The Wardman Wire

UK Blog coverage of the US Election seems to focus more on the continuing scrummage and detail of the process, rather than on the underlying political principles.

I’m not a US Election anorak, but I did come across a couple of interesting pieces looking at the principles rather than the process on one of my occasional reads: Girl in Short Shorts.

A Plague on Nearly All their Houses

Yesterday, Becky’s “Whatever” was a guide to the US Election Candidates for Gay and Lesbian Voters. Worth a look, and with a lot of links to other sites.

…not one of the major candidates advocates repealing the most important federal law adversely effecting homosexuals in America.

That is the Defense of Marriage Act. The law, passed by Congress during the Clinton administration, defines marriage, for federal law purposes, as a union between a man and a woman, and permits the states to refuse recognition of same sex marriages performed in the state(s) where it is permitted.

Unlike the silly argument of whether to call these arrangements a civil union rather than a marriage, this law has some very real impact.

For example, Congress is going to be borrowing money from China in order to send out rebate checks, so Americans can stimulate the economy by purchasing Chinese imports. The current proposal is $600 per person, or $1200 per married couple.

But, a married lesbian couple in Massachusetts (the only state which grants full rights to same sex unions, including the actual designation of the term “marriage”), where one of the partners is a stay-at- home Mom, will only receive $600.

When one of these couples is going through splitsville in another state, that state does not have to apply the usual divorce laws. This effects all the things married couples spill blood over: alimony, child support, child custody, visitation and property division. And even if a state will grant a gay divorce, any party ordered to pay alimony will not, unlike a straight divorcee, be able to deduct it on their federal income tax.

She fills in quite a lot more detail, for example:

Obama used to be for repeal, but is now non-committal. They all pretty much are the usual: Gay marriage bad, but civil unions are begrudgingly acceptable.

At this particular moment, as far as I know, Johnny Edwards is for repeal of DOMA. But he is also the Democratic version of Mitt Romney. The Defense of Marriage Act is just like the Iraq War, the Patriot Act and Bankruptcy Reform. Sunny Boy supported or voted for all of these, but is now against them. At times he has expressed support for DOMA, at other times he has urged repeal. During the 2004 election he argued for repeal of a portion of the law, because the states should not be forced to recognize out-of-state same sex marriages. Knock Knock—that is what DOMA does.

and concludes:

The Libertarian Party has always opposed institutionalizing any type of discrimination, including the Defense of Marriage Act, and officially urges its repeal.

There are a number of reasons why I will be voting for the Libertarian Party candidate on November 4.

This is just one of them.

Read it all

And as for Mitt Romney…

She has a distinct dislike to Mitt Romney, and explains why. I’ve reproduced a couple of excerpts with some links here, but there’s much more in the original article.

No one, other than his Mormon brethren, really likes Mitt Romney. He is the kind of annoying brown noser who always raised his hand in class. And when the John McCain type kid beat the crap out of him on the playground, we all quietly applauded.

But the cool kids don’t always win in politics or business. But slick twirps do sometimes—especially if they have no conscience and are always eager to please.

And wields the scalpel…

And the end always justify the means. The ideological pandering is now legendary. When Romney ran for the Senate in Massachusetts he was at least as strong a proponent of abortion as his opponent, Ted Kennedy, and was more libertarian than him on gay rights. He then kick started his presidential campaign by reviving an ancient Jim Crow law to put the brakes on same sex marriage in the Bay State. He denounced the ideology of Ronald Regan, and then had the audacity to trash Huckabee as being no Ronald Reagan. As a gubernatorial candidate he had no use for the NRA and praised Massachusetts’ heavy handed regulation of firearms. But he has now joined the NRA and is a big time Second Amendment advocate. Even though apparently Romney is a staunch Mormon, he is unable to stay true to the the tenets of his faith, when personal opportunity comes knocking.

What a piece of work.

Ouch.

Wrapping Up

It is nice to see someone talking about political principle, and meaning it - even if it won’t make a blind bit of difference to the election. Perhaps one day it will.

Tags: girl in short shorts, us election, mitt romney, obama, hillary clinton, john mccain[tags]girl in short shorts, us election, mitt romney, obama, hillary clinton, john mccain[/tags]