The Political Whore

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

This just in from Securing Our Children’s Rights (SOCR), a Tampa-based lobbying group organized to secure, protect and preserve equal rights for children of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents in Florida:

Securing Our Children’s Rights, Inc. (SOCR), is pleased to announce HB 3 – Adoption, for the 2010 legislative session, introduced by Representative Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, that is a full repeal of Florida’s ban on adoption by its gay and lesbian citizens. Senator Nan Rich has a companion bill in drafting at this date.

Governor Crist has declared Wednesday, July 22, 2009 as Explore Adoption Day and we must contact Governor Crist and the legislature to Explore Adoption by repealing the ban.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 22, 2009
WHO: Governor Charlie Crist (850) 488-7146 or email to Charlie.Crist@myflorida.com

House Speaker Larry Cretul 850-488-1450 or 352-873-6564 or email to Larry.Cretul@myfloridahouse.gov

Senate President Jeff Atwater 850-487-5100 or 561-625-5101 or email to atwater.jeff.web@flsenate.gov

Your Florida Representative – www.myfloridahouse.gov

Your Florida Senator – www.flsenate.gov

THE ASK:
Please ask the Governor to support the repeal of the adoption ban on gay Floridians and ask him to encourage the legislative leadership to pass the repeal.

Please ask the House Speaker and the Senate President to support the repeal and encourage Committee hearings for the bills.

Please ask your representative and senator to support the repeal, and to become a co-sponsor.

Here are your fun facts and talking points, courtesy of SOCR:

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By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Watch a clip from the program after the jump.

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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

In a presidential proclamation issued on Monday, President Barack Obama officially recognized the month of June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The president’s call for equality and his acknowledgment of the many contributions LGBT people have made to America’s culture, society and politics despite being culturally, socially and politically marginalized are truly moving. However, I can’t help feeling slightly ambivalent about the whole thing. Here’s why:

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By Heidi Lux
Daily Loaf contributor

Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf blog.

I have a secret I can no longer keep. It burns my soul and pains my conscience. I had an affair. I loved a man powerful in Florida politics, and he loved me back. I cannot reveal his name. My honor and his lawyers do not permit me. I will refer to him only as C. He currently seeks more power, and I know that rumors will begin to fly, so I submit my story publicly to save us both, and our love, from the public’s harsh scrutiny.

It all began in the winter of 2008. I was a 19-year-old USF student, wandering through my studies with no real direction, still trying to find myself among the textbooks and study halls. My life did not live up to my name – Destiny St. Clair – and my bright red hair spoke of an excitement I could not claim. I was, I must say, average in every way, certainly not the type you might soon expect to be sipping champagne on yachts with the most powerful man in the state.

I can remember the exact moment my life changed forever. Jan. 30, 2008, the day John McCain won the Florida Republican primaries. “That man is such a silver fox,” my older sister, Fate, said as we watched the announcement on TV. C. was standing at a podium behind John McCain, looking pleased as they announced the elderly senator’s victory. “How is that man even still a bachelor.”

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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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Hey, it’s another Tampa Bay teacher sex-related case. From TBO.com:

Police arrested an Azalea Middle School teacher Saturday on charges of sending pornography to a student.

Christy Lynn Martin, 32, 3457 Lynn Lake Drive S., was charged with sending pornographic photos to a 14-year-old boy’s cell phone. The boy is an eighth-grade student at Azalea Middle School, but is not a student in any of Martin’s classes, St. Petersburg Police said.

She is charged with one count of transmitting pornographic images through an electric device and one count of transmitting material harmful to a minor.

Martin was released just after midnight on $20,000 bail, according to the PCSO website. Updates later in the day said she and the boy exchanged photos via cell phone, and that the boy told a relative who told the boy’s mother, who told police.

Former Rep. Dick Armey was scolded after losing his cool during an appearance on Hardball last night, where he told Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh he’s “so damn glad” she isn’t his wife.

Walsh and Armey were in a heated debate about the relevance of Rush Limbaugh in the GOP.

“I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife, ’cause I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day,” Armey said.

“Well, that makes two of us,” Walsh shot back.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, waiting off camera for an appearance, later said on-air: “Dick Armey was so far out of line in the last segment with his sexist comments, and he owes Joan Walsh and your viewers an apology.”

Matthews later apologized on behalf of the former House Majority Leader, and said the comments were “overboard.”

Video below: Read the rest of this entry »

New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer is only the latest in a long line of politicians undone by their sexual urges (or demons), including many in Tampa Bay. My former political partner Mary Repper once described it to me as a “rich history of lust in politics.” Here’s a partial list of the juiciest stories of the bunch:

• Gary Hart was busted by two enterprising Miami Herald reporters in May 1987 during his presidential primary campaign after the reporters staked out his D.C. apartment and observed Donna Rice leaving one evening. It didn’t help that he had dared the media to put to rest rumors of his marital infidelity by saying, “”Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.”
  (for the serious journalism junkies out there, here is in the inside account by the Herald of how it got the story, in part 1 and part 2.)
• Circuit Judge Gasper Ficarrotta sees his judicial career in Tampa come to an end after it is discovered that he was having an ongoing affair with one of his bailiffs — in his own chambers. They broke up and bailiff Tara Pisano (at the urging of her attorney) wrote a journal about the affair, which later become public during a courthouse corruption probe: “He used his office like it was his private apartment. He had a couch, a blanket, another blanket that folded into a pillow, two small pillows, a radio boom box, many candles, a TV/VCR combo, a microwave, a small refrigerator, a coffee maker, eating utensils, snacks, cold drinks, beer, wine, piña colada, margarita mix, all the comforts of a home. He wanted to have sex on his couch, in the dark, in the light, with candles burning, in his desk chair, in his hearing room, in his closet, on the floor, sitting, standing…. The sexual encounters in his judicial office were countless.”
• Pinellas Circuit Judge Charles Cope was busted in California in 2001, trying to break into a hotel room to hook up with a woman he met while at a judicial conference. The details of his two days of public intoxication and damned-near stalking of the woman and her mother can be found in the Supreme Court of Florida’s condemnation of his actions (download .pdf here.)

Bill Clinton. Wilbur Mills. Jim McGreevey. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. There’s so many more that even the unlimited space of the Internet prohibits listing them all.

Who’s your favorite? And is wanting sex really so bad, or is it the way they wanted sex?