Author: Carnacki

Ineffective Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito came in to office with her good friend George W. Bush and she needs to leave with him. For the past 7 and a half years what has she accomplished for WV-02? Nothing. She has little to show for her four terms in office for the WV-02 District.

As Clem pointed out the right wing bloggers don’t even write anything positive about her because there’s nothing there.

For the past 21 years, Anne Barth has worked with Sen. Robert C. Byrd to serve West Virginians. There’s been no one better at constituent service in Congress than Senator Byrd and he doesn’t do it alone. He’s relied on staffers like Anne Barth.

Like her political idol George W. Bush, Shelley Moore Capito grew up as the child of privilege. Her father former Gov. Arch Moore made sure when she wanted to run for office she was elected. She was born on 3rd base and acts like she hit a triple. And throughout her long years in Congress, she’s voted consistently on issues that have helped people like her – wealthy and born into privilege – over people who know what it’s like to earn a paycheck through the sweat of our brows. She’s voted against bills supported by the unions and she’s voted on bills that put a greater burden on the middleclass to give bigger tax cuts to the rich.

Anne Barth was born the daughter of a minister, who served different parishes throughout the state. Then she served as the right hand of Senator Byrd as he served the people of the state.

When it comes to getting the job done, Anne can.
In other WV-02 news, the DCCC picked the race as one of 13 to highlight Republicans tied to Big Oil.

spruceshoe pointed out that Capito is one of 8 Republicans receiving funds from a national Republican funnel group at the NRCC called ROMP (Regain Our Majority Program).
How are they going to gain seats spending money to defend an incumbent?

Clem had a nice Barth fundraiser diary.

Part of this diary was originally published on June 9 at West Virginia Blue.

My connecting train was late tonight. It was hot as hell and I struck up a conversation with three young men, two black, one white, at the station about the heat and the lateness of the train. When we boarded, someone warned us the next car down didn’t have air conditioning working so I went up to the second deck and all the way to the end seat where I could stretch out. The other three followed me up and I had the end seat facing them as they sat sideways.

The man sitting closest to me, an African American in his 20s, was muscular with a tattoo of a flaming skull on his left bicep with “Protect Me From Evil” written around it (the skull not the bicep). He pulled out a book, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father. His friends also began reading their books too though I could not see the titles.

We all four get on the train home at the same stop and then catch the connecting express train home (express – there’s irony on days like today). So I knew they were going into West Virginia too.

I knew he was talkative from our conversation at the train station so I didn’t think he’d mind me interrupting him. I asked him if he liked the book.

He told me he did and what an amazing life Obama has led. I asked him if he voted for him in the primary and he laughed and said he did. “There weren’t enough of us,” he said. I laughed too and told him I had as well.

We talked some more. He and his friends work at the same company. He delivers copiers and does maintenance on them. Since I had argued with people throughout the day on Daily Kos about racism in West Virginia, I asked him what his experience had been. He had moved out here from Washington, D.C., where he said reverse racism is the norm where people in some neighborhoods get angry if a white person walks down the street. He said he was hassled at a store once where he ordered a sandwich at 10:30 at night and the clerk said they had stopped selling sandwiches for the evening but the person ahead of him had just ordered a steak and cheese. But he said he also was hassled more because of his race when he lived in the city.

He told me he thought some people in West Virginia were racist. I asked if they were more so than any place else and he thought about it and said he didn’t think so, that there were more uneducated people in West Virginia who saw racism more as part of their heritage, but there was racism all over.

We talked about the primary election and I told him I thought it had more to do with people being more familiar with Hillary Clinton and of associating her with the `90s when they might have done better economically. He said that sounded about right. He said there are plenty of people who would never vote for a black man just as there are many who would never vote for a woman either. Where he works in Maryland, he encounters people he suspects are racist, but they’re better educated and don’t reveal it because they know it’s not good business, he said. But he said you could tell from the way they react. We then had a good discussion on classism and racism and how the two entwine there and in West Virginia, an adopted state for both of us.

I told him it bothered me that West Virginia is constantly portrayed as a backward, redneck state. He said it bothers him too, but he’s used to it because he grew up in D.C., where people have a very negative view of the city and how to this day people bring up Mayor Marion Barry’s crack arrest and people would say he must have crack on him since he’s from D.C. But he said he’s come to like many rednecks. He said there are a lot of rednecks in West Virginia, but many of them aren’t racist. He said they’re just redneck in their lifestyle because it’s their heritage or because they lack social skills or education.

He then said something that surprised me. He said the racists in West Virginia are very polite. They were raised with bigotry, but they also were raised with good manners and while that seemed contradictory to me he said it isn’t. They might not like black people, but if you treat them with respect, he said, they’ll treat you with respect. If you needed help, they’d go out of their way to give it, but they wouldn’t shake a black person’s hand or have dinner with him.

Our conversation went on for a while. I never got around to asking how he could tell someone is racist if they act polite, but it’s probably something intuitive which is really deduction at a subconscious level.

I would have liked to have talked to him about whether he had volunteered for the campaign, but as we shook hands as he departed at Duffields he’d see me tomorrow.

I broke out my laptop and began to write down the conversation while it was fresh and before my stop at the end of the line.

I’ve been called naive for defending Appalachia. Despite claims by some to the contrary, I’ve never denied racism exists here. I’ve encountered. it. But I’ve encountered it just as much in the regions outside of Appalachia where I’ve lived.

When I dated an African American woman in Ohio in 1983, I walked into a Denny’s with her late at night. Every eye turned towards us and every conversation stopped. All that was missing was the sound of a needle scratching across the turntable. I’ve been to counter demonstrations at KKK crossburnings in Maryland and Pennsylvania and a NeoNazi/Klan rally in Harpers Ferry. I’ve seen racism and done my best to counter it. But the truth is those who express bigotry towards any group based off preconceived, negative stereotypes exist everywhere.

The Washington Post today had a story on race and Obama based off a national poll that shows what I’ve always believed and said.

Despite claims by many in the mainstream media and some front page bloggers at Daily Kos about Obama’s so-called “Appalachia problem,” the poll shows what I’ve said all along:

As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

In West Virginia 21 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary said race was a factor in their decision, including a significant number of white voters who picked Obama.

About a fifth of whites said a candidate’s race is important in determining their vote, but Obama does no worse among those who said so than among those who called it a small factor or no factor.

Nor are whites who said they have at least some feelings of racial prejudice more or less apt to support Obama than those who profess no such feelings.

Putting several measures together into a “racial sensitivity index” reveals that these attitudes have a significant impact on vote preferences, independent of partisan identification. Combining answers to questions about racist feelings, perceptions of discrimination and whether the respondent has a close personal friend of another race into a three-part scale shows the importance of underlying racial attitudes.

Whites in the top sensitivity group broke for Obama by nearly 20 percentage points, while those in the lowest of the three categories went for McCain by almost 2 to 1.

A similar pattern holds among Democrats. Obama scores more than 20 points better among nonblack Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the “high” group than he does among those in the “low” group.

Obama has some convincing to do among the 29 percent of whites who fall into the scale’s lowest category. (Twenty-one percent were in the top grouping, 50 percent in the middle.) Almost six in 10 whites in the low-sensitivity group see him as a risky choice, and a similar percentage said they know little or nothing about where he stands on specific issues. Nearly half do not think his candidacy will alter race relations in the country; 20 percent think it will probably make race relations worse.

I wasn’t surprised by this.

Quite a few experts on race and politics outside of Daily Kos expressed similar thoughts:

Al Cross, of The Rural Blog of the Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Journalists from around the world continue to write about Barack Obama’s “Appalachian problem,” based on his single-digit percentages in some Central Appalachian counties and exit polls showing that more than a fifth of white Democratic voters in Kentucky and West Virginia said race was important to their vote and more than four-fifths of those voters supported Clinton.
…

Such stories imply that race was the main reason Obama lost the two main states of Central Appalachia. They ignore the fact that he made only one campaign stop in each of them, that Hillary Clinton’s lunch-bucket speeches spoke more to local needs than Obama’s high-flown rhetoric, and that the Clintons had strong followings in both states while Obama was not well known. As I said in my fortnightly column in The Courier-Journal yesterday, if Obama asked one of the black mayors of overwhelmingly white towns in Kentucky, “They might tell him that when folks know you, they’re willing to vote for you. When you’re a silhouette or a cartoon, they’re not even listening.”

Prof. Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, expert on racial politics in
 The Guardian:

The difficult truth is that Appalachia is unusual mostly because many people here are willing to openly talk about what some of their fellow citizens are secretly thinking. In exit polls of the recent primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia, one in five Democrats confessed to pollsters that race was a factor in their voting choice. ‘West Virginia and Kentucky were just more honest than other parts of the country. A lot of other people know it’s not socially acceptable to mention that sort of thing,’ said Professor Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University and expert on racial politics.

Ruy Teixeira, a fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, author of “Why the White Working Class Still Matters” and coauthor of “The Decline of the White Working Class and the Rise of a Mass Upper Middle Class.”:

Salon: So what does it mean then, when a white voter tells a pollster that race was “important” in choosing one candidate over another? How many answers are contained in that answer?

Teixeira: I think if we clarify what the question actually was it helps clarify how much it might mean. The question was, was it one of several factors, the most important factor or not a factor, right? The larger group was the people who said it was one of several important factors and basically they lumped the most important factor folks in with the several important factors, so that can be a little deceptive. So what does it mean when somebody says it’s one of several factors they considered? Does that mean they otherwise would have voted for Obama but they’re racist [and] they voted for Hillary? I think there are a lot more benign interpretations and positive answers to that question. It’s certainly the case that whites who responded who said it was one of several factors were likely to favor Hillary over Obama, but I think you have to be careful about the interpretation you make about that relationship.

…a lot of it’s cultural overlay on the race issue and in fact, people tend to label anything that’s correlated with race about race where it actually could be about lots of other and broader things. And in particular the Democratic Party has a sort of image in certain areas of the country among certain voters, particularly downscale voters, that’s somewhat unfavorable. There’s a certain cultural distance there, a sense of an elitism in the national party that Obama probably connects to in their minds. And they felt that Hillary connected less clearly to that. So is that race or is it culture or is it both?

Sean Wilentz, Princeton University historian, contributing editor at the New Republic, author of “The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.”:

At some level, this all becomes sheer speculation. We don’t have individual voters saying why they voted this way particularly, it’s all aggregates, and you have to try to put it together. But I do think that to the extent that the media line about Clinton’s racist voter support has tended to be, at least among the pundits that I’ve read, concentrating on, particularly in the Rust Belt states, and particularly among, there are euphemisms for it, low-information voters, we all know what that means. The data don’t support that contention. That’s all. And why upper-middle class voters would suddenly be turned to Hillary, I don’t know. It could be any number of things, but I think it’s sheer speculation to say it’s based on Jeremiah Wright or racism or anything else.

…Appalachia is the exception. Because they’re voting for lunch-bucket issues. They always have. And to a certain extent for national security but that’s not the issue here in this primary. They went for Hillary not for the racial issues, they went for here for the reasons they said they did.

I think it’s a question of perception. I think the perception is that, this is actually holding this Sirota theory intact, you can hold that intact, but you can’t then assume that all the whites in Appalachia are Southern racists. Which some people have assumed.

…But I don’t think that it’s driving it. There’s no empirical evidence that it’s driving it, that’s for sure. Whereas, West Virginia has, going back to the New Deal, probably going back to the Civil War, when it became West Virginia … This is the least racist part of the South. But it was historically rather poor, when mining got going — I won’t give you a lecture on American history. But this is the part of the South that has been least driven by race among white voters, rather than the most.

Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies:

The legions of pseudonym-laden online posters who follow in political punditry’s wake are less restrained in describing the shortcomings of Sen. Clinton’s Appalachian supporters. They suggest it has to do with her voters being racist, toothless, shoeless, and prone to marrying their cousins. In short, they characterize these “special” Democrats in much the same terms they used in quieter times to describe Republicans.
… When the country needs iconic war heroes like Alvin York or Jessica Lynch, mountaineers fill the bill. If, periodically, this rich nation needs people to pity, poverty-stricken hillbillies make excellent poster children. And if backers of the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee need to explain why their preferred candidate is not connecting with downscale, rural voters — a demographic that was once key to Democratic electoral success — Appalachia can again answer the call. Obama supporters and members of the media can place the blame for his poor fortunes not on the candidate or his message, but on the moral failings of those benighted mountain people.

However, the unnerving truth for the erstwhile party of Jefferson may be that Appalachia, for all its legend and lore, is not that different politically from the rest of the small-town and rural parts of the country where 60 million of us live.

…Yet there is plenty in the numbers to give Obama heart, starting with the 9-point deficit that he and Kerry have in common five months out from the general election. When Kerry was down 9 in rural counties, he had a commanding lead nationally….

Surprisingly, Obama has already achieved the same standing in the polls that Kerry enjoyed when things were going well. And for Obama, this comes after weeks of relentless news coverage of his ex-preacher and after the senator’s own costly “those people” moment when he was caught at a private fundraiser using broad stereotypes to characterize small-town and rural voters. (They are bitter. They cling.)

What our polling also shows is that rural communities are experiencing measurable economic distress, especially with the out-of-control price of fuel. Rural voters express concern over the mounting cost of healthcare and of the Iraq war. They are also measurably displeased with the country’s direction. On the issues, there is clearly prime territory for Obama to seize….

How Obama fares in rural America may, in the end, have to do with whether he shows up. In politics not showing up and losing are kissing cousins. Obama made three visits to West Virginia. In Kentucky, he limited himself to appearances in the state’s two biggest cities, Louisville and Lexington. He didn’t come to my part of the state, or try to make any friends in rural areas.

Prof. Ron Eller of the University of Kentucky, author of “Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South”:

Newhouse News correspondent Jonathan Tilove even suggested that Sen. Barack Obama has an “Appalachian problem” that goes beyond race to the peculiarities of “Appalachia’s whites and the Scots-Irish who settled there and forever branded its culture.”

Popular stereotypes and misreading of Appalachian history have long provided a convenient excuse to ignore Appalachia or to justify public and private attempts to bring the region into the cultural mainstream. Thus, the argument is offered that Clinton’s appeal in Appalachia should not be taken too seriously since mountain voters represent those “other whites” whose heritage has led them to be suspicious, pugnacious and a little less civilized than the Anglo-Puritan whites of the Northeast.

Sen. Barack Obama could not possibly succeed among these highly individualistic, uneducated and unrefined mountain whites whose ancestors resisted slavery and Southern nationalism during the Civil War. This independent spirit, suggest the pundits, will lead the hillbillies to vote for Scotch-Irish Appalachian John McCain, born in Appalachian Mississippi.

Such characterizations of Appalachia not only obscure the historical diversity of the region and project a static view of human culture but also ignore most of the recent scholarship on Appalachia that contradicts the idea of Appalachian “otherness” and attributes its history and economic problems to political struggles that have shaped the rest of the nation.

Far from being the repository of Scotch-Irish culture, ignorance born of geographic isolation or backwardness nurtured by anti-modernism, contemporary Appalachia is a much more diverse and historically complex place….

For blue-collar voters in Appalachia, economic concerns, not Appalachian identity, shaped their decisions at the polls. Job insecurity, rising food and gas prices, and uncertain access to health care and education turned Appalachian voters toward the more working-class message of Hillary Clinton, especially among women who occupy the center of the modern mountain economy. Perhaps because of the race issue, Obama conceded West Virginia to Clinton, who was able to use the local Democratic political machinery to her advantage.

Jeff Biggers, of Huffington Post:

How the media loves its hillbillies.
Makes me wanna holler: The hand-wringing aftermath of the recent presidential primaries in Appalachia — from western Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky — says more about the media’s prejudice and misperception of the Mountain South than any insights into the voting ranks and their racism or religious narrowness….

Take hillbillies, on the other hand. Dating back to the 1850s, when George W. Harris created the character of Sut Lovingood, the “durn’d fool” with his “brains onhook’d” from eastern Tennessee for a New York newspaper, the media has obsessed over hillbillies, as if they have cornered the market on provincialism or racism in America. From bloggers on the liberal Daily Kos to untold television interviews, this same obsession has reared its ugly head in one commentary after another, blinding the writers from any historical truths about Appalachia.
…

In West Virginia (and Kentucky), on the other hand, disregarding the fact that the Clintons have had a several decades-long relationship with southern Democrats in West Virginia, that Bill Clinton’s folksy southern accent still goes down among the aging electorate like molasses, that Sen. Barack Obama ran a poor operation and did very little campaigning in the state and mainly invoked his Illinois coal state credentials in an anachronistic pitch for votes, the media preferred to dwell on the region’s perceived legacy of backwardness. In truth, Obama blew it in Appalachia; Hillary reaped the rewards of the Clinton legacy.

Still, most reporters, exclusively interviewing older voters, went out of their way to find the most outrageous examples to confirm their hillbilly-biased pronouncements.

Del Ali, pollster, Research 2000:

Obama should listen to that point of view, rather than accept the conventional wisdom that he’ll never get support in rural, white America, said professional pollster Del Ali of Research 2000 in Maryland. “It would be smart of him to visit, to go to Appalachia and say, ‘What I’m offering is closer to your interests … you’ve got nothing in common with trickle-down economics or oil companies; I care about you,'” Ali said. “I’m surprised he didn’t do more of that before the primary.”

Gov. Joe Manchin:

MANCHIN: Well, you hear this, and I have heard this from West Virginia and Kentucky and these types states which we call Appalachia, but, you know, which we had a story in the paper today, which was this really something that a young African-American female staffer of Obama’s was working in West Virginia and she was concerned because she didn’t know, just what she’d heard. And her car broke down, and … not only that help her fix the car, the family lent their car for her to continue on her campaigning. They got to know each other.

…

HEMMER: You know, as you talk about that, if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, can he win in your state in November, governor?

MANCHIN: I truly believe he can. I can tell you, the people in West Virginia are totally committed to change. We have to change the direction of this country for this –

HEMMER: What does it mean when Hillary Clinton wipes him out by 41 points two weeks ago?

MANCHIN: Well, I mean, listen, first of all, Bill Clinton is a very, very popular ex-president in West Virginia, who is still beloved as she is very popular, and she – the whole family worked extremely hard here. It’s just campaigning that paid off, it was pressing the flesh, you know, and face to face.

… He spent quite a bit of money, but they enjoyed the time and also the relationship they’ve had with the Clintons. It had nothing to do with race. And people keep talking about that. It’s just so wrong.

So why do so many West Virginians also describe the state as being more backwards than others? Because that’s one of the dangers of stereotyping any group.

You can find people in any minority group who have bought into the stereotypes about their people. You see it among some in the African American communities, in the Chinese communities, etc., so why should some of those from Appalachia be any different?

I was glad to have the frank talk on race with my new train friends. I’m going to invite him and the others to the next Drinking Liberally in Martinsburg. (Second Friday of each month at the Peking across the street from the Berkeley County Democratic headquarters. 8-10 p.m.)

The occasional late train can do a world of good.

I want to tell you a story about my father. And then I’m going to ask you to do something. It’ll probably not be easy. You probably won’t even like me asking you to do it. It could be one of the best things you can ever do.
This is my dad at 52. My mom says I look like him except I never had my nose kicked off by a horse and sewn back on like he did.

My father was born during the Depression in a poor town, Circleville, Ohio. He talked very little of his childhood. Most of what I know of it is from his oldest brother, who is still living, and from my mother.

My dad was a good man, who overcame a level of poverty we could never comprehend. He talked very little of his childhood. We spent hours working together in the fields or perched next to one another on the tractor. But I knew almost nothing of his childhood until his funeral.

His mother had died when he was a child and when his father remarried a year later, the children from the first marriage were put out on the street. His oldest brother and his wife took some of them in. An elderly black man who lived down the street took in my father and a few other children, who also were homeless.

They worked picking crops for different farmers and stole coal from slow moving trains to fuel the stove. He dropped out of school to work and when he was 10 he met my mother visiting a cousin’s farm. He told my mother he’d marry her one day.

At 17 he joined the Navy during the Korean War. At 19 he called home from his base in Norfolk. He’d written a letter to my mother’s best friend and sent the ring to her to take to my mother, then a bank teller, to give to her when he proposed over the phone.

Keep my mother’s best friend in mind. She’ll come back later in this story.

He was fortunate. He spent the Korean War cruising the Mediterrean and the Caribbean in a destroyer escort. He told me once of rough seas from a hurricane and a large brawl with French commandos at a bar where a handful of them took on half the ships crew and the French won.

He came home, got a job at the papermill in Chillicothe, built his first house himself, married and began raising a family.

A couple of years later he had saved enough to fulfill his dream of owning his own farm. He worked the papermill 8 hours and then would work the farm often until beyond sundown.

I spent hours working along side of him. Banding the bull calves, mending fence, plowing, bushhogging, baling hay and hoeing long rows of corn.

It didn’t seem like it at the time, but looking back it was an idyllic existence he gave us.

He never wanted us to work when we were in school (other than the farm). He wanted us to play sports and be in school activities, the things he had missed out on.

He took us on long vacations to places he wanted to see when he was young.

He always had confidence in us even when it wasn’t well placed. When I was 5 or 6 – depending on which family member tells the story – our old one-row corn picker that was antiquated even in 1969 when we were using it, broke down and he wanted to get the crop in that night. My older brother and sister and he would alongside the wagon picking the field corn and throwing it in by hand for the last 10 acres or so left. Someone had to drive the tractor though, so he stuck me in the seat, put it in gear, told me how to accelerate with the gas on the side and how to stop and steer. I’d ridden on his knee on the tractor and he’d let me steer often so he figured I’d do alright. Except he put it in third gear instead of first like he intended and instead of moving at a crawl, I took off at a fast running speed. He yelled for me to stop it, but at 5 (or 6) I didn’t weigh enough to push the clutch all the way down. I forget how we got it stopped, but we all survived and I drove with it in first gear the rest of the night.

Sorry for the digression.

He was a strong man. He worked all day at the paper mill and then worked on our small farm when he got home. He was never sick until one January in 1984 when he started having trouble breathing.

We were digging a trench to run an underground electrical cable to the new barn.

“Boy, I just can’t catch my breath,” he said.

He went to the doctor. The doctor ordered a biopsy. The biopsy showed inoperable cancer. Less than seven months later he was dead after months of painful radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

My mother’s friend visited us on the night when we received the biopsy results. She was a registered nurse. She and my mom cried for a long time. I walked her out to her car and after trying to keep it together, I cried on her shoulder for a long time too.

As kids, my sisters and I had often encouraged my father to quit smoking. He tried. He tried several times. But he couldn’t stop. The cigarette in the morning was as natural to him as his coffee.

I had just turned 20 when he died. I was working that summer at the paper mill when the foreman came up to me and told me the call had come. I raced out the gates and to my truck and threw in my hard hat on the seat next to me and slammed the truck into gear and drove with a desperate and terrible fear that I would get to the hospital too late.

Dad had wanted to die at home, but it wasn’t to be. He was not conscious when I arrived. The rest of the family was already there by his chair. The cancer had made it uncomfortable for him to lay down so he had slept for months in his chair from home.
He passed away soon after I arrived.

I’ve often thought that if a tobacco company executive ever crossed my path, it would be his last step.

Nearly 24 years after my father’s death, I still miss him terribly. He never got to hold my children. I can remember him with his first two grandchildren, both girls. They followed him on the farm like two rambunctious puppies and he’d set them beside him on the tractor. I miss that he’s not here to do that with my daughters.

I often say I’d do anything for my kids. And sometimes I mean it.

I’ve said it before, with each birth of my daughters I thought my heart would swell and explode through my chest because I was so filled with so much love and happiness by their arrival.  I love my life, but if I ever had to trade it to keep one of them safe from harm, I would make that bargain with a glad heart for I love them so.

As fathers we need to do the things that are hard to do as well as the things that we’d gladly do.

If you smoke, stop smoking. If you drink too much or do too many drugs or do anything that can be detrimental for your health, then look at your children. If you’d gladly give up your life for them, aren’t they worth giving up cigarettes or 30 pounds of excess weight for them as well?

I was doing well with running to get back into shape until a minivan bounced off me in December. Here is my Father’s Day promise to them, to do all I can to be there for them. No life is guaranteed, but what I can control, I intend to do my best to live as long as I can for them.

U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D) of West Virginia’s 3rd District in the southern end of the state endorsed Sen. Barack Obama early on.

Rahall, chairman of the Arab American caucus, is in a district that went largely for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Rahall did what he could do, but as kos and others have pointed out, Congressional representatives and senators do not have political machines to turn out the vote for other candidates.

But that didn’t stop Rahall from trying and he deserves our thanks.
Rahall is probably taking a lot of political heat for his decision to support Obama in a district that went overwhelmingly for Clinton.

Rahall believes the voters will come around. Here’s what he said before the primary:

Rep. Nick J. Rahall, the longtime Democratic congressman from southern West Virginia, said Obama was a lot closer to Appalachia voters than might be apparent on the surface. After all, sections of central and southern Illinois bear a striking resemblance to much of Appalachia.

snp

“With each succeeding primary election, as Sen. Obama becomes more toughened, he will continue to improve,” Rahall said. Locals will “recognize that he is more attached to their issues than John McBush – I mean McCain.”

John McBush. You’ve got to love the guy.

But Rahall is used to taking principled and not always popular stands. In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, he’s been an outspoken advocate to prevent discriminatory practices of the Bush administration against Arab Americans.

Rahall opposed the Iraq war. He opposed telecom immunity. I don’t agree with him on every issue, but his opponent, Marty Gearhart, is a real piece of work, who had to be appointed a candidate by the West Virginia GOP since he forgot to sign his notarized candidacy papers.

So if you want to show support to a Barack Obama supporter think about a donation to Nick Rahall.

Nick Rahall helicoptered all over West Virginia for Obama. Let’s show him some support back.

Sure it’s a primary and not a general election, but in a year where the Republican brand has a lower approval rating than herpes it’s something to consider:

Barack Obama with just 26 percent of the Democratic votes 91,663.
John McCain with just 76 percent of all Republican votes 89,654.

More good news to consider.

Anne Barth is going to face Shelley Moore Capito.
At the WV GOP state convention in February, McCain finished a very distant 3rd. Mitt Romney was the favorite, but did not top 50 percent. So the McCain folks joined in with the Mike Huckabee people and the Ron Paul people who hadn’t left in disgust to give Huckabee a win.

While it’s easy to dismiss a GOP race where McCain is the only active candidate, there were actually many local races and issues that were highly active – a zoning vote in Berkeley County, for instance – that should have still brought Republican voters to the polls.

And they ended up giving the only active GOP candidate 76 percent of the vote.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as much as many like to dismiss Senator Clinton and West Virginia, she’s a hell of a lot better candidate than Senator McCain can ever hope to be on his best day. A big win by Senator Clinton in West Virginia over Senator Obama does not mean Obama cannot carry the state in the general election. Believing that is a discredit not just to West Virginians, but also to Senator Clinton. John McCain is no Hillary Clinton.

Let’s look at it another way: 357,031 Democrats and independents voted for candidates who want to bring the troops home from Iraq, make healthcare more affordable, and get the country on a different track; 89,654 Repubs and indies voted for more of the same.

Closer to home for me, a race I’ve invested much more time to, is what happened in WV-02 yesterday.

Anne Barth won over two Democratic challengers.

We’ve got a solid contender to take on Bush Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

With apologies in advance to David Letterman,

From the home office in Paw Paw, West Virginia, here’s the Top 10 reasons on why you should support Anne Barth.

No. 10 – Anne’s been “Getting the Job Done” for West Virginia for the past 21 years working for Senator Byrd unlike Shelley Moore Capito, who after 8 years in Congress can’t list a single accomplishment.

No. 9 – Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan endorsed Anne because they want someone who is hard working and effective to serve with them because whenever they call Shelley she’s busy serving as president of the George W. Bush Fan Club.

No. 8 – Anne is for “pay-as-you-go” balanced budgets while Shelley helped George W. Bush run up record federal deficits, blowing through money faster than Powerball winners on a road trip to casinos and strip clubs.

No. 7 – Anne wants our veterans to be able to go to high quality VA hospitals for their healthcare needs. Shelley wants them to go deploy on yet another tour of duty in Iraq.

No. 6 – Anne wants tax breaks for working families of West Virginia so they can take care of their children and send them to college. Shelley looks out for a special class of minorities, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans who are millionaires. Hey, someone’s got to look after their interests so they can buy all the caviar, yachts and multiple vacation homes they want.

No. 5 – Anne believes in improving West Virginia’s highways and bridges so they don’t fall down like in Minnesota. Shelley’s for spending money for new roads and bridges too – in Iraq.

No. 4 – Anne graduated from West Virginia University and her daughters are now Mountaineers too. Shelley attended Duke University just like her daughter now. Duke, possibly the most evil school in the NCAA during basketball season, appropriately is represented by a Satanic symbol.

No. 3 – West Virginia currently ranks 46* out of 50 in the Cutest Congressional Caucus Category. Anne’s election would singlehandledly put West Virginia in 1st Place.

No. 2 – Anne is for healthcare access for all. Shelley’s healthcare policy is healthcare for the rich, aspirins for everyone else.

No. 1 – Iraq.
…

More good news

Some commenters about West Virginia keep repeating a stereotyped view of Appalachia being too racist to vote for a presidential candidate who is African American named Barack Hussein Obama, that it has an “Obama problem.” I think that’s wrong. Yes, there are racists in West Virginia as there are in every other state. One is too many. But here’s something to consider: U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D, WV-03). That is southern West Virginia, the most Appalachian part of the state. Here’s something that you might not know about Mr. Rahall if you weren’t from here, but people here know.

Rep. Nick Joe Rahall II, West Virginia Democrat, Rahall has been a tireless champion of Arab American issues since arriving in D.C. in `76.

snip

On domestic issues, Rahall has been a watchdog for the civil liberties of Arab Americans and others, bringing public attention to threats on those rights in cases from the Gulf War behavior of the FBI to current anti-terrorism legislation. [Rahall is] the dean of the Arab American caucus in Congress. (emphasis mine)

Mr. Rahall wins in landslides in the heart of Appalachia. He endorsed Obama and campaigned for him across the state. If Obama campaigns here with more appearances – and whether that’s a good use of his time for 5 electoral votes is another debate – I believe that once West Virginians get to know him, he’ll win them over.

That also ignores that in McDowell County, 88 percent white and 11 percent African American, in the heart of Appalachia, won his primary bid to the House of Delegates last night. He faced a white woman who had held the seat from 1993 to 2004. Amazing how those who claim “voters in Appalachia aren’t ready to vote for a Black candidate, even though in most of the rest of the country they are.” miss that they already do vote for an African American and will send him back to the statehouse for a third term. (Del. Clif Moore also made a couragous stand in the House Judiciary Committee against those eager to discriminate against gays in the last session, but that’s another story for another time.)

More good news.

Coal baron Don Blankenship’s good friend Spike Maynard lost his seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. Sweet! win for justice

More good news

WhooooHoooo!

In about an hour, we’ll announce the blogs selected for the State Blogger Corps at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.  Congratulations.  I’m writing to let you know that West Virginia Blue will be the credentialed blog from West Virginia.

The DNCC staff is ready to welcome you to Denver in August. We know that you’ll be the eyes and ears of a large audience back home.  As we’ve said, members of the State Blogger Corps will be seated alongside their delegations at the Convention.  You’ll literally have one of the best seats
in the house.  And we expect that you’ll share that up-front view with your online community of readers and other bloggers.  Together, we’ll make sure this Democratic Convention is seen and experienced online in more ways than ever before.

I’ve been posting for quite some time now of the large gap in West Virginia in the grassroots support and county level Democratic activists for Sen. Barack Obama well out of proportion to the polls that showed Sen. Hillary Clinton ahead in West Virginia by a large margin.

Today in Berkeley County, one of the largest counties in the state, 50 of the 52 delegates elected at the county convention today to the state convention in Charleston were Sen. Barack Obama supporters.
Check out Clem’s explanation of West Virginia’s convoluted primary process. Basically we elected delegates at the county level who’ll be electing delegates at the state level. However, the delegates will be selected to the national convention proportional to the votes their candidates received. The primary vote still matters (voting runs from April 23 to May 13 in West Virginia since we have early voting). What this shows is the enthusiasm gap in the state and also could very well signal turnout for the primary. Telephone polls are not the same as going to the ballot box.

West Virginia Blue is getting comments and emails from other counties showing other high support for Obama.

• Morgan County, 30 out of 32 delegates for Obama.
• Ohio County, 75 percent of the crowd were estimated to be Obama supporters. No delegate count included.
• Pocahontas County, 100 percent of delegates for Obama.
• Greenbrier County, 25 out of 28 delegates for Obama. Three uncommitted.
• Kanawha County sounded more chaotic and I haven’t got a report on numbers there yet.

Most of my afternoon was tied up in the Valley district of Berkeley County.

There was a line to get in to the Berkeley County Democratic headquarters. It took a while to get in, but the local Democrats ran it very smoothly, asking the people their names and precinct to know which district to put them in. There are six districts in the county. I’m in the Valley district. There, of 24 people who attended, one woman said she was for Clinton although she was adamant she would vote for Obama in November since it appeared to her he’d be the nominee. The other 23 were all Obama supporters.

Ken Collinson was elected to chair the county convention. Ken was the only one to raise his hand up to vote against him doing it.

Under the rules, we had to pick four women and four men to serve as delegates to the state convention in Charleston on June 13 and 14 (fixed where I left XX in rough draft. Carnacki). We had four women who said they could attend and all were Obama supporters so we elected them as a slate for our district. We had seven men who were nominated for the four delegate positions and so we had each of them tell a little about themselves. All said they were absolutely committed to Obama. One of the men has volunteered for the Obama campaign in other states and is going to Pennsylvania next weekend to canvass. Another began the veterans Camp Kerry that drew many veterans to volunteer for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Another was our local Democrat of the year and an active volunteer. The fourth man has been active with the Obama campaign. We also had a diverse slate demographically of older and younger Democrats. Two of the women and one of the men are African Americans.

The meeting hall had been jammed packed with bodies. I estimated the crowd at one point to have been about 150 people and in the narrow long space of a former clothing shop that was a tight squeeze, particularly on a warm day.

After most of the delegates had been selected, the crowd fortunately thinned considerably, which was fortunate because I don’t think the air conditioning was working.

One of the six districts had four women delegates but did not have any men who could commit to the state convention. So those seats and two at large seats were put up for a county wide vote as well as two at large seats for women delegates. Interestingly, two women who have long been active in local Democratic activities were not selected over two enthusiastic Obama supporters. In the past, attending the state convention has been seen as an award for party participation. We were able to get one more of our men on one of the six remaining slots for male delegates.

I was told one of the men, a long time Democrat and active volunteer in campaign after campaign, one of those older gentlemen there every weekend rain or shine, was a Clinton supporter. I do not know if that is true. He’s on a county executive committee and under the county rules are not supposed to publicly say one way or the other. However, if he were supporting his dog for president I would have still voted for him to go. Others apparently felt the same way and he was elected. Would I have felt the same way if it wasn’t so overwhelming Obama? I don’t know.

But it was.

Here’s a photo taken by one of our local Democrats, Ryan Frankenberry as we elected at large seats for the women. This is nearly two hours after it began, iirc, and most of the crowd has left.

More on the county and state convention process here at the West Virginia Democrats site pdf.

I wrote earlier at MyDD about the contradictory nature of West Virginia and the West Virginia presidential primary race.

Yesterday provided a great example.

In my earlier post

West Virginia is a state of contradictions. Take the Eastern Panhandle, where one of the fastest growing counties in the country is located. It has become an outer suburb of Washington, D.C., with large McMansions built not far from dilapidated house trailers. Or McDowell County, the core of Appalachia. If any county fits the stereotypical view, it is McDowell. Yet it is the home of State Del. Clif Moore, an African American and a defender of a bill to extend anti-discrimination protection to gay people.

And a state that touts its natural beauty also is busy allowing the coal companies to literally destroy the mountains and hollows, using more explosive force than was used at Hiroshima through mountaintop removal.

To continue forward with the contradictory nature of the state,  polls consistently have showed Sen. Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead if she faced John McCain in the general and against Sen. Barack Obama in the primary. Yet two of the state’s biggest political names, Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick Rahall have endorsed Barack Obama and the grassroots support has seemed to consistently favor Obama (here’s one example).

While Obama is trailing in all of the polls in West Virginia by a large margin, the Obama supporters appear to be more active than the Sen. Hillary Clinton supporters. Whether that will translate into an Obama win in the primary is doubtful, but if Obama is the nominee it will give him a better ramp up for the general election race than Al Gore or John Kerry had since their races were decided long before the West Virginia primary mattered.

The West Virginia Democratic county conventions are on April 12. It’s a new and confusing process to many to pick delegates to the state convention in Charleston.

The West Virginia Democratic Party has done a solid job of informing Democrats statewide of the convention process through emails, news releases and state party field workers.

The state party also has been sending out emails of organizing meetings and events for both parties.

Chelsea Clinton appeared in West Virginia on Saturday for three campaign events, including guest speaker at the West Virginia Young Democrats Convention.

Here’s an excerpt of the coverage from Huntington:

Huntington, WV (HNN) – A poised, relaxed former First Daughter spent approximately 75 minutes answering questions from Marshall University student and community members. Unlike many speakers on behalf of candidates, Chelsea Clinton delivered specific and technical answers, rather than simple generalities.

Here’s from her appearance at WVU Tech:

– A second President Clinton, she said, would “immediately start greening” the federal government – making government buildings and operations more environmentally friendly and creating jobs in the process – and ultimately cutting emissions 20 to 30 percent.

– On the country’s future energy use, she said there is an “abundance of incredible natural resources (including coal) in our country.” More emphasis must be placed on developing clean-burning coal. Her mother, she added, would “take away tax breaks” given in 2005 to energy companies and install a “windfall profits tax.”

Here’s from her final event at the West Virginia Young Democrats convention:

Chelsea Clinton ended a whole day in the Mountain State on Friday talking bread-and-butter issues with a crowd at the Charleston Civic Center, in support of her mother’s presidential campaign.

At the kickoff of the West Virginia Young Democrats convention, the 28-year-old Clinton said that she’s very proud of her father, the nation’s 42nd president, but thinks her mother would be better in the job.

“She’s more prepared than he was,” she said of her mother, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

snip

Travis Mollohan, a district coordinator for the Young Democrats, said he was somewhat disappointed in the event’s turnout of about 130 people.

“I had hoped to see more young people here,” he said. “That may [be due] to the fact that more young people are committed to Obama.”

The organization reached out to both campaigns, but Clinton’s visit logistically worked out for the start of the convention, said Young Democrats President Rod Snyder.

“[Chelsea Clinton] is one of the most visible young Democrats in the country,” he said. “Everyone’s excited, regardless of who they’re supporting.”

Snyder, whose father former State Sen. Herb Snyder is seeking to regain an office he held previously, really nailed it with this:

He said the close Democratic primary race is energizing the party, especially young Democrats.

Meanwhile, the Obama supporters held a dozen meetings across the state for organizing efforts for the May 13 primary. Another half dozen other upcoming meetings are on the schedule.

For the record, I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

I attended the Obama meetup yesterday in Martinsburg where a group of of Obama grassroots supporters have met for the past eight weeks. I’ve canvassed with several of Obama’s supporters in past elections.

There were 30 people there for the two hour meeting on a sunny spring day.

The new regional field director from the Obama campaign introduced herself. She’s a West Virginia native who worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria.

Since there were new faces – myself included – at the meeting, they had people introduce themselves and explain why they supported Obama.

I wrote down a few of their words and will include a bit of demographic information about the speaker for identification purposes.

“The America I came home to is a country so different. I’m here to take back my country,” a white female in her 30s who lived in London from 2000-2003.

“He seems to keep everything on a positive note,” a retired white man from Martinsburg, who so far has volunteered in four states for Obama, including Texas.

“I remember FDR. He was my hero growing up. I remember JFK. He was my children’s hero growing up…. I think Barack Obama would make a wonderful president,” a retired nurse, white female.

“My wife was killed in the Pentagon on 9/11,” a middleaged white man, who said the federal government squandered the unity to go after those responsible. I had trouble writing down everything he said because it was touching.

“In the beginning I was for Clinton, but things aren’t going so well. I don’t like where the campaign is going. I want to know more about Obama,” older white woman.

“He’s got all the right ideas,” a middleaged white woman and canvassing buddy who was a former Dennis Kucinich supporter.

“Hillary always says, ‘I will do this. I will do that.’ But Barack always says, ‘We will do this,'” a middleaged white male and husband of my canvassing buddy, who also described himself as a yellow-dog Democrat.

My blogmate Clem does an excellent job explaining the West Virginia Democratic primary process.

One final thought… if this process seems kindof sortof messed up to you… you know, like the fact that the delegate count could end up being a rather inexact reflection of the popular vote… two things to keep in mind:

(1) These were the rules everyone knew about at the beginning of the process… there were no strong voices advocating for more little “d” democracry inside the W.Va. Democratic party before this nominating process started. If it bothers you, start voicing your concerns immediately after election day to change how things happen next time around.

(2) No one expected the W.Va. primary outcome to matter when these rules were put together. The rules were drafted  with a major concern about who gets to attend the convention instead of who they represent once they get there.

He also breaks down the math in a separate post to explain that even if Clinton runs away with the West Virginia primary vote, she’ll most likely still pick up either 0 or 2 delegates.

The W.Va. delegate plan requires a victory of more than 58.3% of the vote in a single congressional district for a two delegate margin in a congressional district. A state-wide vote total of 55% or more is needed to pick-up a two delegate at-large advantage.

At this point, I give the Clinton 15 Obama 13 scenario a 70% likelihood of occurring with the remaining 30% being a 14-14 delegate tie.

Don’t forget upcoming events:

April 12, 2008 : County Democratic Conventions in each county to elect Delegates to the State Convention. All Democrats welcome in their respective county. Call your County Chair or the State Party (304) 342-8121 for location information.

…

April 22, 2008 : Last Day to Register to Vote in the Primary Election.

April 23, 2008 : Early Voting Begins

May 13, 2008 : PRIMARY ELECTION

I went to the peace vigil in Shepherdstown tonight. Five years of the occupation already. Some have been at it since before the Iraq invasion and occupation.

The event was moved to O’Hurley’s General Store due to the rain.

I saw many familiar faces from other peace events and political campaigns and I saw new faces as well. There were about 80 people in all in the large room where music and dances are sometimes held.
It was a good mix of young students from Shepherd College and gray-haired veterans of the Vietnam War and of Vietnam War protests.

It had been cooler during the day, but had warmed after the rain stopped and a fire in the stone fireplace had died down to smoking embers. On a wet day, the wood-smoke made the room seem cozier.

A good friend who I had traveled to Fairmont with to canvass in the last days of the 2004 Kerry-Edwards race was at the entrance collecting money for Central Asia Institute. We hugged and I made a donation and got a couple of sugar cookies and a cup of tea.

There were a pair of guitarists singing. Then I saw Anne Barth, our WV-02 candidate for Congress, standing in the back of the room. She greeted me warmly. She really is a very nice woman. I was surprised to see her there not because she’s not a strong advocate for peace, but because I hadn’t seen any announcement of her attendance. She was there not to politic but to show solidarity with the others who want to support the troops and bring them home from Iraq.

She hadn’t planned on speaking, but one of the singers asked between songs if she would say a few words. Barth kept it brief. She introduced herself and said she remembered the day when Senator Byrd spoke out against the war and how the fax machines buzzed with people agreeing with him and others opposed to him. (Read his speech here.) She said she still gets chills thinking of his speech when he was one of the few voices with the courage in Congress to speak out in opposition before the war.

“Senator Byrd was right,” Barth said and people applauded. “I want to end this war and bring our troops home.”

Barth said she wanted to go to Washington and join him in his efforts to bring the troops home.

“The troops have served honorably. It is time they were brought home,” she said.

When she finished to loud applause, two more singers, a young, college age woman and a grayhaired man did a lovely duet of John Lennon’s Imagine.

It was a good event, solemn yet friendly with people united in purpose.

Afterwards another canvassing partner, JBdem4usa, took me out and bought me a beer, Mountaineer Stout, just like he said he would.

“If this trend continues, no one could discriminate against anyone for any reason.” Del. Kelli Sobonya (R-Cabell). source.

13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus Christ as quoted in John 13:1-34-35

West Virginia came close to passing an anti-discrimination bill to add the same protections to gays as other groups.

This is a diary about how it came close, but failed.

…

God bless gay-bashing, bigoted, Republican Del. Kelli Sononya. Blessings come in many guises as we know from the Book of James. Many people like Sononya are ignorant of the Bible except the portions they can use to “justify” their own bigotry stemming from fear of “others.”

“Where’s the tolerance for those with true, deep-seated convictions based on Bible teachings relating to homosexuality?” Sobonya wondered after the meeting.

Conceivably, under the bill, she said, a cross dresser could demand to put on whatever he pleases while teaching in a public school to express “sexual orientation.”

“Homosexuality is an abomination to God based on the teaching of the Bible,” she said. source

There are four passages in the Bible regarding homosexual acts and more than 3,000 passages about caring for the poor. Do you think Kelli Sononya has ever stood and railed that the state is not doing enough to help poor people? Has she ever railed against the sins of greed? Of course not.

So when Sononya pleads for “tolerance for those with true, deep-seated convictions based on Bible teachings” she ignores the log in her own eye. I can quote passage after passage of Jesus condemning hypocrites, but none where Jesus condemned homosexuality.

My blogmate Wabi-Sabi pointed out this great YouTube clip.

But this is a democracy, not a theocracy despite the desires of Sononya and Del. Mel Kesser, D-Kanawha, who said, “It’s my right. I’m not going to discriminate against gays. I’m not going to line any of them up and shoot them. I’ve said this in church before. I should have the right to exercise my religious beliefs, and my religious beliefs are that the Bible says it’s an abomination.”

The irony of his claiming his rights while seeking to deny a group of people the same rights because of his narrow views was not lost on me.

But it is not just ignorance of the Bible and religious views in support of anti-discrimination measures against gays. Opponents to the bill showed a remarkable lack of knowledge of U.S. history and of scientific research.

Echoing the sentiments of other critics, Delegate John Pino, D-Fayette, said the bill attempts to reward behaviors of choice rather than birth determinations such as gender and race.

“This country was founded on certain principles, and one of them is that I’ve never known that any behavior of any individual deserves special recognition or status or grace that’s to be blessed by the majority of the country,” a somber Pino reflected.

Really? Did Pino choose to be heterosexual?

Is Sexual Orientation a Choice?
No, human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.  source

Nor is he historically accurate. From The Historians’ case against gay discrimination:

Even in periods when enforcement increased, it was rare for people to be prosecuted for consensual sexual relations conducted in private, even when the parties were of the same sex. Indeed, records of only about twenty prosecutions and four or five executions have surfaced for the entire colonial period. Even in the New England colonies, whose leaders denounced “sodomy” with far greater regularity and severity than did other colonial leaders and where the offense carried severe sanctions, it was rarely prosecuted. The trial of Nicholas Sension, a married man living in Westhersfield, Connecticut, in 1677, revealed that he had been widely known for soliciting sexual contacts with the town’s men and youth for almost forty years but remained widely liked. Likewise, a Baptist minister in New London, Connecticut, was temporarily suspended from the pulpit in 1757 because of his repeatedly soliciting sex with men, but the congregation voted to restore him to the ministry after he publicly repented. They understood his sexual transgressions to be a form of sinful behavior in which anyone could engage and from which anyone could repent, not as a sin worthy of death or the condition of a particular class of people. See Richard Godbeer, “The Cry of Sodom”: Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England, 3.52 WM. & MARY Q. 259, 259-260, 275-278 (1995); Eskridge, 1999 U. ILL. L. REV. at 645; JOHN D’EMILIO & ESTELLE B. FREEDMAN, INTIMATE MATTERS: A HISTORY OF SEXUALITY IN AMERICA 30 (2d ed. 1997).

The relative indifference of the public and the authorities to the crime of sodomy continued in the first century of independence.

So why do they support bigotry and intolerance? Fear and hatred. The two are often combined.

You see, they might not know anyone who is gay. It is hard to discriminate if you learn your favorite niece or nephew comes out of the closet and is gay. It is hard to hate those you know in your family or in your circle of friends, no matter how much you have been told that “homosexuality is an abomination.”

Here is a diary I wrote on Daily Kos on Nov. 14, 2004.

God bless gay-bashing Rev. Fred Phelps. Why? Because his hatred and bigotry against gays has united a very conservative church and community in Oklahoma to rally around a 17-year-old gay man, Michael Shackelford.
The story here at the Washington Post should give us all hope that American progressive values of tolerance and “Love thy neighbor,” shared by Christians and atheists alike, are alive and well even in the red-state heartland.
The Washington Post did a story on the young man growing up gay in a red state in a community that openly despised him.

After Phelps read about the young man, Phelps brought his oxymoronic “God hates fags” campaign to the young man’s community. (Oxymoronic because if you believe God made everything and God doesn’t make mistake then God’s not going to hate anything he made.)

What happened next shows that real life is much more than blue or red and black or white.

“There is darkness and there is light and we are in the middle of the light,” Eubanks said, to more thunderous applause. “Say it: God loves us all. All of us!”

After the service, several people came up to hug Janice. One woman held her in an embrace that lasted two minutes, whispering to Janice the whole time.

A burly man with a crew cut gave Michael a thumbs-up. “Man, you be who you are,” Shannon Watie said, holding his Bible. “We got your back.”

Watie later said that he respected Michael for having the courage to come out. “I have the sin of pride, the sin of lying sometimes,” said the 37-year-old father of two. “The reason why Jesus was on the cross was because we all do.”
Watie voted for Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage. Civil unions? He might have considered those. Homosexuality? “That’s between the person and God,” Watie said.

I’m a happily married heterosexual who has had a vasectomy. One could say I don’t have a stake in either the fight for gay rights or reproductive rights.

But I do. Because I’m an American and a Democrat. And Americans are supposed to look out for each other like the people in this community did for one of their own.

I saw this story as hopeful. Sure things look dark right now with George Bush’s election (stolen or otherwise), the defeat of all the gay marriage amendments, and the control of Congress in the hands of the worst group of politicians since the pre-Civil War era.

This community rallied around a gay man when outsiders challenged him. It may have helped him that the outsiders came from Kansas and they’re from Oklahoma, but they embraced him as one of their own.

The America of the individual cowboy or lone gunfighter embraced by George Bush and his capitalist cronies is a myth. The strength of America is in being united, not divided. It wasn’t an individual* that held the line at Bunker Hill, stormed Normandy beach or died at the Alamo. Martin Luther King didn’t march alone. John Glenn may have orbited the earth alone, but rose on the efforts of many. And Neil Armstrong may have took the first step on the Moon, but our hearts were there with him.
Let’s remember Michael and Sand Springs, Oklahoma when we talk about the differences between red states and blue states. So even if the Phelps family is a hopeless cause, God bless them for reminding the people in Sand Springs and elsewhere that the rest of us do share many of the same values.

This fight is not over and in West Virginia gays are not alone. As I reported before, Fred Phelps said West Virginia was `by far the worst‘ in countering his bigotry.

There are people who in their ignorance want to divide us instead of unite us. We need to love those who oppose us and lead them into the light. They can’t claim to follow the Lord’s word and then hate people and they can’t discriminate and love at the same time.
SB 600 made it farther than in the past. We should remember those who opposed progress and those who tried to advance it, such as the West Virginia State Senate for passing SB 600 out unanimously, particularly Senators Kessler and McCabe. There were also 13 members of the House Judiciary who voted in favor of sending SB 600 to the floor for a vote, Delegates Clif Moore and Fleishauer tried to reason with the unreasonable as did Del. Carrie Webster, who stood up against the worst hyperbole and slurs.
It doesn’t always come easy and it doesn’t come at the pace we’d like, but they cannot hold back progress with their hate. The Bible also tells us love is the greatest of all.

I was in New York City on a business trip when I went into the now notorious Emperor’s Club. This diary is about my experience there.
I was in need of a drink after a hard day in the city. I saw a discrete sign saying the Emperor’s Club. A fancy name for a bar, but none the less I didn’t know the neighborhood and didn’t want to wander around looking for one.

I entered and was surprised to not see a bar, just a few leather chairs like an old fashioned British club. Nice, I thought.

“May I help you?” an elegant woman asked, looking me up and down as if I had stumbled into the wrong place. I get that a lot.

“I just want a quick one,” I said, looking forward to a shot of Crown Royal Special Reserve. Long time readers might recall my love for the “Special Reserve.”

“We don’t normally accomodate walk-ins,” she said.

That’s weird for a bar, I thought. But I didn’t want to say anything and show I was a bumpkin not used to the city ways.

“I have the money,” interpretting her earlier look as concern for my ability to pay. As I said, I’m used to that look.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll send someone over.”

So it’s one of those fancy bars with waitresses, I thought. Nice.

I waited and an elegant, lovely woman came over. “What would you like?” she asked.

I felt tongue-tied by her beauty. “Special,” I said before stammering.

“That’ll be $5,000,” she purred.

Holy shit! I thought. I knew a drink in New York would cost more than back home, but that was outrageous price gouging. I got up to leave and was already composing my email to Elliott Spitzer, who I knew was strong on consumer protection, when I saw him enter. I smiled at him as I passed him on my way out the door.

He was already on the case.