Can Someone Explain?

For all of my libertarian leanings, I never could understand Log Cabin Republicans.  All right, I take that back:  If the ones I've met are typical, they are--like the Romney/Cheyney/ Bush the Elder/Reagan wing of the party, concerned only with themselves.  They've made money and don't want to be bothered with anyone who hasn't--unless, of course, they can dupe is into helping them with their work.  A group of LCR's tried to do just that to me once, at an event in the LGBT Community Center of New York.  I told them something to the effect that I wished I could afford to be one of them, but that even if I could, I don't think I would join them. 

Then, of course, there is the Tea Party element.  I don't know how any gay or lesbian can align him or her self with them, but I hear there are such people.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised:  It also has people who have gotten and want to keep, and want to slam the door behind them.  (I must say, though, I've yet to hear of a gay or lesbian say that climate change or the Ebola outbreak are God's vengeance against gay people.)

Whatever motives a gay man who looks like he just stepped of the pages of Gentleman's Quarterly has for being a Republican, I don't think very many trans people share them.  In fact, I can't think of any reason for any trans person to vote for any Republican, even the ones who profess their support of same-sex marriage or other forms of equality for LGBT people.  Too many other policies in the GOP platform work against us.  I wonder whether the "gay-friendly" Republicans can see the inconsistencies in their platform.

But, I suppose, some trans folk are smarter than I am.  Or, at least, they can rationalize things I can't.  One of them is, apparently, Lauren Scott.  She is trying to unseat an incumbent Democrat assemblyman in a blue-collar district of Sparks, Nevada. 

What's really striking, though, is that she worked on John Kerry's Presidential campaign in 2004 and has a picture of herself with Vice President Joe Biden on her website.  

I wonder:  Did she get rich since then?  Or is she doing something trans people were advised to do in the days of Christine Jorgensen:  abandoning her past and re-inventing herself?  If she's doing that, why does she have the photo with Biden on her website?

Some things, I'll just never understand.

 

Harvey Milk Postage Stamp

Getting one's image on a postage stamp is, I reckon, a bit like the Nobel Prize.  Whenever I hear about someone being honored with one or the other, I have one of two responses:  "What were they thinking?" or
"What took them so long?"

I had the first response when Obama got the Peace Prize.  (For that matter, I was even more perplexed when Henry Kissinger got it.)  But I had the latter reaction today, upon finding out that the US Postal Service is issuing a stamp with Harvey Milk's image. 

As many of you know, he was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States.  His career was tragically cut short--along with that of his boss, then-San Francisco Mayor George Moscone-- by Dan White, who had recently resigned from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on which Milk served at the time White shot him.

A number of motives have been ascribed to White.  The one with the most empirical evidence is that White, a former San Francisco police officer and firefighter and a Vietnam veteran, represented a conservative district on the southeastern edge of the city.  Residents there were said to be resentful toward the city's growing homosexual community whom, of course, they--and probably White himself--saw embodied in Milk.

Another plausible explanation--implied in the 2008 film in which Sean Penn played Milk--is that White was a closeted homosexual who was jealous and resentful of the accomplishments and accolades that came Milk's way.

Whatever the explanation, I'm glad to see Harvey Milk so honored.  Even though his political career spanned only a few years, his work gained a lot of momentum.  I wish that he could have lived to see--and perhaps partake--of some of the fruit it is just starting to bear.