Silly Log Cabin

I would think that when reading a tabloid like the Drudge Report, that one would proceed with caution before believing what you read is the gospel truth. Apparently, this is not true if you are a Log Cabin Republican.

Last night, while I was at the AEN meeting on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", I fell into conversation with a self proclaimed "gay Republican libertarian". Personally, I thought that Libertarians were different from the GOP, but I'll leave that aside for the moment. In a wide ranging, and enjoyable, conversation about varied topics such as forced sterilization as a condition of receiving welfare (his proposal), his opposition to all marriage, not just gay marriage, and Hillary Clinton's political genius, he tried to sell me on Clinton's homophobia.

Yes, he tried to seriously argue that Bill Clinton was really a homophobe. This guy was from Louisiana, and the Democrats there gay bashed with as much glee as the Republicans. Bill, being an Arkansas boy, just *had* to be a homophobe because he's from the South? And a Democrat to boot? It seemed like he was arguing that southerners all hate homosexuals, including the Democrats, even though they might pretend to like us.

His biggest piece of "evidence" was something he'd read on Drudge. His claim was that Clinton set an expiration date for the non-discrimination order in federal employment where it concerned protections for LGBT workers. This did not seem right to me, but I had nothing with which to disprove his assertion. He claimed that Bush extended the LGBT protections proactively, which seemed patently absurd to me.

I have since discovered what poppycock this claim is. In 1995, Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order which lifted the ban on LGBT people from receiving a security clearance on the ground that being closet cases, they can be easily threatened or blackmailed. On May 28, 1998, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13087 which amended Executive Order 11478, which was the Equal Employment Opportunity in the Federal Government order signed by Richard Nixon on August 8, 1969. The amendment tacked on "sexual orientation" to the list of protected classes within federal employment. There was not any sunset provision provided. This amendment was PERMANENT. The thing Bush did was decline to rescind Clinton's order of non-discrimination.

Those silly Log Cabiners....they never learn.