The Political Whore

David Simanoff was a reporter at the Tampa Tribune for a decade before leaving just as massive layoffs and contraction began at the daily newspaper. He was pretty high profile and a business writer, showing up on News Channel 8 segments often. He is also a gay man.

Now, on his blog, Daily Dave 3.0, he writes about his mixed feelings about whether to join yesterday’s protest of his former employer, Media General, for broadcasting the anti-gay Speechless: Silencing Christians hour-long paid television show on the same evening as St. Pete Pride.

He ultimately decided not to join the Red Flag Rally, but most interesting are his recollections about how his former employer treated GLBT issues. Here’s what he wrote, using the acronym MFE for “my former employer”:

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By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

Hooray for Florida’s very own  Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen! On Wednesday, along with a bipartisan coalition of 100 House members led by Rep. Barney Frank, she introduced a revised (read: trans inclusive) version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). When passed, ENDA will extend existing Federal protections against employment discrimination to also protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

A version of ENDA that did not include protections for transgender people passed the house in 2007 but died in the Senate. In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Frank was cautiously hopeful about the bill’s prospects in 2009: “Things have gotten better. The transgender community is lobbying hard.  I just need to remind people that when we have trouble doing something in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, it doesn’t get easier when you have South Carolina, Utah and Nebraska.”

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Winning a mayoral forum or debate is not the most meaningful thing in a campaign. The myriad gatherings of the 10 mayoral candidates in St. Petersburg that have already occurred and are yet to occur likely won’t alter the Sept. 1 primary outcome one iota.

Why?

Because such forums are a place that can only do a candidate harm. Stumble, or stumble badly, and the media coverage can magnify it into major damage. “Win” such a debate and not only will the MSM mostly not declare you the winner, but you have only “won” in front of a few hundred people, at most.

The way campaigns are really won are through spending campaign contributions on direct mail, television and radio advertising and through a concerted grass-roots voter contact effort.

So that brings me to reporting the “results” of Monday night’s mayoral forum held by the St. Pete Pride organizers at the King of Peace MCC. The “winners”?

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By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

In a recent blog posting, Nadine Smith, Equality Florida’s executive director, issued a formidable challenge to GLBT people everywhere: If you want equality, sacrifice for it. With the bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins of the black civil rights movement as her inspiration, Smith asks “What can we (GLBT people) do that demonstrates not only the rhetoric of equality but the personal sacrifice that will awaken the conscience of a nation?”

Smith answers this question with a simple suggestion:

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By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

eQuality Giving, an online community that provides strategic advice for philanthropists interested in legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans, has ranked all 50 states according to the number of Equality Goals each has achieved. On this States of Equality list, Florida ranks an embarrassing 37th with a score of 1.5 out of a possible 6 points barely beating out Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and other shining beacons of progressivism.

What hurt the Sunshine State’s score?

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She’s living now in Arizona, a long way from Largo where her transgender revelation as Steve Stanton cost her a longtime job as city manager, but Susan Stanton has a shot at returning to the Sunshine State.

From the Palm Beach Post:

Stanton’s gender was not mentioned by [Lake Worth] city commissioners Thursday during a discussion of city manager finalists.

“We don’t have time for bigotry in the city of Lake Worth,” Mayor Jeff Clemens said. “There’s too much for us to do. I’m going to make my decision based on who the best candidate is, period.”

In her cover letter to the city, Stanton offered to work 90 days without pay on a trial basis. The letter says she used to live in West Palm Beach.

Read David Warner’s CL interview with Steve Stanton from 2007.

The change in UT policy was announced to the campus in an e-mail Wednesday: the downtown Tampa university has done what Hillsborough County government couldn’t do in offering domestic partners of homosexual employees insurance and other benefits.

The campus newspaper, The Minaret, reports:

A week after Hillsborough County commissioners shot down a similar idea and two months after Florida voters rejected gay marriage, the University of Tampa agreed Wednesday to begin offering domestic partner benefits for homosexual couples.

Beginning April 1, UT will allow same-sex domestic partners to secure health insurance and other employee benefits. The offer does not apply to heterosexual domestic partnerships because those couples are allowed to marry under state law.

“It’s about time,” said Matt Gould, president of the Gay Lesbian Transgender Straight Bisexual Alliance, a UT student group. “I think it’s great that UT is implementing [benefits], but I think it’s wrong that the entire county won’t.”

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