QUEER QUOTE: VP Biden Calls Out Homophobic GOP Presidential Candidates

Vice President Joe Biden appeared as the keynote speaker at the Human Right Campaign's National Gala last night and in his speech reiterated and explained his support for full LGBT equality. This excerpt is today's Queer Quote:

“I strongly support the equality act and it will pass. The American people think the law already prevents an employer from  firing someone because they are LGBT The American people already think it’s illegal to deny you housing. the American people already think what the act calls for. The problem is, they don’t know that it’s still legal in so many places, so the one way, if you could change this overnight, would be to infuse in every mind in America that there are still 31 states that can deny you employment, and housing, etcetera….Let them know! The American people are already with you.”

“There are still homophobes left. Most of them are running for president I think.”

Interestingly, a few hours before Biden's speech, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made some news of her own in an address to staffers and volunteers at HRC by obliquely calling out homophobes Kim Davis and Mike Huckabee.

“We assure [gay youth] it gets better, but it can still be really hard to believe that especially when you turn on the TV and you see a Republican candidate for president literally standing in the courthouse door in Kentucky calling for people to join him in resisting a Supreme Court ruling, celebrating a Kentucky clerk who’s breaking the law by denying other Americans their constitutional rights.”

Hat/tip to TowleRoad

United States Files Brief Against Proposition 8

As Joe Biden would say, this is a "BFD."

STATEMENT BY ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER ON THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S FILING INHOLLINGSWORTH v. PERRY

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder issued the following statement today on the U.S. government’s filing inHollingsworth v. Perry:

“In our filing today in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law.  Throughout history, we have seen the unjust consequences of decisions and policies rooted in discrimination. The issues before the Supreme Court in this case and the Defense of Marriage Act case are not just important to the tens of thousands Americans who are being denied equal benefits and rights under our laws, but to our Nation as a whole.”  

# # #  

The United States government has taken a position that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional and is urging the judicial branch to strike it down.

You can read the full brief here.

4 Weeks Till Election: Obama 294, Romney 191

There are now exactly 28 days until election day on November 6, 2012. In this week's summary of the TPM Electoral College Scoreboard, the Democratic ticket has 294 electoral votes (down from last week's total of 332) while the Republican ticket remains constant at 191 electoral votes.

The movement by the Democrats is primarily due to polls showing that Colorado (9) and Florida (29) have slipped from being leans Democrat (light blue) back into the Undecided/Toss-up (yellow) category.

The general impression is that the President's lackluster performance in the first presidential debate has given the Romney-Ryan a boost in the polls which should be reflected in the current and next batch of polls.

7 Weeks Till Election: Obama 274, Romney 206

There are 49 days (7 weeks) until Election Day 2012. In today's Electoral College Scoreboard, President Obama leads with 274 votes to Mitt Romney's 206 votes. Last week, Obama-Biden 2012 led with 256 votes to 206 for Romney-Ryan 2012.

The only change from last week to this week is that Ohio has changed from being a a"yellow" (undecided or too-close-to-call) state to a "light blue" (leans Democratic) state, giving its 18 electoral votes to the Democrats and thus making it increasingly unlikely that Republican candidate would win the election.
It takes 270 electoral votes to be elected President. No Republican presidential candidate in modern times has been elected without winning Ohio.

VP Biden (Effectively) Endorses Marriage Equality

Vice President Joe Biden made news and The White House sweat yesterday when he went on NBC's Meet The Press and said:

BIDEN: Look, I am Vice President of the United States of America. The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that. [...] I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has done so far. People fear that is different and now they’re beginning to understand.

Sure sounds like an endorsement of marriage equality to me, no? The only way American LGBT citizens can have exactly the same rights if they are married is if their state allows same-sex marriage and DOMA is repealed. The question is, was Vice President Biden endorsing both of these policy changes (his boss has already committed to the second, but is famously "evolving" on the first).

LGBT groups reacted with delight to the news of the second-highest ranking official in the United States government endorsing marriage equality.

Celebrity Friday: VP Biden Says Marriage Is "Inevitable"

Vice President Joe Biden made news this morning on ABC's Good Morning America by declaring that it is "inevitable" that a national consensus on marriage equality will be reached.

Joe.My.God quotes:

“I think the country’s evolving,” he said. “And I think you’re going to see, you know, the next effort is probably going to be to deal with so called DOMA [Defence of Marriage Act].” DOMA prohibits federal government from recognising gay marriage, meaning that even if states allow the practice, gay couples still cannot access federal benefits. Mr Biden added that attitudes had changed to openly gay soldiers and that consensus was beginning to turn in favour of gay marriage. He said that gay troops were now “widely accepted” and “the same thing is happening now in regard to the issue of marriage.”

Celebrity Friday: VP Joe Biden Says "It Gets Better"

 

WATCH: Obama Remarks at LGBT Reception

POLL: Obama Approval Rating Hits 79%

Thanks to Talking Points Memo I was alerted to this new CNN poll showing the extent of Barack Obama's honeymoon with the American public. Obama's job approval rating is 79% (while his personal approval rating is 76%) with 56% of Americans approving of Vice-President-elect Joe Biden.

Additionally, Michelle Obama has an approval rating of 67% and the Democratic Party is approved by 60%.

The poll was conducted December 1-2 by telephone and has a margin of error of +/- 3 points.

Here are some other details of the poll:

Obama's approval rating is "14 points higher than the approval rating for president-elect Bush in 2001 and 17 points higher than president-elect Clinton's rating in 1992," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland noted.

The president-elect's current approval rating is also more than 50 points higher than Bush's current approval rating, which now stands at 28 percent, with 71 percent disapproving of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

"An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent! That’s the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush Administration was a national disaster," says CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider.

Indeed.

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Barack Obama Accepts Historical Nomination

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Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate.