Tag Archives: michele bachmann

BREAKING: Perry signs anti-gay marriage pledge; NOM responds by calling him ‘marriage champion’

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Gov. Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a GOP presidential candidate, has signed an anti-gay marriage pledge from the National Organization for Marriage, the Associated Press reports. By signing the pledge, Perry has vowed to support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage throughout the country; defend the Defense of Marriage of Act in court; appoint judges and a U.S. attorney general who “will respect the original meaning” of the U.S. Constitution; support legislation allowing D.C. residents to vote on whether to overturn the district’s same-sex marriage law; and appoint a presidential commission to “investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters.”

Although Perry’s decision to sign the NOM pledge comes as no surprise whatsoever to us, the AP writes that it “repudiat[es] his earlier comments that marriage rights should be left up to individual states.” For a recap of all that, go here.

Other Republican presidential candidates who’ve signed the NOM pledge include Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Check out Bachmann’s signed copy below:

UPDATE: Brian Brown, president of NOM, issued the following statement about Perry’s decision to sign the pledge:

“Kudos to Gov. Rick Perry for making it clear: he’s a marriage champion. The purpose of NOM’s Marriage Pledge is to move from vague values statements to concrete actions to protect marriage. Gov. Perry joins Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum as a signer of NOM Marriage Pledge. By doing so, Perry makes crystal clear that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, gay marriage is going to be a bigger issue in 2012 than it was in 2008, because the difference between the GOP nominee and Pres. Obama is going to be large and clear. We look forward to demonstrating that being for marriage is a winning position for a presidential candidate.”

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: Gov. Perry silent so far on LGBT issues; Pink Noise moves to Rational Radio

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Gov. Rick Perry strikes an, umm, rather unfortunate pose on the campaign trail this week.

Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has already jumped into first place in the Republican presidential race, according to the latest Rasmussen Results poll.  Of course, the poll was conducted before it was widely reported that Perry had accused Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke of being a traitor. Meanwhile, it’s worth nothing that, as far as we can tell, the rabidly anti-gay Perry hasn’t said a word about LGBT issues since entering the presidential race four days ago. And even fellow bigot Michele Bachmann is toning down her anti-gay rhetoric. That’s because it’s no longer terribly effective as a wedge issue, even in a Republican primary. Still, these candidates can’t hide from their records, and we fully expect Perry to sign that anti-gay marriage pledge from the National Organization for Marriage any day now.

2. Pink Noise: The Dallas Voice Radio Show, which was previously a podcast done from our offices, is moving to Rational Radio beginning this week. The show will air from 4 to 5 p.m. each Friday. Follow Pink Noise on Facebook and Twitter, and tune in to RationalRadio.org to watch our first episode live. We’ll also post recordings of Pink Noise right here on Instant Tea.

3.Lady Gaga released the video for “You and I” — the latest single from Born This Way — on Tuesday. Watch it below.

—  John Wright

CHART: Rick Perry 1 of 5 presidential candidates who oppose LGBT community on every issue

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The above chart from Ned Flaherty at Marriage Equality USA (click to enlarge) provides a snapshot of where each of the presidential candidates stands on LGBT issues. As you can see, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is one of five with No’s across the board. Openly gay Republican Fred Karger is the gay-friendliest of the bunch, followed by Barack Obama, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like it will be a choice between Obama and either Bachmann, Perry or Romney (and likely some combination of the three).

—  John Wright

PIC OF THE DAY: Gov. Rick Perry deep-throats corn dog at the Iowa State Fair

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Photo via IowaPolitics.com on Flickr

According to The Dallas Morning News, Perry’s corn dog turned out to be vegetarian, and he ate only half of it. But it sure looks like he’s had some practice, and as you can see below, the governor’s form is certainly better than Marcus or Michele Bachmann’s.

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: Rick Perry’s first big flip-flop; Michele Bachmann says she doesn’t judge gays

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Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. Hours after plunging into the Republican presidential primary, Texas Gov. Rick Perry made his first big flip-flop. The Texas Tribune reports that Perry is backtracking from one of the few socially progressive moves he’s made as governor — an executive order in 2007 mandating the HPV vaccine for girls entering sixth grade. Until now, Perry has consistently defended the controversial executive order, which was overturned by the Legislature. But now that he’s running for president, his position has changed. “I signed an executive order that allowed for an opt-out, but the fact of the matter is that I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry,” Perry told a gathering in New Hampshire on Saturday. “But here’s what I learned: When you get too far out in front of the parade, they will let you know, and that’s exactly what our Legislature did, and I saluted it and I said, ‘Roger that, I hear you loud and clear.’ And they didn’t want to do it and we don’t, so enough said.”

2. Perry’s chief rival for tea party and evangelical support, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, told CNN on Sunday that she would reinstate “don’t ask don’t tell.” But Bachmann mostly dodged questions about her virulently anti-gay record during NBC’s Meet the Press, declaring that, “I don’t judge [gays].” Watch the clip from Meet the Press below.

3. Indiana State Rep. Phillip Hinkle, the anti-gay Republican accused of hiring an 18-year-old male prostitute on Craigslist, faces growing pressure to resign.

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: San Antonio to offer DP benefits; Indiana Republican in gay Craigslist scandal

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Indiana State Rep. Phillip Hinkle

Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. Frontrunners Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann were among the candidates who came out strongly against same-sex marriage during a televised GOP presidential debate Thursday night in Ames, Iowa. Meanwhile, Jon Huntsman defended his support for civil unions, and the virulently anti-gay Rick Santorum actually appeared to express concern for gay people in Iran. Watch a video compilation of the candidates’ remarks on same-sex marriage from ThinkProgress below.

2. The city of San Antonio plans to begin offering benefits to the unmarried domestic partners of employees, both gay and straight, according to the Express-News. San Antonio, the second-most-populous city in the state, would become the fifth to offer DP benefits, joining Austin, Dallas, El Paso and Fort Worth. “For the city as an employer, it means we can be more competitive for great talent,” Mayor Julian Castro said. “For the San Antonio community, it means there are no second-class citizens. We’re a cosmopolitan city and we value everyone in our community.”

3. An anti-gay Republican state representative from Indiana is accused of hiring a male prostitute from Craigslist’s M4M section.The Indianapolis Star reports that State Rep. Phillip Hinkle offered the 18-year-old $80 for sex, plus tips. Hinkle picked up the teen and drove him to his hotel room. But when the teen found out Hinkle was a lawmaker, he got cold feet and called his sister to come get him. Joe.My.God. reports that Hinkle is a right-winger who opposes same-sex marriage and once forced the state to offer an “In God We Trust” license plate.

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: Santorum compares marriage to a napkin; Bachmann likes pro-slavery books

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Rick Santorum

Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. Anti-gay GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Monday compared marriage to a napkin to explain his opposition to same-sex marriage. And no, we’re not kidding. It’s perhaps the most ridiculous anti-marriage analogy since Texas Sen. John Cornyn hatched his box turtle. Watch video of Santorum’s remarks below.

2. Meanwhile, ThinkProgress revealed that a book saying blacks were better off under slavery once appeared on GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s “must-read” list. Is it any wonder that Texas Gov. Rick Perry will be considered a frontrunner if and when he enters the race? Who wouldn’t be? Too bad my puppy is a Democrat.

3. A gay couple is suing a California amusement park for allegedly displaying a photo, taken of them riding a roller coaster, with “Were [sic] Fags!” written on it.

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: With Perry about to enter race, Bachmann steps up her anti-gay game

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Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. With Texas Gov. Rick Perry about to enter the GOP presidential race, Michele Bachmann is stepping up her anti-gay game. Polls show that Perry and Bachmann are likely to compete for the critical evangelical vote. So, with Perry’s day of prayer happening Saturday in Houston, Bachmann released a list of 100 pastors who’ve endorsed her on Friday and set out to attend two evangelical church services on Sunday. And one of those services just so happened to be virulently anti-gay, with the pastor denouncing homosexuality as “immoral” and “unnatural” and playing a video featuring a man who claims to have prayed away the gay. Watch the hilarious video featuring the “ex-gay” man, Adam Hood, below.

2. The polls say Perry and Bachmann will compete for the evangelical vote, but Rick “frothy mix” Santorum isn’t about to throw in the towel, so to speak. CNN reports that on Monday, Santorum’s campaign launched a pre-emptive strike against Perry based on the news that the Texas governor will confirm his plans to run for president on Saturday in South Carolina. “If reports are true, then I want to be the first to welcome Governor Perry to the race — but it’s too bad he chose to ignore Iowa,” Santorum said in a statement. “I guess we’ll all see each other soon on the trail. I wonder which version of marriage he’ll be ‘fine’ with in South Carolina – obviously, not the same version he was ‘fine’ with in New York.”

3. Here’s something both Perry and Bachmann — but not Santorum — can include on their list of anti-gay credentials: Their home states, Texas and Minnesota, are both among the 18 where where sodomy laws remain on the books despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2003 declaring them unconstitutional. Equality Matters posted a detailed report about the sodomy laws on Monday saying that not only do they remain on the books, but in some cases they continue to be enforced. Scary.

—  John Wright

WATCH: Joel Burns goes on MSNBC to talk about teen suicides in Michele Bachmann’s district

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Gay Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday night to discuss the string of teen suicides in GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s Minnesota congressional district. (For some background on this issue, check out this piece from Mother Jones the other day.) Following the appearance, Burns said on Twitter that he planned to send Bachmann an email because there were a few points he wasn’t able to get across on the air. And on a lighter note, Burns also apparently won an argument with his husband, J.D. Angle, about whether he would shave his beard before the show.

—  John Wright

Friends of Dorothy

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EASE ON DOWN | The Tin Man (Sydney James Harcourt, above left) steals the show in ‘The Wiz’ at DTC, while over at Fair Park, Megan Sikora, right, gives ‘Guys & Dolls’ its jolt.

If only DTC’s ‘Wiz’ had a heart. And I got yer horse right here, ‘Guys & Dolls’

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Life+Style Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

If there’s one thing a gay guy can be counted on to know something about, it’s The Wizard of Oz. After all, the death of Judy Garland sparked the Stonewall Riots, and even before that, being a “friend of Dorothy” was code for practicing The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. You wanna change it? Be prepared for theater queens to take note.

And so it is with The Wiz, the 1975 funked-up, all-black musical that serves as the Dallas Theater Center’s season ender.

The appeal of Dorothy’s adventure has always been the exploration of self-understanding with heavy doses of psychology. (The folks she meets in her reveries about Oz mirror real-life people she knows in Kansas.) This rushed 90-minute kiddie show so trims the classic structure of the film (it’s closer in plot to the book, but that’s not a good thing), it feels more like a series of unrelated vignettes than a mythological journey of personal discovery. Dorothy gets to Oz, meets a good witch (not Glinda), hooks up with three buddies (sans Toto, who is only heard barking offstage in the opening), dispatches an evil witch in about six minutes then presumably makes it back home (we never see Kansas again).

DTC is marketing it as a “family musical,” and I suppose it is in the sense that we might start referring to Michele Bachmann’s husband as “family.” The show — even in this abridged version — is gayer than Liberace on Halloween. The Lion, always the nelliest of the bunch, basically admits he’s gay due to an absent father and strong-willed mother; so many men are obsessed with Dorothy’s shiny shoes (here silver as in the book, not ruby like the movie), I expected one of the Munchkins to be Stanford Blatch; and director Kevin Moriarty employs lithe, half-naked dancers from Dallas Black Dance Theater to gyrate their moneymakers — is this Oz from the book or the gay club on Bourbon Street?

Still, this version of The Wiz is just children’s theater without much heart, brain or courage (it’s difficult to tell if that’s the fault of the book by William F. Brown or the direction, which feels stage-2rushed). The style is presentational and flat, with the actors projecting broadly to the balcony with exaggerated emotions.

Although the set famously includes moving “pods” of seats that move the audience around the space, the main actors rarely perform as in true theater-in-the-round, except when the dancers jump into them. I counted a dozen repositionings, but the sense of movement only genuinely grabs you once; during the cyclone, which should make you feel dizzy and excited, the pods move lumberingly around dancers portraying winds. It’s all oddly unsatisfying: It’s there, it ends.

What’s surprising is that there’s not more magic considering how balls-to-the-wall strong most of the singers are. The Tin Man has never been my favorite character — face it: He’s never been anyone’s favorite … until now. Sydney James Harcourt delivers the only truly wrenching musical performance on his solo “To Be Able to Feel,” just moments after the juiced-up eroticism of “Slide Some Oil to Me.” It’s a sexy, charismatic turn in sharp relief to David Ryan Smith’s hilariously flamboyant Lion and James Tyrone Lane’s limber goofing as Scarecrow.

Liz Mikel hams it up, both as good witch Addaperle and her wicked sister Evillene, which gives her the chance to seethe and gnash her teeth at the youngsters in between belt-‘em-out anthems. But Trisha Jeffrey as Dorothy makes little impression. In this construct, without Toto to talk to, the character is a cipher with little to do but watch the rest of Oz upstage her, wondering “Why, oh why can’t I?”

 

Over at Fair Park, the national tour of Guys & Dolls does a good job of reminding us how gosh-durn terrific a songwriter Frank Loesser was. The score plays like a master class in Broadway hits, with standards (the most famous, “Luck Be a Lady,” isn’t even the best) that convey character through complex harmonies with toe-tapping brio. It’s ironic that “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” makes the audience want to jump to its feet.

If only the production were quite at the level it needs to be to showcase those numbers at their best. Four of the five leads — Ben Crawford (Sky Masterson), Steve Rosen (Nathan Detroit), Megan Sikora (Adelaide) and Glenn Rainey (Nicely Nicely) — have great voices, with Sikora stealing the show as the squeaky-voiced stripper. (Erin Davie never rises above the confines of the show’s least interesting role, missionary Sarah Brown.) The book, based on Damon Runyon’s caricatures of New York low-lifes, still has some zingers (and Crawford is especially good at making the dialogue feel contemporary), but it hasn’t aged well.

It doesn’t help that director Gordon Greenberg cleaves closely to outmoded conventions, like a long
introductory ballet (danced only serviceably by a disappointing chorus) and extended, stylized sequences throughout that do little to advance the plot. And with the show clocking in just shy of three hours, there is plenty of room to trim.

Sikora, though, makes it worth a look-see alone, and the songs have more energy and have endured better than those of The Wiz. Given a choice, it’s a crapshoot between the Loesser of two Evillenes.

………………………..

travel Travel Diary

Anyone who has ever been trapped in an airport during flight delays knows the madness can become infectious, but being balanced and serene is worth the effort. Here are some tips to get your Zen on.

Exercise. You might be on vacation, but your body is not. Exercise in your room, in your hotel’s gym, outside (run on the beach!) or find a nearby gym. Investing an hour in working out can reduce stress, improve sleep and increase energy.

Choose the right attitude. If you approach traveling with the attitude of, “Ugh! I hate to fly/drive/sit,” you’ve already decided it’s going to be a terrible experience. Instead, make the decision to enjoy the journey. Find a good book or download some interesting movies on your iPad. A long flight can be hell… or six hours of scheduled “me” time. The choice is yours.

Eat right. There’s no such thing as “vacation” calories. A calorie is a calorie and unhealthy options are as unhealthy at the beach as they are at home. Make food choices that nourish your body and you’ll feel strong and you’ll enjoy your vacation even more.

Do less, accomplish more. Many treat vacations as narrow windows into which they cram in as much “fun” as possible. While tempting, it can result in seeing a lot but experiencing nothing. Instead, do a few things you’ll actually enjoy rather than constantly looking at your watch.

Stay hydrated. Planes have notoriously dry air; make it a point to get some water whenever the stewards or stewardesses offer it. After going through security, buy a large bottle of water. It makes your body infinitely more comfortable, especially on longer flights.

Meditate. Even if you don’t normally meditate, taking 10 minutes a day to sit quietly is refreshing. Ideally, meditation is best in a quiet room, but even on a packed plane you can make it work. If there is chaos around you, make it part of your practice! Tune it out and find your center. Among other things, it will help reduce tension, relieve stress and improve your mood.

Wash your hands. Restaurants and public transportation facilities are rife with germs. Vacations are more enjoyable when you’re healthy, so minimize your risk of getting sick by washing your hands often.

— Davey Wavey

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 22, 2011.

—  Kevin Thomas