This is the web address to nominate in a whole bunch of categories, some of which I didn’t understand. Got it from a Happy Endings post in Queerty

Alan - I respect you as well and appreciate the debate. That was cool to submit PrideDEPOT to the webbies. Where do you do that?

BTW I nominated PrideDEPOT in several categories for the 2007 Webbie yesterday. Good luck Lukas.

P.S. - Your name is still spelled wrong underneath the Say It! button I’m about to press.

Historically, it is home to very active Jewish community. The Synagogue run by the Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel in Boise is considered the longest continuously operating Synagogue in the West. Where ever there is oxygen there are Jews (also queers).

Politically, Idaho unfortunate holds title as a “red” state. Yet, it elected its first openly gay state legislature two years ago. Gays and supporters beat anti-gay legislation twice over the past 15 years, but failed this last election.

It’s home to political heros like Sen. Frank Church, but now in a quagmire with the likes of Sen. Larry Craig.

And to Idaho Queer - I appreciate your passionate commentary. I don’t actually care much for the Log Cabin Republicans as a whole and I would never consider supporting them, but in a way it is nice to know there are homos in their ranks relentlessly trying to get that party invitation. The LCR can be comic relief sometimes.

Thanks again…
Lukas

As for your comments on the LCR’s, I appreciate the alternate perspective, certainly something to think about. You make some good and interesting points. To be really honest the only gay republicans I have been personally exposed to are here in Idaho and there is MUCH internalized homophobia here and not the kind of prolific affluence you speak of. That perhaps has slanted my view. I will ponder it more, Thank You! Goodnight!

Idaho what it is is their economic insulation protects them from the actual people who revile them. These are not generally the people they meet in the course of their daily lives. The people they meet are socially, economically and probably even religiously copies of themselves. People who they think of as friends, colleagues and equals [the ones who disappear when the knocking on doors begins]. Unless they’re into rough trade they don’t generally run into people who are not like them.

Another problem here is that we all paint with too broad a brush. There are millions of moderate Republicans who do not revile homosexuals. Many in the libertarian branch of the party fully support gay rights and even gay marriage.

Unfortunately the Republican Party hierarchy has decided to suck up to that portion of the party that does revile us - something that comes from a lack of education, which the LCRs have in spades, and because of the very existence of the LCRs - they don’t ever have to be in the company of those who revile them at party meetings because they have separate meetings. Consequently it’s a question of their considering the revilers as an other, not their kind of Republican - the kind that lives for tax cuts so they can keep their wealth and doesn’t think bad things will happen to them because they “happen” to be gay.

1. You may be correct about the money thing but what is it then that makes someone work for and support a group of people that revile them? The false security of the economic insulation can not be the only reason. As I said I think it is complex.

2. I certainly did not intend to offend. I also am a Jew and have experienced much anti-Semitism growing up in the early 60’s in So Cal. My family arrived in this country via Ellis Island escaping the Russian Programs in the early 1920’s. I did say “In Many Ways” To clarify - I understand there is a distinction between Jews who worked for Hitler were certainly in a more grave situation and for many it was the only way to survive.

However I feel my statement speaks to the gravity of the damage that gay people do to themselves and others who work to and support people who oppress others and the group de jour is Queers. As we know this CAN AND DOES cost us lives. It perpetuates institutionalized hate and in that way FOR ME is the same issue.

2) As a Jew I find your corollary insulting. The overwhelming number of Jews who worked for Hitler had the option of doing that or dying. Not quite the same. A more apt corollary would be the quislings - Nazi collaborators in Scandanavia and France who, rather than help liberate their countrymen from the Nazis, chose the advantages they received in repayment for their treachery. Or perhaps the African tribal chiefs who actively participated in the selling of people into slavery.

In my humble opinion, what we are really talking about here is huge denial mixed in with self loathing and internalized homophobia acting out the need to accepted by those who revile us.

Perhaps our Republican Queers should start first by working out and resolving within themselves their issues of acceptance within their own families of origin. This is WAY more complex that just about fiscal responsibility, family values and gun laws.

However in the meantime while gay republicans are, or are not, figuring this out, they are helping the homophobes use us for political purposes and exposing HATE, making it harder, not better, for the rest of us. How could anyone support such an agenda and be in their right mind.

In many ways it is not much different than a Jew working for Hitler.