Tag: Gay marriage

Ken Mehlman, Manager of Bush-Cheney’s Anti-Gay 2004 Presidential Campaign, Finally Comes Out

Jon Ponder

FLASHBACK: Here’s a clip of from CNN’s “Larry King Live” from 2006 in which Bill Maher outs Ken Mehlman during the live broadcast:

CNN edited out Maher’s mention of Mehlman’s name in the re-broadcast.

The fact that Ken Mehlman is gay was one of the worst kept secrets in modern politics — now he has come out of the closet in an interview with the Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder:

Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman told Ambinder. Mehlman also said his friends and family have been “wonderful and supportive,” and that coming out has made him a “happier and better person”

“It’s something I wish I had done years ago,” Mehlman said.

You and a few million others, Ken.

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Conservative Olson: All Rights Aren’t Up for a Vote

Trish

Olson was probably only allowed to speak without being shouted down because of his conservative creds. After all, he was the man who won Bush v. Gore and was rewarded with the job of Solicitor General under George W. Bush. The entire exchange is great, but the part where he asks Chris Wallace whether we should also put FOX News’ right to free speech up to the voters is brilliant.

Gallup: Gay Marriage Support at 44%-53% – Still Twice As Popular Today than Interracial Marriage Was When It Was Legalized in 1967

Jon Ponder

Chart source

The trend toward a national consensus in favor of gay marriage remains in play, a new Gallup survey finds — and while a slight majority of Americans remain opposed to gay marriage today, it is still more than twice as popular now than interracial marriage was when the Supreme Court legalized it in 1967.

In the first Gallup poll on interracial marriage taken after the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling on Loving v. Virginia that states could no longer prevent interracial couples from marrying, just 20 percent of Americans favored mixed-race marriages. Seventy-two percent were opposed.

The latest Gallup poll on gay marriage finds a nine point gap between opponents and supporters:

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