Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin in a 1984 studio portrait as Miss Wasilla. The cover of the latest issue of Us Weekly.

Does Palin candidacy mark the death of the Christian right?
Paul Abrams, Huffington Post, September 6
By choosing to applaud the Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the Christian right ceded most of the claptrap they have been preaching for 30 years. No longer can they rail against big-town, or Hollywood, or Washington DC (read, experts) or New York (read, Jewish) or San Francisco (read, gay) "values" as the cause of peoples' "misbehavior" and social disintegration. No longer can they wring their hands about poor role models for children, about out-of-wedlock sex being a sin against God, about how books can be the devil's work.

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
By Gloria Steinem, Los Angeles Times, September 4
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

Palin's big strikeout
The Nation, September 4
Sarah Palin gave a riveting and devastating nomination speech on Wednesday night. She shared her inspiring story and brave family, while savaging and ridiculing the celebrated life story of Barack Obama, a fellow barrier-breaking candidate, with whithering attacks on his work as a community organizer, senator, and author. She misrepresented his record and simply lied about her own.

Log Cabin's big McCain mistake
By Chris Crain, CitizenCrain.com, September 3
The Log Cabin Republicans join in the fall foolishness by going forward with an endorsement of the McCain-Palin ticket without even waiting to ask, much less get answers, about the Alaska governor’s unknown views on a range of issues important to gay Americans. We only learned today, for example, that she opposes hate crime laws.

Palin's privacy versus her public stance
By Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, September 3
She, her husband and daughter got to make private decisions privately. But her public views would deny that same right to other Americans.

What the Palin pick says
By David Brooks, New York Times, September 2
My worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy. There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government. But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice.

The doctor’s office is no place for bigotry
By Barbara Shelly, New Haven Register, September 1
The doctors at North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group in California had no problem treating Guadalupe T. Benitez for a medical condition that prevented her from becoming pregnant. Yet, they balked when it came time to perform the artificial insemination procedure that might enable her to conceive. Benitez said two of the doctors said they wouldn’t help her — because she was a lesbian.

Sarah Palin: Vice in go-go boots?
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, August 31
The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick. So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching "Miss Congeniality" with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch "Miss Congeniality" with Sarah Palin.

McCain’s Baked Alaska
By Gail Collins, New York Times, August 30
It is conceivable that some people will think John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate because she is a woman. I know you find this shocking, but I swear I have heard it mentioned. However, the idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong.

John McCain thinks women are stupid
By Jill Filipovic, Feministe.com, August 30
The fact is that John McCain has chosen a staunch conservative to be his running mate. She is anti-choice. She is against civil rights for gay and lesbian people. She wants to drill in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. She’s a gun nut. She’s a Buchanan supporter. She wants to teach Creationism in schools. She doesn’t believe in global warming. She talks about having a child with Downs Syndrome, but then voted against funding special-needs programs in schools.

A few PUMAs on the loose
By Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times. August 30
Now that the Democratic National Convention is over, have all the PUMAs gone back to their dens? Is it safe to jog in the mountains or are rabid, ravenous Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters still crouching in the chaparral, patiently waiting until November, when they'll avenge their candidate in one deadly pounce?

Barack Obama: American revolutionary
By Walter Shapiro, Salon.com, August 29
Watching Barack Obama give the most speech of his career -- was a reminder that near miracles can happen even in this jaded decade. And, win or lose in November, America has been reshaped forever by this alliance of what Obama described as "young people who voted for the first time and the young at heart." On a night for defying the taboos of intolerance, the Democratic nominee went out of his way to affirm that "our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve ... to live lives free of discrimination," even if Obama glided by gay marriage.

NBC snubs more than Olympic athlete’s sexuality
By Eric Shaw Quinn, Advocate.com, August 29
The network's obvious, unmistakable and inexcusable snub of gay medalist Mitcham during its exhaustive coverage of the Beijing Olympics offers us insight into how black athlete Jesse Owens must have felt at the Nazi sponsored games in 1936.

Log Cabin dismisses anti-gay Republican platform as "symbolic"
By Rod McCullom, RodOnline, August 28
Denial is more than a river in Egypt. During the same week Michelle Obama, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton speak out for gay rights at the Democratic National Convention, a draft emerges of the new, anti-gay platform of the Republican Party. Oh, and the capital gains tax-lovin' homocons at the Log Cabin dismiss the platform as "symbolic." Priceless.

Gay rights need a galvanizing moment
By Tobias Barrington Wolff, Chicago Sun Times, August 27
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs recently issued a report documenting a sharp rise in hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Combating violence against GLBT Americans will require strong leadership from the top. In that respect, the choice in this presidential election is clear. Barack Obama recognizes the imperative to combat anti-GLBT violence and has made his commitment concrete.

Imagine if we dealt truthfully with HIV
By Jill Rips, Deputy Executive Director, San Antonio AIDS Foundation
QSanAntonio, June 13

Wouldn't it be nice if Texas would become known as a leader in public health? As one of many providers of HIV care in Bexar County, we struggle to find enough money to provide the population in need with the services they deserve. We know that people get infected every day from unprotected sex and sharing of syringes and other injection paraphernalia.

Imagine Texas as a state in which we could provide reality-based sex education in the schools that stressed not just abstinence, but also taught youth how to properly use condoms to protect themselves from STDs if they were sexually active.

Imagine Bexar County as a place where citizens could hand out clean syringes and collect dirty ones as a service to this community to help prevent the further spread of HIV and hepatitis, without being arrested.

Imagine Dallas as a city that did not sentence an HIV-positive man to 35 years for spitting on a police officer (with no documented case of transmission through saliva). Imagine that we let the public know how people really get infected with HIV and provided them with the tools they needed to stay safe. Imagine Texas as a model of public health.

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