Recently Tulsi Gabbard announced her intent to seek the democratic nomination for President in 2020. Just as with HRC I have a serious problem with rep. Gabbard.
Not that long ago Gabbard argued in favor of gay conversion therapy and supported an amendment to ban gay marriage. I take my support for LGBTQ rights and marital equality very seriously. HRC had also denied marital equality in her support of DOMA. While I understand that both women later flipped on the issue - that's not good enough for me.
Marital equality and LGBTQ rights are issues of fundamental fairness. That is among the most basic of egalitarian rights and "flipping" for votes because you're following the fads of the day signals a lack of good character in my book. Bad character for not having the courage to support such a fundamental issue to begin with as well as a complete failure to stick to their beliefs in the face of adversity due to changing times.
I have no problems with Liz Warren, AOC, Tammy Duckworth or a myriad of other women in politics. But these 2 will never get my support.
And while Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has "apologized" and says, "I regret the positions I took in the past, and the things I said" she still doesn't state her actual beliefs about LGBT people, nor does she say that her past positions were wrong. Sure she regrets them because of the political ramifications they are causing her now.
Notice what she did last week when she provoked a fight with Senator Mazie Hirono... Tulsi reinvented herself once again and is now a champion of "religious freedom." This seems to be her signaling to the anti-LGBT right. We all know that "religious freedom" is their new code for discrimination against LGBT people.
Some are saying Tulsi could be the Jill Stein of 2020. In a Vanity Fair article, more is discussed.
the religious freedom thing annoys me as well.
@kauva Mazie Hirono is my senator, and she has represented me very well in standing up for the real freedom of and from religion. I have felt well represented by her.
In contrast, Tulsi Gabbard is my representative and in comments regarding religion and God, she says she respects all religions, but specifically leaves out Jews and Atheists in her "inclusiveness."
There are just too many problems with her for me to support her in any way. This last election, she was the only democratic choice on the ballot for representative, but I simply could not push the wheel down on her name. She has a lot of people fooled with her charisma and photogenic surfing pix, and people simply don't do any further research on her.
Edit: Honolulu Civil Beat just posted this article, in reference to the "religious bigotry" comments and comments from our Indivisible organization.
@Julie808 my fellow democrats get rather angry at me over it but I refuse to budge anymore on gay rights. I had friends in the 80's who died of AIDS and wouldnt even try to get medical assistance thanks to the navy's policies. My best friend was one of those and he was a wonderful person. He didnt deserve to be treated that way and I won't ever sully his memory.
@Julie808 Enlightening, thanks.