"Kerry Compares Black, Gay Struggles"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXIV

Um... don't they mean "African-American"? Editor must have been snoozing.

From Monday's Boston Globe:

During a campaign swing through Mississippi yesterday, Senator John F. Kerry excoriated President Bush from the lectern of a black church, insisted that New England has much in common with the Deep South, and decried the "crucifixion" of the young gay man Matthew Shepard as he compared civil rights for blacks to gay and lesbian rights....

Early during the forum's question-and-answer period, an African-American woman stood up and asked Kerry to take her side in insisting that the cause of gay rights should not be mixed with the civil rights movement.

The senator replied by briefly noting his support of preserving marriage for a man and a woman, but then began making a full-throated defense of civil rights for gays and lesbians — recalling how minorities were once denied entrance to universities, and insisting that just as the Equal Protection Clause protected them, so, too, should it protect the rights of homosexuals.

At one point he compared the "crucifixion of Matthew Shepard," the Wyoming 21-year-old who was beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die in the fall of 1998, with the dragging death of an African-American Texan, James Byrd Jr., whose murder earlier in 1998 sparked new efforts for hate crimes legislation.

Kerry, in his remarks, however, misstated Byrd's last name, and referred to Byrd's sexuality when he meant to refer to his race.

"Let me tell you something, when Matthew Shepard gets crucified on a fence in Wyoming because, because, only because he was gay," Kerry said, "and Mr. King gets dragged behind a truck down Texas by chains and his body is mutilated only because he's gay, I think that's a matter of rights in the United States of America." Despite the slipups, his remarks drew strong applause from the predominantly African-American audience of 700....

Political campaigning in a church: where's the ACLU?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/11/04 06:25:12 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.