Queer as a three dollar bill Clinton

We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people... It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the fact that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all. Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality.

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My goodness, such powerful words.

Are these Barack Obama's thoughts on ending discrimination against gay folks?

Oh, hell-the-fuck-no.

These are the words of John F. Kennedy, in his June 1963 Civil Rights Message to the country.

You see, there was a time in America when morality trumped public policy. Disdain, dislike, distrust, hatred, suspicion and fear molded our social/political infrastructure and left many folks without essential, basic, human rights.

And it’s a tradition of prejudice we still honor to this very day.

Whether it gay folks; folks without health care; veterans without limbs (and housing) or even those "suspicious" brown folks being tortured in concentration camps (American Style) -- there's still a great number of folks delegated to the margins of the most moral nation on the planet.

That's why I'd like to point out a fantastic article at The Huffington Post written by Nancy Goldstein, long-time friend of the United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks (celebrating two years, already).

Goldstein has decided not to put her money where the candidates' mouths aren't: namely discrimination.

It's compelling argument that silence isn't golden - in fact there's a great cost to complicity and cowardice.

Goldstein reminds us that political capital is earned and not given freely.

She particularly challenges Barack Obama:

I can't help but wonder about Obama, the son of a black, Kenyan father and a white, American mother. He was born six years before Loving v. Virginia ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the US. Had he come of age earlier, would he have remained silent about those laws, which would have forced his father to pretend to be his mother's chauffeur as they drove across America? Would he have maintained that silence with folks who made those laws -- acting out of the same kinds of "deep moral convictions" and "religious beliefs" that now decree that marriage can only be between a man and a woman?

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Nancy Goldstein: Why No Democratic Presidential Candidate Is Getting My Gay Money.