the announcement, entitled "Price-Murdoch Nuptials in Canada," the couple was married on June 27th in the Toronto City Hall wedding chapel. They have been a couple since 1985. (A snippet of the wedding announcement is posted at left - the entire announcement is 4 paragraphs long.)
How cool is that?
4. DontAmend.com Update - Lots of Articles Posted Online
Our effort to stop anti-gay bigots from amending the US Constitution continues. We've already received over 10,000 signatures on the petition in less than a week, and thousands have joined the DontAmend.com email update to keep informed of the latest on the issue, and of local organizing efforts that are already being planned.
We've also added a lot of news items to the site, including a series of really nice editorials. Included in the recent news, the first gay couple just got legally married in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They're the first gay couple to be legally wed in all of Latin America. When you consider that twenty years ago Argentina was living under a right-wing military dictatorship and today it's granting its citizens more rights than we have in America, it's quite an astounding fact.
Read the Argentine story here:
There's another great article from Knight Ridder about how Justice Scalia's rabid dissent in the Lawrence v. Texas case sounds an awful lot like the reasons used to justify slavery:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6334678.htm
And an excellent article from the UK about how evangelical Christians have become this century's witch-burners. As the article notes, "the word evangelical is now firmly linked in the public imagination with intolerance and bigotry." It's a great column, read it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,997620,00.html
There are a lot more links to great articles on the DontAmend.com home page, including some stellar editorials - do check them out here:
http://www.DontAmend.com
5. Urban Outfitters President is Big Santorum SupporterSomeone emailed me recently asking if it was true that Urban Outfitters was a big supporter of anti-gay bigot Senator Rick Santorum. I did some checking on the Web, and in fact, the Chairman & President of Urban Outfitters, Richard Hayne, is a big Santorum donor (Fight-PAC, mentioned below, is a political action committee run by Santorum).
According to a story I just found in the Philadelphia Weekly: "While the typical Urban Outfitters shopper is likely to be liberal-minded--as is the province and privilege of youth--the fiftysomething Hayne is mom-and-apple-pie conservative. He and his wife Margaret have contributed $13,150 to the campaign coffers of Paleolithic right-wing Republican Sen. Rick Santorum..." - You can read more about Richard Hayne here:
http://www.phillyweekly.com/archives/article.asp?ArtID=5725
Wonder how Urban Outfitters' young clientele would feel about all of this? Here are the detailed donations, from FECInfo.
HAYNE, RICHARD A
5/14/1997 $1,000.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS -[Contribution]
SANTORUM 2000
[Senate Image Not Available from FEC]
HAYNE, RICHARD A
7/20/1998 $500.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS -[Contribution]
SANTORUM 2000
[Senate Image Not Available from FEC]
HAYNE, RICHARD
11/7/2000 $5,000.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS -[Contribution]
REPUBLICAN FEDERAL COMMITTEE OF PENNSYLVANIA
Hayne, Richard
4/16/2001 $2,500.00
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Urban Outfitters/Chairman -[Contribution]
REPUBLICAN FEDERAL COMMITTEE OF PENNSYLVANIA
HAYNE, RICHARD
12/8/1998 $3,000.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103
URBAN OUTFITTERS -[Contribution]
FIGHT-PAC
HAYNE, MARGARET
5/14/1997 $1,000.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS INC -[Contribution]
SANTORUM 2000
[Senate Image Not Available from FEC]
HAYNE, MARGARET
7/20/1998 $500.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS INC -[Contribution]
SANTORUM 2000
[Senate Image Not Available from FEC]
HAYNE, MARGARET
12/31/1997 $900.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19118
URBAN OUTFITTERS INC -[Contribution]
SANTORUM '94
[Senate Image Not Available from FEC]
HAYNE, MARGARET A
12/8/1998 $5,000.00
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103
URBAN OUTFITTERS -[Contribution]
FIGHT-PAC
6. Correction re Pat Robertson's Shrinking BrainLast week I mentioned that Pat Robertson was responsible for blaming gays for September 11, and for outing fictional TV star Tinky Winky as a raging queen. I stand corrected. Robertson did in fact agree with Jerry Falwell that gays were among those responsible for September 11, but in fact it was that other evangelical basket case, Jerry Falwell, who lost it over Tinky Winky.
Of course, Robertson is still an idiot. This is the man who once warned the city of Orlando, Florida not to fly the gay rainbow flag, or else...:
"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you," Robertson said at the time. "This is not a message of hate; this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." - Source: ORLANDO SENTINEL, January 17, 2001
And read this wonderful response to Pat Robertson in the SF Chronicle:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2003/07/18/notes071803.DTL&type=printable
7. RU Being Immoral and Unethical?Lou Sheldon and his far-right Traditional Values Coalition (they absolutely loathe us) have gotten themselves into a wee bit of trouble this week. And the folks who are ticked at them are far-right Republicans.
According to a Washington Post expose, Sheldon has been lobbying the hill about the importation of RU-486 (the "abortion pill") from Canada and Europe (see, those Canadians again!). Well, the Post found out that Sheldon has been receiving "behind-the-scenes" help in this lobbying effort from the pharmaceutical industry, something he seemed in no big hurry to tell others about.
Here's how the Post put it:
The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) portrays its campaign as a moral fight for the "sanctity of life." Documents provided to The Washington Post, however, show that drug lobbyists played a key role in crafting its argument and in disseminating the information to lawmakers. Pharmaceutical companies oppose the legislation -- which would legalize the reimportation of U.S.-made prescription drugs that sell for less in Canada than in the United States -- not over abortion but because it would erode their profits.
House Republicans were not amused. Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA) called Sheldon's tactics "unethical and unacceptable." But the best quote came from Republican committee chair Dan Burton:
"I do not understand . . . how a religious organization can be manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry to do this sort of thing," Burton said. "They are supposed to be moral people. And yet I am confident, in fact I am dead sure, that the Traditional Values Coalition did not have the money to mail this kind of trash out to congressional districts all across the country."
I understand how. The religious right believes the Bible applies to other people, not themselves. Call it: Do as I pray, not as I do.
Read the entire Post article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31678-2003Jul22.html
---------------------------------
That's enough for today. Make sure you watch "Queer Eye" on Thursday. JOHN Please Help THE LISTAs always, if you want to help support my work on THE LIST, which I do all by my lonesome out of my apartment with no staff, you can use the following link to make a donation online or via postal mail: http://www.hatecrime.org/support.html
Thanks so much! JOHN
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