Before I get into this month's column, let me remind you peeps that if you aren't registered, you have
until October 2 to do so. The GLBT community needs you to participate in the most important election in the last fifty years. It will determine the course of American history for the NEXT fifty years and have a major impact on the GLBT community.
Ah-nold Schwarzenegger recently grabbed headlines when he called his Democratic opponents in the
California General Assembly 'girlie-men'.
What's a girlie-man, anyway? To me, it's a person who's a bully or who won't stand up and do what's right instead of what's popular. The world's full of them, so let's start ferreting them out.
We'll start with the 'Kentucky Democrats' in the General Assembly who caved in to the Rethuglicans two
days before the 2004 session ended to pass that odious anti same-sex marriage amendment that Dr. Daniel
Mongiardo authored. That showed real courage to sell out ten percent of Kentucky's population for your own political gain. If you did it so that you could hold on to your seats in the Kentucky House, or in
Mongiardo's case beat Jim Bunning, I've got news for you. If a voter has a choice between an ersatz
Republican and a generic one, they'll go with the generic one every time. Chew on that thought at the
next party meeting. It's past time for 'Kentucky Democrats' to go back to being 'Progressive Democrats'
and start standing up for the little guy again.
Now in the local 'girlie-men' category, Jefferson County GOP chair Jack Richardson IV comes to mind.
The Republicans are so nervous about Junior getting his butt kicked that he dusted off his plans to use
poll watchers in West End and Newburg precincts. It's a clumsy attempt to suppress African-American turnout that harkens back to the days of Jim Crow racism. That has incensed the African-American community to the point where even Anne Northup had to denounce it.
Maybe we should send poll watchers wearing black berets or the Nation of Islam brothers to his home
precinct and other GOP leaning ones and see how he and his friends like it.
This pattern is happening nationally. The girlie-men in Florida repeated the 'let's strike African-American 'felons' off the voter rolls' trick and got caught. A GOP legislator in Michigan stated during an
interview that the only way to carry the state is 'suppress the Detroit vote.' Detroit has huge concentrations of motivated African-American and Arab voters, and they will be at the polls in force on November 2. If I had an (R) beside my name on the ballot I'd be nervous, too.
Metro Council member James Peden is another one. He's the lead dog in the efforts to kill the Fairness
law by trying to force a vote on it. What's with this conservative fetish to overturn civil rights laws for
people they don't like? He needs to heed the wisdom of Nelson Mandela, who so eloquently stated that
'majority rule is not intended to suppress the views, the hopes, and the aspirations of the minority.'
Peden's attempting to create a wedge issue to use against Democrats in conservative-leaning districts in
their bid to gain a GOP Metro Council majority. If that happens, you can count on much right-wing
mischief coming out of Metro Council chambers after that.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention my least favorite pseudo-Texan, girlie-man George Walker Bush.
I'll save my comments about him for next month's column.
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