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'The case against Brad Carson'

Author:   Matt Deatherage  
Posted: 10/24/04; 3:41:19 PM
Topic: 'The case against Brad Carson'
Msg #: 973 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next: 972/974
Reads: 4974

I know and respect people who work for the Oklahoma City gay news site "Hard News Online." Even so, I have to say, this editorial is both factually and logically wrong.

Let's ignore the spelling errors (like "rational" instead of "rationale") and painfully-bad grammar, just to narrow the field. The editorialist is all but livid that Carson not only voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment (more accurately known as the "Hate Amendment"), but that he's advertising that vote.

Hard News Online asserts that Oklahomans, particularly gay Oklahomans, should deny Carson their vote Nov. 2.

It is painful to watch a man who appeared to be such a promising politician - a Rhodes scholar no less - who now in perpetuity must explain why he could not support the inevitable path for freedom and liberty for all Americans.

Carson was an early supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment. In September, he voted for it. The amendment would deny gays civil unions, marriage or the benefits thereof.

Constitutional Amendments are serious business.

The last time discrimination was written into the U.S. Constitution - Plessy v. Ferguson, U.S. Supreme Court 1896 - it took about 60 years to get it back out - Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, 1954.

Regardless of where you stand on gay marriage, gays would become Constitutional second-class citizens under the FMA.

Carson, a Rhodes scholar, is brilliant. And for that reason, he cannot claim ignorance as an excuse for his actions. We are left with only one conclusion: that Carson knows his support of the FMA is wrong but has chosen political advancement over protection of other's most basic liberties. This type of politician cannot be trusted to make any decision in the interest of Oklahomans over his own.

First, Supreme Court decisions do not "write into the U.S. Constitution." They provide authoritative interpretation of the Constitution. All it takes to reverse it is another Supreme Court ruling. It may take many years - Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 overturned the bigoted anti-gay Bowers v. Hardwick of 1987 - but it doesn't alter the Constitution.

Second, this argument would resonate more clearly if all politicians didn't choose political advancement over the "most basic liberties" of others. In particular, the GOP US House leadership has repeatedly browbeaten, threatened, and intimidated moderate Republican members into witch-hunts of Democrats while ignoring all Republican malfeasance, all for political power. The way to solve this is not to elect more Republicans.

Gays will have more political credibility and power if Carson is denied our votes.

A vote for Carson would be interpreted by politicians as gays are willing to stand by a Democrat no matter what. By denying Carson the gay vote, it will be interpreted by politicians that they need to adjust not just their message but their actions regarding gays.

Oklahoma has its own Hate Amendment on the state ballot (State Question 711), and current polls show that it's got over 75% approval. If Brad Carson loses in the same election where an anti-gay amendment passes by a 3-1 margin, politicians will interpret it as him not doing enough gay-bashing. To believe anything else is stunning naivete and a complete failure of critical thinking.

The key is to keep the pressure on.

Did Martin Luther King dutifully follow President Kennedy simply because Kennedy was a Democrat?

No, King turned up the heat on Kennedy. King continued to make speeches and organize marches. King's leadership resulted in political action - The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Carson went further than being an early vocal supporter of the FMA. Carson went further than voting for the FMA. Carson recently aired TV commercials boasting of his FMA vote! He has made the FMA a central issue of his campaign.

Carson has made the FMA a central advertising issue because his opponent, Dr. Tom "Sterilizations are fun!" Coburn, has spent millions of dollars trying to convince Oklahoma voters that Carson is a "liberal." Carson is not a liberal, which is why I have a hard time supporting him, and he's touting his conservative votes to prove it. FMA is one of them, and it's one of the most odious of his record - but tremendously popular in Oklahoma. Any Oklahoma Congress-critter could justify such a vote by saying "I oppose this bill but I've chosen to represent the will of my constituents," but Carson hasn't even done that - he appears to believe in FMA.

It is nice to believe that Carson is so smart that he can't possibly believe FMA is a good idea, but the editorialist shows absolutely no evidence that Carson is being disingenuous. Even the Coburn camp isn't trying to paint Carson as gay-friendly, at least in public. They're only painting Coburn as more virulently anti-gay, and that has the benefit of being true.

HNO asserts politicians will respect us more if we stand our ground against those who would campaign and vote for the FMA.

Did Kennedy say to King, as Carson seems to be saying to gays, "I'm going to vote to allow the majority population the right to deny blacks the vote, equal education and equal employment. But, give me your money, your vote and don't cause trouble because you know I'm a Democrat and I'm better on your other issues."

We know King's response. He kept the pressure on.

Why shouldn't gays have the same response to Carson as King had to Kennedy?

If Carson loses, you'll never see another Oklahoma Democrat gay-bash in a statewide race.

This last sentence is not from someone in the reality-based community. If Carson loses, the strong message will be that gay-bashing works, and playing on fears of "destroying traditional marriage" and "voting with liberals like Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton," as Coburn is currently advertising, is the key to getting Oklahoma's conservative voters. (Coburn is such a disaster of a candidate that his campaign, and surrogates like the NRSC and Club for Growth, are now trying to run him against Kennedy and Clinton because they can't get anywhere running him against Carson.)

John F. Kennedy never ran for re-election because he was, well, assassinated. However, the editorialist seems to be implying that had Kennedy not capitulated to Dr. King's demands, the black community would have voted for Barry Goldwater instead. That's quite a bit of revisionist history, and just plain wrong.

Carson loyalists claim it would have been political suicide to vote against the FMA.

HNO asserts it is not political suicide when you act on principle. Further, Oklahomans have proven this theory twice.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, facing a statewide election, took pro-gay positions, including supporting gays against the Boy Scouts before the U.S. Supreme Court. His opponent ran TV attack ads showing Cimarron's endorsement of Edmondson. Edmonson won the election.

Regarding fears Carson may have with Oklahoma County voters, consider the case of Jim Roth. Roth, openly gay, ran a campaign for Oklahoma County Commissioner. Roth won the election.

Edmondson did file a US Supreme Court brief supporting New Jersey's right to deny the Boy Scouts access to public facilities because the Scouts discriminate against gay people, but Edmondson made it very clear, in any number of interviews and press conferences, that he was supporting states rights: New Jersey's legislature passed an anti-discrimination law and the Boy Scouts wanted it thrown out. Edmondson said it should be the state's right to avoid giving special consideration to groups that discriminate, no matter how popular they may be.

The decision cost Edmondson a lot. He was widely believed to be a strong candidate for Governor in 2002, but after siding with New Jersey, three-quarters of the Oklahoma Legislature signed a resolution condemning him for his stance. Edmondson instead chose to run again as Attorney General, where his victories over tobacco companies and others all but insured his re-election, despite a slimy Republican challenge calling him gay-friendly.

(Edmondson, by the way, has unequivocally said that Coburn committed Medicaid fraud when he sterilized that young woman and left the fact off a Medicaid form so they'd reimburse him for the part of the surgery that removed an ectopic pregnancy. Coburn has responded that Edmondson is a partisan Democrat and can't be trusted to criticize anyone but Democrats.)

Roth, for his part, was not running for a legislative office - as County Commissioner, he oversees roads and maintenance in Oklahoma County. His sexuality was an issue in the election, but the GOP didn't want to draw national attention to the race by running a hate campaign for an office that has nothing to do with social policy. Comparing that to the United States Senate is beyond ridiculous.

If gays deny Carson the vote, gays win.

Denying Carson your vote will empower politicians and campaign strategists to change their approach to gays.

The wrong side of history.

Carson, like many southern white governors who fought against rights for African Americans, will forever be tainted by his vote to write discrimination in the Constitution.

Blind ambition.

Carson would sacrifice the Constitution to get elected. For this, HNO believes we have glimpsed his soul. We believe him to be blindly ambitious.

Conclusion.

Carson cannot be trusted to make any decision in the interest of Oklahomans over his own.

If Oklahoma gay people deny Carson their votes, they don't win. Coburn wins, and then gay people lose. Coburn has said that the "gay agenda," as he calls it, "is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today." He is against AIDS prevention for anyone who has sex outside of opposite-sex marriage, he is against all laws and rules that prohibit discriminating against gay people simply because they are gay, and if he favors the death penalty for abortion providers, you can just imagine what kind of anti-gay laws he'd pass if he thought he could.

The time to pressure Oklahoma Democrats to choose a more gay-friendly candidate was in the primaries, when we had the chance to vote for an actual minister who believes in equal rights for gay people. There was no (or insufficient) pressure on Carson to keep him from voting for FMA or to moderate his anti-gay rhetoric, and so we got the results of that in Carson as a candidate.

But this really is a choice of the lesser of two evils. Carson voted for FMA but did not sponsor it, nor is he actively looking to find other anti-gay laws to create. Coburn is. Carson is also better on every other issue than Coburn is. Coburn is an anti-government nut who wants to eliminate all taxes and spending other than wars against the non-Christian world. He is against public health care, education, arts, agricultural programs, road maintenance, disaster assistance, and just about anything else you can name. He said voting for farm aid made him "physically sick."

Carson is not the candidate to protect the rights of his gay constituents, but Coburn, as a Senator, will actively work to remove those rights. Throwing the election to Coburn as a "protest" is as insane as those people who threw the 2000 Presidential election by voting for Ralph Nader as a "protest."

The truth is that either Brad Carson or Tom Coburn will represent Oklahoma in the United States Senate for the next six years. You can vote for an anti-gay candidate or an incredibly anti-gay candidate, and that's just about your only choice. The independent candidate, Sheila Bilyeu, supports gay marriage rights, but she also sued Dan Rather for "making insinuations about me [on the news] - that I was a whore or something," just one of many lawsuits she's apparently filed against public figures. (She also said she should sue the reporter who wrote the story about the other lawsuits.) She lived in Virginia when she filed for the Senate seat, much like Alan Keyes. She has no chance of winning, and a "protest" vote for her is a vote for Coburn.

If gay conditions are so much better in Oklahoma, why are most of Hard News Online's writers psuedonymous - and why isn't the editorial signed? There's also a significant conflict of interest in the article, but since I don't believe in outing, I'll respect some privacy by not saying exactly what it is.

If you are as sick of Carson's gay-bashing as I am, Martin Jensen has the better idea. His Clothespins for Carson campaign recognizes that Coburn is a disaster at least two orders of magnitude worse than Carson, but that true Oklahoma progressives are distressed about having to vote for him. He is therefore organizing and recording people who have told the Carson campaign that they're voting for him while holding their noses (with clothespins, get it), so they can stand up and be counted.

It may not make much difference, but it's a far better plan than throwing the election to Coburn. No one will interpret a Carson loss as being too anti-gay, and if anything, they'll read it exactly the opposite. In the meantime, Coburn will be in the Senate for six years to wreak all kinds of havoc upon the gay people not only of Oklahoma, but the entire nation. A "protest" that not only won't be heard but also hurts your cause immeasurably is, as we say in these parts, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The editorial is so badly misconceived that I actually wonder if it was planted by pro-Coburn forces. It's that wrong - it's a disaster promoting a disaster. Gay Oklahomans not voting for Carson are like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.
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