Eliot Spitzer, Vito Fossella, Bill Clinton. The Staten Island Advance asks: what do these three men have in common…?

Hypocrisy, thy name is Vito. Fossella, that is. U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) is a right-wing Republican who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn in the House.

Fossella opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and the Family and Medical Leave Act as well as same-sex marriage and earned a zero percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign legislative scorecard.

A self-appointed champion of ‘family values ,’ the Congressman has never extended those family values to include his an openly lesbian sister, Victoria Fossella, who has marched in Staten Island’s pride parade with her partner. But brother Vito has never publicly acknowledged his sister or her partner and voted for the federal marriage amendment that would condemn one of his own family members to permanent second-class citizenship.

But the self-righteous Fossella now finds himself in a career-ending scandal of his own making. After being arrested on drunk driving charges in Virginia last week, Fossella was forced to acknowledge on Thursday that he had fathered a child with a mistress in the context of a long-standing extra-marital affair — which makes for a total of two crimes, since adultery is technically still a crime in the Old Dominion. Read more…

Happy Friday from Jay Vanasco and John Polly, your “Gay Agenda” vlog hosts. We hopped on camera yesterday to issue an imporant message to Senator Clinton. Stop. It’s time. Even die-hard Hill-o-phile Jay has come to a decison: It’s time to bow out. Watch and discuss, please.

And while you’re watching you can hear us riff on the McGreevey divorce (which today seems to have settled?), the Michigan domestic-partnership benefits train wreck, and the happy forthcoming wedding plans of supergay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. He’s been getting death threats, but he’s undaunted. Jay’s got some good insight on the esteemed pastor because she just interviewed him. Nice!

It gets us both thinking about our own marriage possibilities. Hmmmmm… See it all below.

The Great White Hope emerges…

Hillary Clinton is now the Bernie Epton of the 2008 presidential campaign.

In 1983, when Harold Washington stunned Chicago by defeating Jane Byrne (then mayor of Chicago) and Richard M. Daley (now mayor) to win the Democratic mayoral primary, all eyes turned to Bernard Epton, a political non-entity whom the Republicans put up to run against the Democratic nominee. For decades, the Democratic primary was tantamount to the mayoral election, but when an African American won the nomination, the wildly irrational fears of whites fixed on Bernie Epton as The Great White Hope who would save them from the black peril.

In 2008, it is difficult to imagine the hysteria that gripped Chicago back in 1983, but there were many white Chicagoans who talked openly about moving out of the city if Washington were elected. Epton, running with the slogan ”Before it’s too late,” came within 3.3% of defeating the Democratic nominee. But in the end, the support of Latinos and white ‘Lakefront Liberals’ as well as a united African American community elected Harold Washington the first African American of the great city of Chicago. And despite the ‘Council Wars’ between the black mayor and the white-dominated City Council, whites did not move out of Chicago and the city was able to absorb the lessons of the hysteria that had gripped the city in 1983.

In an interview with USA Today on Wednesday, Hilary Clinton cited an Associated Press story that “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Is Hillary trying to suggest that people of color are not ‘hard-working’? Or that ‘white Americans’ who support Obama are indolent elitists? Read more…

When the Democratic primary was fresh and new, Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff wrote an editorial in support of Hillary Clinton. Unless your love of Obama juice was in the red zone, Naff didn’t say anything too outlandish. It was Clinton’s international experience that sealed the deal for him. Well that was then, this is now because earlier this week Naff wrote it was time for Clinton to close up shop and jump on the Obama train.

“The time has come for Clinton to adopt a gracious and conciliatory tone, end her campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president”

Aside from joining the chorus of folk telling Clinton it’s time to end her quest, Naff wonders what happened to the experienced pol he initially supported. From Iowa on, the Clinton machine seemed unable to get out if its way.

“From Bill Clinton’s ruinous (and arguably racist) campaign swing through South Carolina, to an obvious failure to craft a strategy past Super Tuesday, her campaign staff made so many miscalculations that Hillary went from a coronation to a shocking defeat. “

Naff however, doesn’t want to spend much time going over Clinton’s mistakes because defeating John McCain is his goal, especially after the Republican nominee recently announced he wanted to nominate Supreme Court justices just like Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

But it’s been a brutal process and Naff’s call for Democrats to come together against McCain might go unheeded. Judging by some of the comments left on this site a united front against McCain is never going to happen.

Would you want that finger on the button…?

This week, Hillary Clinton repeated her threat of “massive retaliation” against Iran first made in the run-up to the Pennsyvania primary.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran [if it attacked Israel],” Clinton said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Barack Obama called Clinton’s statement about Iran an example of “cowboy diplomacy,” saying, “We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and in the meantime have made a series of strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

When Clinton made her threat against Iran late last month, the Boston Globe called her ‘Hillary Strangelove.’ “She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists,” the Globe editorial board intoned in its April 27 editorial, calling her declaration a “foolish and dangerous threat.” Read more…

If you ever described the same sex marriage movement as an extension of civil rights, then you know Mildred Loving (if you don’t you really need to be ashamed). Mildred Jeter Loving was the wife of Richard Loving; in 1958 the then young couple decided to get married. He was white, she black, and the laws of Virginia, their home state, did not look kindly on their union because it was a violation of the state’s Racial Integrity Act. The couple were arrested in their home late one night and sentenced to a year in prison, a punishment that was voided if they left the state and did not to return for 25 years. Here are the words of their sentencing judge, Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Read more…