July 30, 2004

some final thoughts, for this evening

For anyone who is curious, transcripts of all the speeches that we received [no final Sharpton transcript, sadly] are available in this directory including the Kerry and Biden speeches in Spanish, over 100 in all. If I get any later, I'll add them.

I am back at home in Vermont after getting a ride home from Massachusetts with my Married Gay Friends. I haven't seen them since the law went through in Massachusetts, and was just stupidly delighted to see them and their almost-one year old son. To me, the biggest thing to happen in Massachusetts politically has been gay marriage, other than Mitt Romney's complete dismantling of most of the social safety net in the state leaving many of my friends looking for new jobs. You'd think the Dems might have at least made a nod in that direction, seeing as the DNC was in Boston and everything. I sure did meet a lot of gay delegates and DNC staffers. But then again, they're over a barrel, aren't they? What are they going to do, vote for Bush?

The good news about having all the speeches go straight into gmail is that they're easily searchable. Here's who said the word "gay" in all those 100+ speeches.

• Kweisi Mfume, president of NAACP, "We understand that gay bashing and immigrant bashing and union bashing deplete us as a nation, in an era of smaller vision, rampant apathy and celebrated mediocrity. We so desperately need a president who will stand up for that which is right and speak out against that which is wrong." [read full speech here]
  
• Barack Obama, media darling, State Senator from IL, "We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States." [read full speech here]
  
• Cheryl Jacques, former MA state Senator, current president and executive director of the Human Rights Campaign. [read speech here]
  
• Barney Frank, Rep. from MA who diverged quite a bit from his prepared remarks. [read speech here]
  
• Roberta Achtenberg, Senior Vice President for Public Policy at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, former Clinton staffer. [read speech here]

Only Jacques and Achtenberg had speeches that mentioned gay marriage though I know Frank discussed it from the podium. Those three are, of course, the gay ones. I wonder how much they feel they need to suck up the absence of a gay marriage mention for the good of the party?

Here's how many times the word "gay" appears in the Democratic party platform: once. On the second to last page of a 41 page document, the platform says Posted by jessamyn at July 30, 2004 09:35 PM