Intrepid lesbian reporter Karen Ocamb over at The Bilerico Project and Bloggernista have posted interesting details of the recently announced HRC/Logo Presidential forum, which is being marketed as The Visible Vote '08: A Presidential Forum. Former Capital Gang panelist and Time magazine reporter Margaret Carlson and Jonathan Capehart, an openly gay, African American editor at the Washington Post have been named as additional panelists, joining previously announced Oscar winner Melissa Etheridge and HRC Executive Director Joe Solmonese.Karen has the particularly fascinating detail that the candidates will be appearing sequentially (with no cross-talk between candidates) and that they were allowed to choose their order of appearance with a priority established by the order they confirmed their attendance at the event. Thus the order of appearance will be:
- Senator Barack Obama
- former Senator John Edwards
- Senator Christopher Dodd
- Congressmember Dennis Kucinich
- former Senator Mike Gravel
- Governor Bill Richardson
- Senator Hillary Clinton
Apparently Senator Joe Biden has a scheduling conflict. Note that this is not a presidential debate, because all the Democratic contenders have made an agreement with the Democratic National Committee to only appear in a certain number of debates in 2007, and that Visible Vote '08 was not on that list when the agreement was made back in the Spring.
Bloggernista apparently agrees with Mad Professah that allowing Mike Gravel to participate is waste of time, since he is "nutty as a fruitcake." However, Bloggernista also posts useful links to submit your question for the candidates as well as the link to watch the forum live online on August 6 at 6pm PDT/9pm EDT.
Mad Professah submitted the following "question":
List three accomplishments the LGBT community can expect you to achieve in
the first 100 days of your Presidency which would tangibly benefit the LGBT
community, for example, appointing an openly LGBT member of your cabinet,
issuing an executive order prohibiting discrimination in federal employment on
the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and fully funding the Ryan
White Care Act.
That's a great question. Hopefully it will be chosen.
ReplyDeleteI am willing to bet that one reason the candidates are speaking individually is because that's what the campaigns laid down as what the are willing to do. We have some political power, but we are going to need more to get them to actually debate one another on LGBT issues and to get legislation pasted.