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Born (again) in the USA
The 2008 US presidential primaries continue to fascinate. Whoever wins the prize for the Democrats, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, this internal primary contest will surely be more dramatic, confrontational and action-packed than the actual general election can ever hope to be.
But if queer Americans are under any doubt as to the importance of getting the Republicans out of the White House, consider Sally Kern, a State representative from Oklahoma who recently got caught firing off an anti-queer tirade to what she assumed was only a small captive audience, but which instead has earned a star in the YouTube universe.
Some of Kern’s particularly colourful ravings include: ‘Studies show, no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than … a few decades.’ (Brace yourself Australia, you’ve only got a few years left, tops!) Furthermore, the gays ‘are going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is … acceptable.’ And apparently, homosexuality is ‘the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam’.
Have you figured out yet to which Grand Old Party Kern belongs?
Not to tar all Republicans with the same brush, of course. The problem, however, is that the Sally Kerns are not necessarily at the fringe extreme of the party. Kern sits on the Education Committee of the Oklahoma legislature – and keeping the gays away from the vulnerable kiddies at school, as well as their education system, is a recurring bugbear of the inevitably Republican US religious right.
Last year in Utah, for example, a Republican state senator co-sponsored a Bill that would allow high schools to effectively ban gay-straight alliance clubs on campus. It’s just what they do.
Interestingly, the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, would not appear to be quite as enslaved to the rancid religious right as the current president – or indeed his father, and Ronald Reagan before him. McCain has of course strongly opposed same-sex marriage and queers serving openly in the military, but he must be doing something wrong to get the RRR offside, given leading media wingnut Ann Coulter’s claim that she would endorse Clinton over him.
Unfortunately, however, no Republican president can ever remain truly above lawmakers like Kern, since often she is only ever articulating the ignorance and prejudice of many voters. If McCain wishes to rally the support of Kern, Coulter and other anti-queer Republicans – since, let’s face it, there’s plenty of campaign funding available there – he’ll have to pander to their views rather than condemn them.
Hopefully, this will be a moot issue when one of two Democrat candidates who’ve fallen over themselves to establish their cred as the more queer-friendly president-in-waiting, takes charge in the new year.
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Opinion 
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