Libertarian Gravel says, “I’ve got your gay back!”

Former Senator and Former Democrat Mike Gravel may have switched parties — he’s now jockeying to be the Libetarian Presidential candidate — but he hasn’t changed his tune about his devotion to the LGBT community. He’s going to keep fighting our fight, even if no one’s paying much attention. (You can’t fault him for that certainly.)

Gravel’s pals with the bloggers over at Queerty and he penned them a note pledging his unflinching allegiance to help further queer politics in the world at large, especially gay marriage.

Refresh your memory by watching Gravel gab about gay marriage at Logo’s Presidential Forum last summer. And after the jump, read chunks of his note to Queerty. Here’s a good bit: “Did you notice that after the corporate media dumped me from the debates, gay marriage ceased being a major issue? As a third party candidate I’ll make sure marriage equality moves back into the national spotlight.”

Go Mike!

Read more…

The talking heads have been yapping in the past few days wondering if it’s time for the Clinton campaign to shut down. Vermont senator, and Democratic bigwig, Patrick J. Leahy sent out the first salvo saying essentially Clinton had no chance of getting the prize

“Senator Clinton has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to,” Leahy, a Obama supporter, said.

This brought tons of sound bites from camp Clinton, all of them making clear she has every intention to fight until the bitter end. While Democrats are uneasy about how the primary has turned ugly, any calls for Clinton to drop out now are premature. Sure she is slightly behind in the delegate count, but if she wins the Quaker State next month and can a pull a win in either North Carolina or Indiana, then she can make a good case to the super-delegates the prize should be hers. Of course, if she loses two of the next three primaries it will officially be Clinton campaign death watch. Here is a bold prediction: if Clinton stumbles in Pennsylvania (and that’s a big if because the polls give her a comfortable lead), then it’s over. No amount of spin will be able to explain that type of loss.

Marisa Richmond, DNC delegate and LGBT activist.

The 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver will be a ‘first’ in many important ways: it will certainly be the first major party convention to nominate either a woman or an African American for president.

But DNC 2008 will be notable for some other firsts as well: it will be the first major party convention at which an openly transgendered woman of color will be seated as a delegate, the New York Blade reports. An African American woman from Tennessee, Marisa Richmond has been named a delegate by Howard Dean. “I plan to use this opportunity to every chance I get talk about inclusion, diversity and how all GLBT people — including trans people — are victims of discrimination and hate crimes and why it’s so necessary for the Democratic Party to stand up for what’s right,” she told the Blade.

The Democratic National Committee chair has also named Diego Sanchez — a Latino transman from Massachusetts — to the platform committee — one of the convention’s standing committees; he will also be seated as an at-large delegate in Denver.

While Marisa is supporting Hillary Clinton and I’ve endorsed Barack Obama, we have worked together in the past and will continue to do so — happily — in the future, as friends and colleagues in the movement. Read more…

You’ve got to love The Onion. And here’s to our “shadowy overlords!”

Genius.

It’s a sassy Springtime Friday and Kate Clinton has much to discuss. Men are getting pregnant, and you can bet transgender issues are going to be getting a lot of play as a result. Meanwhile, Hillary is tired, Obama’s hitting the beach and John McCain is off his rocker. Or so sayeth Kate…

Check her out. (And psssst… She’s got a killer new CD out. It’s called Climate Change, fyi.)

The Out People of Color Political Action Club: giving a voice to the voiceless.

On March 18, in response to the repeated broadcasting of clips of an incendiary speech by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama gave a speech on race in America in Philadelphia. Obama’s Philadelphia address on race in America was widely hailed by observers as a historic speech that would be remembered long after the 2008 presidential campaign was over.

“It was as thoughtful as King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ with the added dimension that it was in a political context, in which [Obama] showed courage rather than merely doing the safe denunciation,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and biographer of several American historical figures, including Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger. “He wrestled with the most important issue we have faced throughout our history, and he did it in a way that wasn’t politically calculating, but was intensely personal as well as insightful.”

Walter Earl Fluker, executive director of the Leadership Center at Morehouse College, called the speech “truly historic,” and said of Obama that, “Like King in the past, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, he spoke directly to the complexity of the issue at hand, and translated it so it’s part of our nation’s story.” The speech was so well received that even the Clinton campaign refrained from criticizing the speech, at least directly.

What is especially interesting to me is the response that the speech has garnered within in the LGBT community. Read more…