Comments on Advance Indiana™: Dean Fires Liaison To Gay Community

Good points, Gary. I've never been shy about sayi...

2006-05-05T03:07:00.000-05:00

Good points, Gary. I've never been shy about saying, "I told you so!", and, about my early warnings about Dean, I'm not going to change now.

Dean was and is no friend to the gay community. He is as much responsible as the religious political extremists in Vermont for Vermont settling for civil union sloppy seconds instead of the real civil marriage that we were on our way to getting had Dean not intervened (and slimily for personal gain with his eye squarely on the 2004 presidential election, no less.)

According to gay lobbyist/activist counterparts in Vermont, he exercised his now-famous temper, threatening to cut important social service funds -- including HIV-related ones -- if they didn't back away on Dean's legislative agenda, including civil unions versus equal access to civil marriage.

Our community's support for Dean was an exercise of being seduced by pretty form instead of taking the personal responsibility to investigate for evidence of function -- coupled with a sad lemming tendency born, I believe, of the cumulative effects of discrimination -- or maybe we are, in the aggregate, just politically and intellectually lazy Americans -- who knows...

It does appear that some well-placed opportunistic national scope political queers capitalized on queers' gullibility in such matters, fanning the Dean flames gaining not-small personal rewards in the bargain. I hope people will remember who these "leaders" were and hold them responsible for their part of the great hoodwinking.

I don't think there is any question it was in reta...

2006-05-03T20:59:00.000-05:00

I don't think there is any question it was in retaliation for what his lover had said--the nexus is just too apparent to overlook. Having said that, I don't believe it is an actionable employment claim in a legal sense. The problem lies in how Dean has gotten himself into the position of being criticized for failure to act, which led to the firing. Some might also argue a double standard. The Dems don't seem to blame James Carville for what Mary Matalin says or vice versa with the GOP.

is there any actual evidence that this was retalia...

2006-05-03T20:48:00.000-05:00

is there any actual evidence that this was retaliation? the timing is a bit suspicious, but it hardly proves anything. post hoc ergo proper hoc is a logical fallacy, after all.