revisionist history from the pqe

The Petty Queer Establishment’s blind embrace of the Clintons is sort of like the NAACP coalescing behind George Wallace. After all, it was Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage Act banning federal rights like Social Security and immigration for same-sex couples.

He signed it simply to deprive Bob Dole of a campaign issue, and did so at midnight while denouncing it as gay-bashing. Days later, his re-election campaign advertised on Christian radio that he had signed it.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is also a byproduct of the Clinton years, and while it’s admirable that he was willing to make the case, it’s undeniable his compromise made matters worse. And it wasn’t necessary, as executive order powers applied. If the president wanted gays in the military, all he had to do was sign.

Barack Obama has vowed to reverse this discriminatory policy, but the HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton/Human Rights Campaign) would rather carp about Rick Warren.

I was one of the 12 first-ever openly gay White House staff members to take up work the day following President Clinton’s inauguration. His respect for gay Americans was evident even when setbacks and disappointments slowed the change agenda, and he certainly did not deliberately nor unnecessarily scheme to sell out gay Americans on his first day in office to score points with opponents. Ordinary gay Americans will need to hold this new Administration to the tenets of its campaign and to the idealism of its Inaugural language — and to a fundamental expectation for respect. The Warren invitation remains a disgrace and a blemish on day one of the new Administration. *Shame on Obama.

I guess Clinton accidentally signed DOMA, then inadvertently bragged about it.

*Beware anyone who starts a sentence, “Shame on …” And expect more such PQE propaganda in the days and months ahead.

comic timing

the war of unintended consequences

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.

“The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war,” said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?”

blame the media, facts be damned

Scott Henry’s post on Fresh Loaf, “Clearing up confusion over Standard murder” clears up nothing. His only source is the cop who fed reporters misinformation regarding the details of John Henderson’s murder.

Based on that, and his own assumptions, Henry concludes “the press snafu over the Henderson murder was brought about by a combination of vague, inconclusive information offered by the police and a competitive news environment in which reporters race to make their stories as definitive as possible — often before all the facts are nailed down.”

Read Tim Eberly’s initial account of the murders — all the details are attributed to the cops. When Tim found out the facts were erroneous, he reported it before anyone else.

Scott Henry infers that the AJC’s reporting was sloppy, though he never bothered to contact the reporter. And for this he’s lauded by commenters on the Fresh Loaf blog and other sites for setting the record straight.

Reaching a conclusion based on the comments of one already discredited source hardly qualifies as “good journalism.”