“Senator Kerry has been an outspoken leader for GLBT equality in the United States Senate. Most recently, Senator Kerry’s leadership was crucial to the advancement of legislation to lift the discriminatory HIV travel ban. We are pleased to endorse Senator Kerry for re-election and look forward to working with him on achieving equality for our community,” said Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign.
Kerry has a long record of fighting for equal rights for all gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered (GLBT) Americans.
Please share widely!
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p>…yeah, as long as you don’t consider marriage equality to be an equal right.
Like most Washington-based lobbying groups, they will normally endorse an acceptable opponent over a challenger who might agree with their positions more but has little chance of winning. I don’t imagine they spent very much time thinking about Ed O’Reilly, though the latter (as I recall) is pro-marriage.
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p>The HRC endorsed Lieberman over Lamont for CT-Sen in 2006, earning the following rebuke from Christopher Durang:
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p>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
and Senator Kerry fully deserves it. Especially after he flatly turned down Bill Clinton’s disgraceful advice, in 2004, that Sen. Kerry should support Bush’s anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution and/or endorse the state bans on gay marriage that were on the ballot that year, in order to shore up his run for President. Senator Kerry reportedly said bluntly, “I’m not going to do that.” Senator Kerry has stood by the gay community for many years, and I’m glad they’ve still got his back.
… but I would say that him refusing to take Clinton’s “advice” is a plus (not to mention the fact that he was one of only 14 Senators to vote against DOMA in 1996), and certainly makes me less likely to criticize HRC’s decision to endorse Kerry than their decision to endorse, say, Susan Collins…
Does he now suddenly support gay marriage? That certainly wasn’t his position in 2004. He even went so far as to tell the Boston Globe that the state constitution should ban gay marriage
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p>I’m a proud member of HRC. I am not going to end my membership over this silliness. I am not, however, happy with John Kerry regardless what HRC says.
to ban gay marriage. I’m sure he knew that there was no way that guaranteed protection for civil unions, with full equal rights except for the word ‘marriage’, was going to be added into the amendment. In any case, he threw down the challenge that he would support this amendment if it had all that added in. It was never written to include those protections, and hence he never supported it.
that same Bill Clinton is advising Senator Hillary Clinton even as I write this.
I will keep that in mind. đŸ™‚
Yeah I really don’t care much about endorsements from groups like HRC, Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, etc. because they are basically interested in keeping their influence with incumbents and (which has been noted above) continually endorse incumbents over challengers who support policies much closer to their agenda.
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p>I mean think about – why would a gay rights group endorse someone who does not support gay marriage when that appears to be the most pressing equal rights at this time for the GLBT community? It just seems odd.
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p>2. marriage equality is not the number one most pressing concern of all lgbt people. an employment non-discrimination law probably ranks highest or ties with marriage equality for lgbt people across the country. i am disappointed in kerry that he is not pro marriage equality, and that he was part of the anti-marriage calculus in MA and the nation during his campaign. However, that battle has been stolen from him in MA, so he can do little more damage there. on a national level he has proven himself dedicated to what we need from the federals in regards to marriage: dump DOMA and oppose anti-equality constitutional amendments.
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p>i certainly don’t agree with all of hrc’s endorsements. however, in the case of kerry, i’d say that supporting the incumbent makes a lot of sense.
I see your point with the employment non-discrimination law. That certainly would have a greater effect on the daily lives of the GLBT community than the issue of equal marriage.