At the precipice of history, on the shoulders of giants

“I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.” --Thaddeus Stevens-July 1837 at Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.

There’s a poignant scene in Steven Spielberg’s new movie “Lincoln” where Pennsylvania Representative Thaddeus Stevens hobbles down the aisle of the US House chamber to ask the Speaker of the House for the copy of the newly passed 13th Amendment—the amendment to abolish slavery.

A casual observer of history may not know why Stevens was so eager to have that original written copy of the 13th Amendment. Stevens was the most progressive and vindictive American of his generation. He was admired and despised, and perhaps until now almost forgotten.

Stevens takes the Amendment home, where he is greeted by his quadroon “housekeeper” Lydia Hamilton Smith. She takes his coat and readies him for bed where they lay down together. He plainly meets her as a respected equal, lying back in contentment as she reads to him in a clear voice the text of the 13th Amendment.

Lydia Hamilton Smith was by the Congressman’s side more than 23 years. Though Thaddeus Stevens never married, neighbors referred to her as his “common law wife.”

There are many reasons why Thaddeus Stevens has gone down in history as a tireless advocate for abolishing slavery and equal rights. The biggest reason for him can be told through that poignant scene. The biggest reason was the woman who met him at the door at the end of the day the 13th Amendment passed.

We stand at the precipice of another great moment in American history today. The fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ community is not unlike the fight for equal rights in the past for African Americans, and women. It is the civil rights issue of our time.

Just yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases on equality. We are filled with hope as to what the future holds. Still, the fate of equality in the hands of 9 robes with law degrees seems tenuous at best.

Our movement needs a Thaddeus Stevens.

Thaddeus Stevens wasn’t just an abolitionist because it was politically expedient. He hated slavery because of the woman he loved. There’s a reason he hobbled down to aisle of the House chamber to get that historic document. There’s a reason he took it home for Smith to read.

One might question why we need a Thaddeus Stevens when we have Barack Obama. Obama became the first sitting president to come out in favor of equality in May of 2012. While we are forever grateful for the president’s brave stance, Barack Obama doesn’t know what it is like to be told he can’t marry, or share benefits with the person he loves.

Stevens’ advocacy stemmed from the fact that until slavery was abolished (and for many years after) Lydia Hamilton Smith would have to be nothing more than his housekeeper. The 13th Amendment was the first step in the paradigm shift. Today, Stevens and Smith could be open, married, and without shame. That all started with the 13th Amendment. It started with Stevens’ advocacy.

We need more than just a voice or chorus of political voices in favor of equality. We need someone who lives the struggles of inequality every day; someone who knows why our fight is important because it directly affects them as well.

Who is our Thaddeus Stevens?

What might have been for the LGBTQ community had Harvey Milk lived…one thing we can take from Harvey Milk’s life is his encouragement to come out of the closet, stand up and fight. Milk believed that people are more likely to see injustice and support equality the closer the inequality was to home. This of course isn’t true in every instance but it gets to the very heart of the reason why we need a Thaddeus Stevens.
Many days my mind wonders who is next? Who is the next person to break the chains of their closet and be an advocate? Will that person be our Thaddeus Stevens, our Harvey Milk?

The movement experienced a breathtaking leap forward on Election Day where we saw equality and love win over hate in Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. We also saw the historic election of Tammy Baldwin to the US Senate. Baldwin will become the first openly lesbian US Senator and will no doubt become a strong voice for our cause.

The Gay Rights movement is truly on the doorstep of history. The admonishments of our predecessors to be patient and wait for equality are no more. We are here. What I fear we are missing is a powerful progressive voice like Thaddeus Stevens.

One can only assume from the causes he championed that if Stevens were alive today he would also be a tireless advocate for our cause too—just as he was for the abolition of slavery, immigration and women’s suffrage.

For the sake of this editorial piece I’d like to assume that Thaddeus Stevens would believe in our cause, as I believe in it. I believe it is right, and I believe that love will win.

Now is our time. It is time to stand on the shoulders of Harvey Milk, Thaddeus Stevens, Barney Frank and the many who have come before. It’s time to honor the voices at Stonewall. It’s time to declare that gay rights are too, human rights.
Thaddeus Stevens and his fight for the equality brought on by the 13th and 14th Amendments was long and politically bloody, as will ours be.

It will also be worth it.

We stand on the shoulders of giants and rest on the promise that the arc of justice does truly bend towards equality.

“I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: ‘Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, Who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.’” -Thaddeus Stevens– January
13, 1865

Dowd brings incisive political wit to Elon University lecture

“If you’ve got daddy issues, pass the tissues.”

That’s how Maureen Dowd ended her well-timed Lecture on father-son dynamics in presidential politics just one day after Barack Obama won re-election.

Elon University welcomed 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to the McCreary Theatre on Wednesday night as part of the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture series which has brought Pulitzer recipients to Elon on an annual basis since 2001.

Dowd’s lecture, “Fit to Print: Writing on Washington” highlighted what she called the “daddy complex” in presidential politics over the last twenty-five years.

“Trying to get into the heads of powerful narcissistic leaders is a bit like being the presidential shrink,” Dowd quipped. “Every president gets the psycho-analyst he deserves.”

For many presidents, Bush to Obama Dowd has been that very shrink. Her harshest quips, in fact, were reserved for George W. Bush who she affectionately referred to in the speech as “Junior”, man who spent his presidency trying to “undo his father’s mistakes.”

“Instead of being steered by the good father, his own, he allowed himself to be steered by the dark father: Dick Cheney. God, how I miss him,” Dowd remarked to a raucous laugh from the crowd.

True to form, Maureen Dowd spared President Obama no expense either--analyzing him as a man hell-bent on self-reliance in order to prove his absent father wrong.
“We’ve seen a strange pattern for a quarter-century … of presidential candidates with famous fathers or no fathers,” she said.

Dowd’s distinctive style, once described as “acerbic but playful” was ever present in her lecture. Visibly nervous but, as down to earth as one would expect her to be Dowd was sure to tell the crowd that public speaking was not her niche.

She described America’s next challenge for both parties as moving away from the “white male patriarchy” in the White House.

That next challenge may be met sooner rather than later. At a reception after the lecture Dowd said confidently that those who supported Hillary Clinton “would get their chance to vote for her again in 2016.”

That’s a big step and one that can be assumed that Dowd, cut from the feminist mold of her predecessor Anna Quindlen, would welcome. When and if that does happen, Maureen Dowd, the Sigmund Freud of presidential politics, will be ready to psychoanalyze away.

She’ll be armed with a sharp mind full of the journalistic wit and wisdom she displayed at Elon University on Wednesday night …and of course, the tissues.

Forward: Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama

Four years ago, I watched Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president in Denver. At the time, I was an undecided voter. Not because John McCain or Sarah Palin shared my views. In fact, I guess you could say I was undecided between Barack Obama and just staying home.

You see, I had been an avid Hillary Clinton supporter throughout the primary in 2008. I was angry at how she was treated by the media and by her opponents. 18 million votes should have been worth more than what she was given. It should have been worth better than the way she was treated.

Then came that speech...Barack Obama, in a packed football stadium, in Denver.

"America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this"

Those words still ring in my memory. It was in that moment that I knew staying at home was not an option.

What Barack Obama said that night was right. It's still right and it's still the reason why I will be voting for President Obama again in November. The country that I live in and love so much is better than the eight years we had to live through with the previous administration. A vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would be a return to the policies from those eight years that drove us to crisis.

When I decided that night that I would have Barack Obama's back in the election, it was because I knew he would have mine if he got elected.

And he has.

In order to continue the contract of progress we entered into in 2008, Barack Obama deserves to be re-elected. He's earned the chance to continue to move this country forward. He has proven himself a pragmatic leader, willing to listen and always ready to lead. He's tackled healthcare reform, taken down the most evil man of my lifetime in Osama Bin Laden, saved the auto industry, improved America's reputation on the world stage, brought the war in Iraq to a close, ended "Don't Ask Don't Tell and became the first sitting US President in history to support marriage equality. The list could go on. It's a list of accomplishments on a progressive agenda not seen since LBJ.

He's survived a barrage of right-wing extremism, paranoid racists forwarding chain emails questioning the President's religion, heritage and "American-ness". Barack Obama was and is right: As Americans, we are better than that.

Every time this nation has been threatened whether from foreign enemies or the enemies of progress that are running for the opposition party its been ordinary people, teachers, farmers, and janitors that have stepped up to protect it. We are faced with that same task now in this election. We are faced with the choice of progress or regress.

I'll be choosing to move my country forward and the only man for that job already resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He resides there because ordinary people like you and me believed in his vision that we are better. I continue to believe in that vision. I believe in Barack Obama.

That's why he will get my vote. Again.

Dan Cathy, the bird-brain

"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage...We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit" -Dan Cathy

Dan Cathy is either dumb, lying or he doesn't read his Bible as much as he claims to.

If I could ask Mr. Cathy or any of the people, who will spend August 1st scarfing down nuggets and sandwiches to prove a point, one thing it would be this. Which biblical defininition of marriage do you support?

I'll give you some choices below:

Polygynous Marriage
Probably the most common form of marriage in the bible, it is where a man has more than one wife.

Levirate Marriage
When a woman was widowed without a son, it became the responsibility of the brother-in-law or a close male relative to take her in and impregnate her. If the resulting child was a son, he would be considered the heir of her late husband. See Ruth, and the story of Onan (Gen. 38:6-10).

A man, a woman and her property — a female slave
The famous “handmaiden” sketch, as preformed by Abraham (Gen. 16:1-6) and Jacob (Gen. 30:4-5).

A man, one or more wives, and some concubines
The definition of a concubine varies from culture to culture, but they tended to be live-in mistresses. Concubines were tied to their “husband,” but had a lower status than a wife. Their children were not usually heirs, so they were safe outlets for sex without risking the line of succession. To see how badly a concubine could be treated, see the famous story of the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19:1-30).

A male soldier and a female prisoner of war
Women could be taken as booty from a successful campaign and forced to become wives or concubines. Deuteronomy 21:11-14 describes the process.

A male rapist and his victim
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 describes how an unmarried woman who had been raped must marry her attacker.

A male and female slave
A female slave could be married to a male slave without consent, presumably to produce more slaves.

Monogamous, heterosexual marriage
What you might think of as the standard form of marriage, provided you think of arranged marriages as the standard. Also remember that inter-faith or cross-ethnic marriage were forbidden for large chunks of biblical history.

Now, I won't eat Chick-fil-a ever again. That's my prerogative just as much as it is yours to continue to go. I just cannot see spending money to support a place where there might be any small inkling of a chance that my dollars might go to spread hate and fear of something that should be neither hated or feared.

Truth is, the God and Jesus I have come to know, probably would feel the same way.

The only people who Jesus railed against were the self-righteous and the hypocritical. Dan Cathy probably falls into that category somewhere. He obviously doesn't know much about the bible, or its definition of marriage.

But poll after poll shows that with each passing day the number of Americans who support marriage equality grows. And just a few months ago a poll confirmed that more Americans now support marriage equality than oppose it.

In a few scant years -- if it even takes that long -- history will judge those who sought to deny basic civil rights to people who are gay just as harshly as it does those who sought to deny basic civil rights to members of other minority groups in the past.

Hate like that leaves a nasty aftertaste that can last for decades.

When it comes to businesses sticking their neck out across the proverbial chopping block to join the fray of political discussion all the while ignoring the actual words of the book they love to thump....well, Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-a rule the roost.

Mitt Romney: Open for bids, not a candidacy

Willard Mitt Romney doesn't care about the Presidency. He just wants it.

If he weren't running, he'd probably be just another guy who couldn't tell you who his Senator or Congressman was. Mitt cares about three things: his faith, his family and his business. Right now, his business is running for President and that is the sole reason why he's interested.

It's his business to be interested.

It's painful to watch Romney in interview after interview where he's served up softball questions that his handlers have gone over with him time after time. Through all of that coaching, Romney finds a way to uncomfortably botch the answer or he just seems stunned. Why? The questions don't fit his interests. He doesn’t think about much outside of his zone of interests: his faith, his family and his business. And that’s the most dangerous thing about a Mitt Romney Presidency:

Since he doesn't have a foreign policy he sings the song of his neo-conservative chorus of advisors. What those advisors are, of course, are the same people who advocated the point of view in the Bush administration; a blood thirsty need for a new war with each Republican President. They need a President who speaks their language. So they write his speeches. They want a war with Iran? Simple, put it in the next speech.

We've had experience not too long ago with a President who had an empty head on foreign policy. Dubbya bought the pitch of the neo-con warmongers hook, line and sinker. The result was the one war in this country's history that truly deserves a dunce cap.

Romney won't say a word about taxes or spending that the Republican puppeteer Grover Norquist won't approve. Grover says "jump", Mitt says "how high?”

The same goes for the almighty "religious right", Romney won't utter a word that Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham haven't stamped their approval on for their political prayer book. Sometime in May I watched highlights of Mitt Romney getting an honorary degree from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. It was probably a Doctorate of Pandering.

It should be clear to any voter paying attention that Mitt Romney is open for bids. He's sold his soul to every right wing faction that exists: the neo-cons on foreign policy, the religious right on social issues and Grover on taxes.

Why have a brain if you don't need to think for yourself?

With this cast of characters around him his only job is to do what he's told. To be bent like a pretzel into whatever political position the right wing wants him in. Watch Mitt Romney next time. His every response and every word is pitch perfect right wing talking points. He spouts the exact words the pressure groups are telling him to say.

Mitt Romney is only a candidate for president because it's his business to do so. It's been his business since his father lost his bid for the White House. Now that he's finally gotten the chance to defend the loss, he's not even a candidate. He's a speaker system.

Un-Erasable Equality: Why NC must defeat Amendment 1

“We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those words are part of Article I, Section I of the North Carolina Constitution. If they sound familiar, it’s because they were modeled after their predecessor on the Federal level. In September of 2011, those words came under attack, when the NC Legislature voted to write discrimination into the very document that begins with the equality and rights of all persons.
Citizens of North Carolina, meet Amendment 1.

For many years, primaries in a presidential election year went unnoticed in North Carolina. In 2008, the Democratic Presidential race came right to our backyard. Now, four years later, our state is back in the national spotlight but for a very different reason. The voters of our state will get their chance to let their voice be heard on this Amendment.

This amendment is more than just an anti same-sex marriage amendment and stands to damage more than just the LGBTQ people living in North Carolina if it is passed.

Not only does this amendment ban same-sex marriages, but it also prohibits the recognition of any sort of domestic legal union outside of the bonds of heterosexual marriage. It has the potential to impact domestic violence protection for unmarried couples, child custody and visitation, end-of-life directives, and domestic partnership benefits for public employees.

A vote for such an amendment would in reality be a vote to completely erase the words that begin our state Constitution. I remain confident that you cannot erase those words. “All persons are created equal” will prevail.

The process of stripping people of their rights is part of a history that this country should be making strides to forget, not relive. In state after state across this country, the rights of a minority have been left up to a vote by the majority. We must not take this step. We must not make the journey down this road again.

The true sadness in all of this is that despite all of the facts listed previously; this Amendment will still be painted by those who will vote for it as an anti-gay marriage amendment. This is a hopeless scare tactic to shore up the vote from the religious right demographic.

Like skilled magicians, supporters of this amendment will seek to take the focus off of the real issue at hand with, and instead seek to paint homosexuals as boogie men that threaten traditional marriage.

The vote on May 8th isn’t about gay and straight, it’s about discrimination and equality, love and hate, hope and despair. The time for North Carolina voters is now. We must stand together and defeat discrimination. It is, and always has been; wrong to enshrine the denial of basic human rights into state law.

Equality is always right, love will always win and hope will never be silent.

Innocent Screams: Trayvon Martin and the need for social justice

The youngest witness to Trayvon Martin’s heinous murder was 13 year old Austin McLendon. He was standing just 20 yards away. Asked about that night, McLendon said he can’t shake the memory of screams and gunfire from his mind.

Austin McLendon should have never had to hear those screams. Now, they rattle around in his daydreams. They keep him up at night and take the place of his concentration on more important things. Those screams raise questions in the young mind of Austin McLendon: what If that had been him instead of Trayvon Martin that night?

The screams, the questions and the outrage should not be confined to the mind of Austin McLendon. They should not be hid under the proverbial bushel in Sanford, Florida. The true facts in this case must come to light. Tough questions have to be asked and answered. Austin McLendon should not be the only one forced to wrestle with the screams of Trayvon Martin.

The facts on the surface are suspect and raise many questions. Why George Zimmerman, a 250 pound man with a 9mm handgun, saw it as “self-defense” to shoot a 17 year old black male weighing it at a scrawny 140 pounds, armed with a bag of candy and an iced tea?

George Zimmerman is a free man. Trayvon Martin is dead.

Trayvon Martin is dead because he was guilty of being black.

Transcripts of the 911 confirm that Zimmerman described Martin as “being on drugs” and “suspicious”. Neither of which appear to be true, but even if they were do not warrant a death sentence.

The Trayvon Martin case signals that it’s time for the United States as a nation to have a serious conversation on racial profiling and on Florida’s lenient and discriminatory “Stand your ground” law.

Why you won’t find Nancy Grace or Greta Van Susteren leading their shows with the story is simple. The reasons why the Sanford police have released George Zimmerman and corrected witnesses to help corroborate his story are simple. They aren’t comfortable having such a conversation.

This is a case that should go straight to Attorney General Eric Holder. The Sanford police do not have the right to be the judge and jury. George Zimmerman should be charged with a hate crime and tried before a jury of his peers. The Florida law that essentially gives its citizens the right to commit murder should be re-written.

Dr. Martin Luther King did not sit in a Birmingham jail cell so that people like George Zimmerman could walk away from a murder of an innocent young man without being charged. Harriett Tubman did not embark on more than 13 missions to secretly lead slaves to freedom, and Rosa Parks did not keep her seat on a bus so that racial profiling and stereotyping could be allowed to happen without consequence. These are pioneers of racial equality and equal rights and the actions that are associated with this story spits in the face of the trails they blazed and the principles they fought for.

It’s time for a conversation. It is time for a conversation about why someone like George Zimmerman was allowed to have a concealed weapon; why he was able to use it to commit such an injustice? It is time for a conversation about race and why Trayvon Martin is really dead.

Trayvon Martin should be alive; Austin McClendon should be free from the screams he hears at night when we pillows his head and no person should fear for their life because of the color of their skin.

The life of Trayvon Martin should not have been lived and lost in vain. We must make sure that Trayvon did not die to send this country back to the 1960’s. May his death be the beginning, albeit a sad one, of an honest, open dialogue promoting a better understanding of race, violence and equal treatment under the law.

We Still Can

Four years ago, after a loss in the Democratic New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton, an Illinois Senator named Barack Obama gave a speech that would define his campaign...

"Yes We Can"

It inspired the nation and catapulted Barack Obama to the Democratic Nomination and eventually the presidency. So it is that we sit now on the threshold of another election year. The Democrats have their man in President Obama, but it is the Republicans that are looking for their nominee.

Last night the party was in New Hampshire. more specifically the party was at Mitt Romney's headquarters. The race was called early for Mitt which gave him the spotlight in prime-time to proclaim victory to the masses. This was the time for Romney to sell himself to a nation whose eyes were all on New Hampshire, a state that he had just won.

Four years ago, Barack Obama lost the state, but roused supporters with the hope of Yes, We Can.

Willard Mitt Romney did nothing of the sort.

In an economic climate that is less than favorable, Mitt Romney said the word "jobs" in his speech just one time. He said the word "Europe" 4 times. That may seem like an insignificant fact to the casual observer, but it is red meat to the Republican party and it shows a proverbial dropping of the ball on Romney's part. It also helps to show the difference in four more years of President Obama and a Romney administration.

Mitt Romney missed his Yes, We Can moment. He missed the chance to end the race for the Republican nomination. Barack Obama harnessed the optimism and the American spirit in the same state just four years earlier, Mitt Romney did not.

Romney took a different tact and the fact that he used the work "Europe" four times more than he did the work "jobs" give us a window into the soul of the Mitt Romney campaign and how they will look to paint President Obama in a general election match-up. The view from that window, couldn't be more sickening.

See, words like "Europe" and "socialism" and "appeasement" used by Mitt Romney help paint President Obama as something that the Republicans long to paint him as being: unfamiliar and un-American.

From the time he began campaigning for President the Republicans have used President Obama's history, heritage and connections to paint a picture of a man who was too extreme and not American enough to hold the highest office in the land.

They continued that drum beat by suggesting that he wasn't even born in this country, even after he provided a birth certificate. Mitt Romney is smart enough to see that the birther ship has sailed and he has moved on to more veiled attacks. But, he labels the President's economic policies as European Socialism and foreign policies as appeasement for the same reasons as the birthers push the idea that his birth certificate is fake. They want to paint him as an outsider, someone who isn't one of us and doesn't belong in the White House.

The truth though is different. Barack Obama's story is inherently different. The son of a black father and a white mother, raised by his grandparents, President of the Harvard Law Review, Professor of Constitutional law, State Senator, US Senator and President of the United States. His story is one of overcoming the odds and following a dream by capturing the hope and optimism that lives inside of each one of us.

To take issue with President Obama over his policies because you fundamentally disagree with them is one thing. But to use the words and lines of attack that Mitt Romney and other republicans use are wrong and have undertones of scare tactics and propaganda of generations gone by.

Barack Obama is just as much of an American as any one Republican running against him. He has America's best interests at heart and I am not disappointed in how he has handled the legacy of two wars and an economic downturn long in the works before he took office.

Barack Obama has turned out to be a pragmatic leader hell bent on bipartisan cooperation with people who are hell bent on seeing to it that he fails.

Mitt Romney has turned out to be a man who has made a career out of running for President, who does not have one solitary position that he wouldn't change for political expediency.

When I watched Mitt Romney's victory speech last night in New Hampshire I couldn't help but compare his fear mongering and lies to the hope and optimism that Barack Obama portrayed in the '08 New Hampshire primaries. I couldn't help but think of who I want in the White House for four more years.

It's going to be a swim upstream for the President no matter what happens between now and November with an unfavorable economic wind. There will no doubt be some that will look at the history of American politics and say that there's no way he can win. To which I would reply with a reminder of three words:

Yes, we can.