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Hyped up by the historic passage of HB 2661, which after 30 years finally adds sexual orientation to our state’s anti-discrimination laws, I decided to stop by the jam-packed party at the Paramount last night, one of several organized around the state to celebrate the hard fought victory. A couple of quick observations…

First of all, I discovered that a party organized by the gay and lesbian community is not a good place to pick up women… unless of course, you are one. Chalk one up to experience.

Second, the absolute joy expressed last night momentarily lifted me out of the cynical haze of political stratagem through which I often view the legislative process, reminding me of how the work of our elected officials routinely touches the lives of ordinary people. And it reminded me that the impact of such legislation reaches far beyond the actual technical language inscribed in the RCW.

In the days leading up to the historic senate vote, as passage became a foregone conclusion, some of the bill’s talking-point-opponents (you know… those who viewed the battle mostly in partisan political terms, rather than having a vested, principled or emotional interest) started to advance a new frame, which I suppose was intended to take the edge off the Democrat’s victory. Actual discrimination against gays and lesbians is exceedingly rare, we were told, and thus the bill is largely symbolic and unnecessary.

It was on this curious meme that our friend Stefan chose to base his rather measured post-vote post mortem:

Paradoxically, the bill passed precisely because of a shift in attitudes that also renders the bill largely unnecessary. Surely 30 years ago when the bill was first proposed there were many more cases of discrimination. Now (and fortunately, in my opinion), it’s scarcely less socially unacceptable to discriminate against gays than it is to discriminate against blacks and Jews. The bill passed by a slender margin not so much because there’s a still a serious ongoing problem with anti-gay discrimination that the bill is needed to fix, but because it’s perceived by many to be a largely symbolic gesture and the prevailing attitudes in the legislature, as in most cases, are a trailing indicator of public opinion.

Even if I were to concede the point that gays and lesbians are no longer the victims of discrimination, and that HB 2661’s passage was ultimately, largely a symbolic gesture — and I don’t — I would still have to take issue with Stefan’s conclusion that it was thus unnecessary. For many of those reveling at the Paramount last night, the actual day-to-day impact of the bill probably will be largely symbolic, but I can’t see how anybody who listened to yesterday’s floor debate and witnessed last night’s celebration could bring themselves to diminish the import of this symbolism.

It is symbolism that drives many in the gay and lesbian community to reject the “separate but equal” notion of civil union, and demand the right to marry their partner and legally call it a marriage. It is not enough to merely be tolerated; gays and lesbians want to be embraced by the larger society as full citizens, with all the same rights, privileges, and protections. This is not about gay rights… it’s about equal rights.

A while back somebody asked me why I was putting so much passion and energy into this issue, and the blog-room brawler in me responded, “because this is a fight we can win.” But the joy I was privileged to share last night reminded me that I’m not quite as cynical as I sometimes like to present myself.

UPDATE:
Josh Feit just posted his own report of last night’s revelry over on Slog, and it provides some of the color missing from my own, brief, first person observations.

What’s that smell? It’s an open thread!

Of course… I’m only joking. From the AP, via Fox News (via Orbusmax) for chrisakes:

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at a traditionally black college, joked that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. […] “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” Coulter said.

Coulter then added, “That’s just a joke, for you in the media.”

Uh-huh.

I imagine if I were to post a similar joke about, say… President Bush, I’d have the Secret Service kicking down my door. But whenever Coulter quips about killing liberals, we’re supposed to think she’s just being cute.

HB 2661 passes, final vote: 25-23.

After thirty years, sexual orientation has finally been added to Washington state’s anti-discrimination laws. Kind of hard to believe it took so long.

A lot of people have worked extremely hard on this issue for many years, but perhaps nobody has played a larger role in its passage than the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, whose ham-fisted grandstanding in the wake of the bill’s close defeat last year was crucial in creating the blowback that ultimately led to Sen. Bill Finkbeiner voting his conscience.

Thank you Rev. Hutcherson. My fondest wish is that you and Kevin Carns team up to direct the conservative legislative agenda in WA state.

UPDATE:
Progressive Majority of Washington wants senators like Tim Sheldon, who voted no on HB 2661, to know that there is a price to pay for Democrats who betray core Democratic values. (You know… like equality.)

Progressive Majority doesn’t just elect new leaders, we hold the ones already in office accountable. But Senator Sheldon doesn’t get it

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The Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat calls insurance industry lobbyist cum CEO cum senate candidate Mike McGavick on a subtly divisive bit of campaign sloganeering:

The other day, McGavick was speechifying in Spokane when he tossed out this odd quip: “I like to say I was born in Seattle when you weren’t embarrassed to say you were from Seattle.”

To concisely paraphrase Westneat… “Huh?”

I was born and raised in Philadelphia, a city that — thanks to its second-best proximity to the nation’s economic and political capitals (not to mention the legendary W.C. Fields) — has become a national icon of civic self-deprecation. Thus, as a relative outsider I have always found the typical Seattleite’s profound sense of civic pride to border on boosterism. I’ve often quipped that the secret to Philadelphia being one of the nation’s most affordable and livable big cities, is that unlike Seattleites, Philly-natives aren’t constantly trying to convince out-of-towners to move there and ruin it. Philadelphia is indeed a great city, but shhhhhh… that’s our little secret.

Of course, Seattle is a great city too, and Westneat’s take rings true to a 15-year transplant like me.

No, Seattle is so lacking in things to be embarrassed about that, ironically, it’s created the most embarrassing thing about us

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It seems to me that almost from the moment Paul Berendt announced his retirement, the race to replace him as state Democratic chair has pretty much split the party in two, between those who support Dwight Pelz and… um… those who don’t support Dwight Pelz.

And so it comes as no surprise that as the party heads into this Saturday’s vote, it’s pretty much shaping up to be a two-person contest. First Greg Rodriguez, and then Phil Talmadge dropped out of the race. And tonight Snohomish County chair Mark Hintz tells me that he has withdrawn his name, and asked his supporters to “vote their conscience.” Good thing we’re not Republicans, as such an instruction might result in a lot of blank ballots.

I know that technically there’s still a couple of other candidates, but with Hintz’s withdrawal, realistically, this has now come down to a race between front-runner Pelz and Laura Ruderman. I keep hearing that Ruderman is coming on strong, particularly in Eastern Washington… but probably not strong enough. And Pelz just got a huge boost this evening when he captured the endorsement of the sixty-thousand strong SEIU Washington State Council.

I know a lot of people have gotten awfully worked up over the race for party chair, but me, not so much. Perhaps I’m naive or ignorant, but while their strengths may lie in different areas, both Pelz and Ruderman seem qualified. So at the risk of incurring Ivan’s wrath again, I just want to repeat that all I ask from the new chair is an open mind and an open door.

It makes me want to throw up.

That was the blunt, emotional response of Rep. Larry Haler (R-Richland) when asked about the fake “Sex Offender Notification” postcards the state GOP mailed out to 25,000 families across the state… and he’s not the only Republican lawmaker expressing disgust with their party’s leadership. But even while several Republican legislators have quietly apologized to their colleagues across the aisle, House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt (R-Chehalis) not only remains unapologetic, he refuses to even accept responsibility for the actions of his caucus’s own PAC.

DeBolt

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Of course, we all know that they’re constantly drinking liberally at the The Stranger. (I once quipped that I could never work there, because I don’t drink hard liquor.) But there’s also a very nice piece by Cienna Madrid in this week’s paper, revealing to a larger world the sublime pleasures of our weekly gathering of the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally.

My only question for Cienna is: how much did Darryl suck up to you to be the only blogger to finagle a link? (Damn! He just got another one. Clever bastard.)

When I first stumbled into politics with my “Tim Eyman is a horse’s ass” initiative, one of my slogans which really seemed to resonate with supporters was my promise to “put the party back into politics.” I can’t tell you have many contributions and petitions came in with a request for an invitation to the election night party.

The truth is, politics can be godawful boring, and progressive politics doubly so… we’re all just so fucking earnest.

And as important as it is, the tedium of the actual process of party politics can bring on horrifying flashbacks of grinding your way through the worst high school teacher you ever had. It’s heard enough to get the average joe to show up at his legislative district meeting… but it’s nearly impossible to get him to come back.

I’ve always been a big believer in making progressive politics more fun and more social, and to be honest, what first attracted me to Drinking Liberally was simply… the name. The first DL I attended was pretty much me, The Him, Nick, and a couple of Nick’s friends. And the crowd didn’t consistently get much bigger than that for the first couple months.

But with word of mouth and some steady promotion on the blogs, DL has grown into a large crowd of regulars (and a few irregulars) that this week took over half the Montlake Ale House. And for those who can’t attend, next week will mark the release of my first weekly podcast from DL… that is, assuming it doesn’t suck.

No doubt Cienna’s piece will help boost attendance, but DL has already reached the kind of critical mass that ensures its continued growth through word of mouth alone. Chapters are already established in Bellingham and Spokane (which I hear kicks ass), and new chapters recently opened in Olympia and Walla Walla. New chapters are scheduled to open next month in Tacoma and Burien… proudly making Washington one of the most liberally drinking states in the union, third only to New York and Pennsylvania.

Cienna warns that “without some new blood, DL could be dismissed as a good-old-boys club stuffed with bloggers and politicos,” and certainly we need to balance out the gender ratio if DL is to achieve its full potential. But this is one “good-old-boys club” that’s open to all comers, and it is that informal, social aspect that makes DL different from all other political organizations.

We meet every Tuesday, 8:00 pm, at the Montlake Alehouse, 2307 24th Avenue E. Hope to see you there soon.

UPDATE:
Ooops. Jim at McCranium reminds me that I forgot the recently founded Tri-Cities chapter of DL that meets Wednesday nights, 5:30 pm, at the Tuscany Lounge, 1515 George Washington Way, Richland.

Portraying the Alito nomination as just another volley in the culture wars vastly underestimates its significance. The judge’s record strongly suggests that he is an eager lieutenant in the ranks of the conservative theorists who ignore our system of checks and balances, elevating the presidency over everything else. He has expressed little enthusiasm for restrictions on presidential power and has espoused the peculiar argument that a president’s intent in signing a bill is just as important as the intent of Congress in writing it. This would be worrisome at any time, but it takes on far more significance now, when the Bush administration seems determined to use the cover of the “war on terror” and presidential privilege to ignore every restraint, from the Constitution to Congressional demands for information.
…
A filibuster is a radical tool. It’s easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

Read the whole thing.

Kevin Carns, the man claiming credit for the Republican’s disgusting fake metaphorical Sex Offender Notification postcards, remains unapologetic, calling the Democrats’ complaints “sniveling” and “asinine.”

“What they are doing is a political smoke screen.”

Uh-huh.

For those who aren’t familiar with the state GOP operatives rogues gallery, Carns holds the dual titles of Political Director for the House Republican Organizing Committee and Executive Director of its associated PAC, The Speaker’s Roundtable, which paid for the mailing.

Carns is also one of HorsesAss.org’s longtime professional trolls.

This information came to me today quite by accident, but when I looked into it further I discovered that Carns has been a prolific fixture on HA comment threads for well over a year, posting hundreds of comments under several different pseudonyms, at all hours of the day and night… but mostly during normal business working hours. That he trolls the threads from his HROC/Speakers Roundtable office at BIAW headquarters seems indisputable. That he considers trolling to be part of his official duties, seems clear.

Carns’ comments range from pedantic regurgitation of GOP talking points, to deceitful, vitriolic, and extremist rhetoric, to down-in-the-gutter name-calling. He has attacked me personally. He has launched veiled threats against other thread participants.

His primary reason for remaining anonymous seems obvious: attaching his name to his commentary would embarrass his employers and potentially undermine his party’s agenda. It would also impair his ability to masquerade as just another irate voter in this and other public forums.

One would think that if Carns was as proud of the bile he spews here, as he claims to be of his schemes to politically exploit abused children, he might hang his name on his comments. But he isn’t. No, what Carns is, is a gutless coward… a sneaky, chicken-livered, spineless pussy… a dick-less wonder, who despite all his tough talk, macho bravado, and BIAW funding, just got his tiny little political balls snipped off by some balding, middle-aged, amateur with a DSL connection and a four-year-old iBook.

Does the hateful, lying rhetoric emanating from my right-wing trolls represent the values and views of the majority of rank and file Republicans? Of course not. But apparently, it does represent the values and views of the Republican leadership and the staff they hire. So the next time you read the bullshit spewed in my comment threads, be sure to remember the self-descriptive words of one of the walking talking-points who spew them:

“What they are doing is a political smoke screen.”

UPDATE:
Kevin… it has privately been suggested to me that perhaps it was inappropriate of me to question your manhood in such strong and provocative words… especially considering the fact that you own firearms. So… I would like to make it absolutely clear that when I call you a pussy… or, for example, describe you as a limp-dick, epicene, girly-man with testicles the size of David Irons’ political prospects… I am, of course, speaking metaphorically.

It turns out, Rev. Ken Hutcherson never had a boycott organized to pressure Microsoft, Boeing and other corporations that support anti-discrimination legislation. But yesterday he told the AP that he did have a plan all along: to urge people to buy up the companies’ stock and then dump it all on May 1, to drive prices down.

Uh-huh.

[Rev. Hutcherson] says he wants to use the stock market to make a political point. But one market expert laughed at the idea.

“The chances of him being successful with that are slim to none, and slim just left town,” said Hans Olsen, chief investment officer at Bingham Legg Advisers.

Yeah, but the chances of him becoming the target of an SEC investigation are pretty darn good; such a conspiracy to manipulate the market is likely illegal. Whatever.

“For me to ask people not to buy their product would be stupid,” Hutcherson said. Instead, he wants his supporters to buy one or two shares over the next few months.

Yeah… sure… because that would be, um… “smart.” Forget for a moment that by Hutcherson’s own logic, if selling Microsoft stock en masse would drive the stock price down, then buying the stock en masse should drive the price up, resulting in a net impact of… nada.

But the most obvious problem with Hutcherson’s plan is that Microsoft has over 10.6 billion shares outstanding, with a total market valuation of about $280 billion. Over 63 million Microsoft shares are traded on a typical day. Large institutional traders would never “gamble their money on a political statement,” and even if Hutcherson’s fantasy stock boycott could manage to dump a few million shares (and it can’t,) the market wouldn’t even notice.

Apparently, Hutcherson is not only a bigoted, blustering liar, he’s also an idiot… and he’s being roundly skewered for his latest plan. John Aravosis at Americablog quips that the Right Wrong Reverend is “not exactly a walking billboard for intelligent design,” while Eli Sanders of The Stranger wonders if Hutcherson’s followers “may come to constitute one of the dumbest classes of investors in the market place.”

Last year, at the height of his anti-gay celebrity, eastside Rev. Ken Hutcherson told the New York Times that his grand ambition was to become ” the most feared man in America.”

Would he settle for the most laughed at man in America?

I suppose there’s always the maxim that all press is good press, but when it comes to publicly making a horse’s ass out of himself, Hutcherson is beginning to make our old friend Tim Eyman look like a fucking statesman.

VanBlog has posted a letter House Democrats have sent to House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt:

January 24, 2006

Representative Richard DeBolt
Minority Leader
Washington State House of Representatives

Dear Representative DeBolt:

We, the undersigned members of the House of Representatives, have been the targets of your campaign committee in recent days. Because we refused to bring to the floor a bill that had not received a public hearing as of that date, a bill that most members had not even seen or read, we are being accused of “refusing to impose life sentences for violent sex predators.”

It is an egregious lie, frankly, and unworthy of the good people in your caucus.

However, we are not the true victims of this action. Thousands of families in Washington received phone calls and postcards falsely warning of a “violent predator” living in their communities. Parents we’ve spoken with were unnecessarily alarmed; children seeing the postcard were needlessly frightened.

Fear-mongering, exploiting children for political gain, lying to the public

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A little birdy has told me that contrary to prior reports, biotech entrepreneur Paul Abrams will not run for the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. Dave Reichert in the 8th Congressional District. This leaves Darcy Burner as the only Democrat officially in the race, with a possible run still being mulled over by Montrail, Inc. founder and CEO Menno van Wyk.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. We are pleased to have Congressman Jay Inslee join us tonight, and I suspect energy policy will be high on his list of topics to talk about.

See… this is why we do what we do: