Showing posts with label Richard Hanna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Hanna. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

And Yet Another Christmas Gift: Another Republican Signs On To Repeal DOMA

There was a lot of chatter as to what happened to the GOP this past November and why they didn't take back the White House and sweep all the elections. There was chatter that the GOP is a rich, white man's party, and makes no room for the middle class or the poor, or anyone of color, or women, or, naturally, The Gays.

But one member of the GOP has stepped up and realized that being exclusive is not exactly the way to go, and has come out, so to speak, in support of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA].

New York Congressman, Richard Hanna, a first-term incumbent, announced his co-sponsorship of the Respect for Marriage Act in a statement provided to The Advocate:
“New York State allows all its citizens the freedom to marry the person they love. Under the Tenth Amendment, the federal government has a Constitutional responsibility to respect New York’s right to set its own laws. It’s my job to see that it does.
....
It is right to extend equal protection under federal law to all couples who are legally married without infringing upon religious freedom and beliefs. This legislation does not tell states who can be married or who must be treated as married, nor does it require any religious institution to violate their own convictions.
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I respect the deeply held beliefs on both sides of this issue. The simple fact remains that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure all legally married couples are treated equally under federal law – and this bill would achieve that proper standard.”
Hanna joins Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the first Republican lawmaker to back DOMA repeal some fifteen months ago. But Hanna has been quite clear on being an LGBT advocate and ally; he has vocally supported the Employment Non-discrimination Act [ENDA] and cast four votes against amendments to affirm DOMA.

Perhaps there will be a new GOP in the future, a more inclusive GOP, and one that includes more members like Richard Hanna.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

A Tale of Two Republicans

Okay, so anyone who stops by here with any amount of frequency knows my liberal bent when it comes to politics. I am not a fan of the GOP, though I am not anti every single republican. Just the one who want to use their Bibles to legislate, who want to push their own view of morality—which is often warped beyond recognition—onto the rest of, the ones who want to tell The Gays what they can and cannot do, and tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, healthcare, and contraception.

So, it’s not all Republicans, but it is most; and here’s two more:

Congressman Richard Hanna, a New York Republican, has ALLEGHEDLY called an executive at a local TV station and threatened to pull his advertising if the station televised a debate in which the congressman refused to participate.

Bully say what?

Dan Lamb, Hanna's Democratic challenger for the newly drawn 22nd District, was prepared to take the stage by himself Friday for the taping of a 30-minute question and answer session, but the coverage was canceled after an "angry" Hanna contacted the station.

See, Hanna doesn’t want to debate, so he refuses; then the station offers up the debate time-slot to his opponent, so he could answer questions about his campaign. But Hanna doesn’t want his opponent talking, and Hanna doesn’t wanna talk, so he threatens the station with a loss of revenue.

GOP.OMG.

Dan Lamb says:
"My opponent has been caught coercing a television station. This is a big deal. This is about a millionaire congressman manipulating a television station and succeeding."
Actually, this is about the GOP trying to bully its way to winning an election.
But Richard Hanna is nothing when you compare him to Jon Hubbard, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives. Hubbard has written a new book in which he says that slavery was "a blessing" for African-Americans.

Oh, but he did.

Hubbard self-published his book—"Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative"—of hate speech, and, after calling slavery a “blessing” he goes on to say that integration of schools hurts white children, and that African slaves had much better lives under slavery in America than slavery in Africa.

But then he adds that blacks do not contribute to society, and that a situation is developing the United States which is similar to that of Nazi Germany.

Here are Hubbard’s own words:
 “… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”
What a blessing that people were stolen from their homes, shipped across the sea like garbage and then forced to work in American fields and factories on the off-chance that one day, some day, they might be free.

Jon Hubbard declined to comment on the book saying he has no time. And by “no time” he means he doesn’t have the good sense to know when to shut his mouth that god gave a goat.

But he continues. On his website, the first term congressman says:
"And perhaps the most important pledge I can make to the people of District 58, the citizens of Arkansas, and to myself, is to do whatever I can to defend, protect, and preserve our Christian heritage. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, if we as a nation continue to turn away from those Christian principles and values upon which this great nation was founded, we will have truly lost everything worth saving!"
And he is staunchly anti-immigrant, calling for the University of Arkansas to be audited to see if tax money had been spent on a panel discussion about undocumented immigrants, and he has asked the Arkansas Department of Health to implement a policy that would require birth certificates to be produced—in order to prove citizenship—by anyone seeking non-emergency medical care in a hospital.

That’s the GOP; Hanna and Hubbard. They're not indicative of the entire, but they are great in numbers. And people wonder why the country is turning away from the party.