The answer is easy. George W. Bush is a homophobe who shows no compassion to GLBT people in the United States.
And the sad part about that is that some (not all) of the GLBT population were the very ones that voted him into office. Yes, there are GLBT Republicans out there, especially in Texas, and in Florida (where W’s brother Jeb was once Governor).
Here are some reasons why many GLBT Americans would wish the 2000 Election went the other way.
He proposed that gay marriage be banned in the United States. To date, Massachusetts is one of few states that acknowledge GLBT marriage and civil unions.
Bush is against gay adoption. It seems as though he is among the many Americans who believe that GLBT people cannot make good parents. The fact is any person (GLBT or straight) can make a good parent. And the children living with two mothers or two fathers actually turn out to live normal, productive lives. So this means that Mr. Bush has been fed, perhaps by his parents, the homophobic nature of things from the Cold War era in which little George grew up in.
Now I am just saying this as a sports fan. Bush has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to, among the many athletes who have made a contribution to the American Experience, Muhammed Ali, Jack Nicklaus, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, and Arnold Palmer. These heterosexual people were honored by Presidential Bush. But lesbian athletes Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova had to be pushed aside as “second-class citizens.” And they both did great things in comparison to those honored by Mr. Bush. This is an awful disservice to the sports fan everywhere and one that needs to be fixed.
But as a human being, what really gets me the most is the fact that Mr. Bush will not acknowledge the murders of GLBT people by reason of sexual preferences as a hate crime. Therefore, he has threatened to veto the Matthew Shepard Act (passed by both the Congress and the Senate) if the landmark bill makes it the desk at the Oval Office. The reason behind that. “Hate crimes do not apply to gays,” Mr. Bush defends.
I must say that a bisexual Texan, I am deeply ashamed to have lived under the iron hand of a governor for six years, and in land with the same iron fist of a president for another eight. I am 23 years old now, and I lived over half of my life ruled by this homophobic tyrant. I hope I never have to go through another 14 years of such awfulness ever again. I am glad to be out to let you Bush voters know what a mistake you’ve made.
The “iron hand” and “iron fist”? Dude. Get some perspective. Go tour Iran. Or North Korea. Or pretty much any Muslim country. See how those countries react to people who disagree with the government, or how they react to people who are openly gay, or who just write poems about their crushes on cute guys.
Then come back home, if you still can, and publicly complain on your freely-accessible blog about how a “homophobic tyrant” is sooooo evil for refusing to sign legislation allowing the feds to poke their understaffed noses into local investigations of violent crime “in case” it was a gay bashing. If that still really seems so bad.
maybebi: Yes, because comparing our standards to Iran & North Korea is a sensible reasoning, and not at all a total strawman way of sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming so that the world is drowned out. If you compare any problem to a worse situation, nothing positive is done, and your ignorance of Hate Crime enforcement is now here for all to see.