Corey Hutchins is working out of Charleston these days, but he’s still out there reporting stuff that you might wonder about, but don’t read about elsewhere.
He did a story for Charleston City Paper about Vincent Sheheen’s unheralded appearance at the huge SC Pride Festival in Columbia over the weekend.
Not only that, he managed to get ahold of what Sheheen said at the event, which follows:
Friends, I want to thank you for inviting me here today – not just having me but welcoming me. And I couldn’t help but think of today’s theme: A Part not Apart. To me, being a part means listening, and hearing and sharing and celebrating our differences and also our similarities. I want to be a leader where everyone has a part. That means working together to protect South Carolinians from unfair treatment, bullying at work, at school, wherever it may be for any reason, for you and for anyone. It means working together to make sure workplace protections are in place to ensure people can’t be fired, fired because of their race or their gender or their religion or their sexual orientation. We all know that in South Carolina it’s one of the hardest places to earn a living and be successful. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in America, and we need to work together if we’re going to change that. And we want everybody to be able to work together. We’re not going to agree on everything, but we’ll be honest and listen and work as we strive together to make a better South Carolina. And only together, only together can we be successful. Only together can we salve the wounds that we’ve had in South Carolina for so long. Only together will we move forward. We’ll all be a part. And we won’t be apart. Together we’ll do it. Thank you so much for letting me be with you.
As I read that, it’s pretty consistent with what Vincent has said in the past, and what I had to say about it recently. Basically, what he’s saying overall to the voters in this constituency is that he appreciates and respects them and shares many of their goals, but doesn’t agree with them about everything.
Which people are allowed to do. In fact, I’ll bet not everyone participating in the SC Pride Festival agrees with everyone else who was there about everything, even about what you might call core issues.
I know that in this binary-thinking world, in which everyone is supposed to agree either with every position of the left or every position of the right, that’s hard to imagine. But people are allowed to agree with folks about some things, and not about others.
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It’s what he didn’t say that matters. As usual, he avoided the primary subject that gays are interested in these days – marriage equality. He didn’t have the guts to say what he believes. I know, I know.. it’s because he doesn’t want to hurt their feelings.
I hope he gets elected and I hope someone is able to bring a marriage equality bill in front of him. Then we’ll see if he wants to treat everyone equally.
“It’s what he didn’t say that matters.” Doug R
It is never what politicians say that matters. It is what they do. Take what Obama said of relevance to gay marriage before he was elected to his first term. Compare that to what he said prior to being re-elected (his “evolved” opinion). Ignore both of his statements and dwell on what he actually did relative to D.O.M.A., etc.
Like Obama, Sheheen is just another lawyer in a government where they have been so supernumerary for so long that they hardly represent the 99.8% of the public whose lives follow other avenues.
A major reason many elected lawyers are partial to anthropomorphic climate change schemes and special rights for gays is simple: there are 16,000 – 28,800 lobbyists (> mostly attorneys) working out of K Street helping them stay in office if they cooperate. Just as lawyers are over-represnted in government, gays may be (let’s bet) over-represented among D.C. lobbyists.
I just hope he gets elected.
Wouldn’t you rather have a Democrat than someone who pretends to be one?
You left out this part from Hutchins’ article:
” Sheheen’s campaign didn’t publicize his speech at the Pride event, and campaign manager Andrew Whalen didn’t respond to e-mailed questions about it Monday.”
Wouldn’t want the word to get out to those Republicans he needs to crossover that he was there.
Are you absolutely blind to his political games?
Actually, I didn’t “leave out” anything. I actually didn’t quote his story at all — I just repeated the text of what Vincent said. That’s what interested me, and here’s why: Over the weekend, Chris Haire Tweeted, in response to something Corey had posted, “Sheheen speaks at LGBT fest? That makes his anti-gay marriage stance even worse. What saw (sic) you now @BradWarthen?”
I responded, “I don’t know. What did he say?” In answer to that, Corey sent me a heads-up when he got the text. And that’s how this post came into being.
I gave you the link, so that you could read it all yourself. If I had copied the whole piece here, I would have run afoul of something called “Fair Use.”
And no, I’m not blind at all. I think I see what’s going on pretty clearly. I see Vincent Sheheen honestly and sincerely trying to navigate through a very difficult situation in which he disagrees on an issue of importance to part of the Democratic base.
My point is that Hutchins’ article was far more balanced than trying to make it sound like Sheheen was doing anything more than trying to appease some LGBT people without making it known to the general public. The fact that it was done on the (ahem) downlow was a calculated decision.
Y’all might enjoy this. The context-sensitive Google Adsense placed a new banner ad at the top of my blog after this post went up. It says, “More GAY Dating Sites=More MEN.”
I’d give you the link, except Google would cut me off from ads if I so much as clicked on one of them. They’re strict about that. That might even apply to right-clicks; I don’t know. But I’m not taking chances.
Doug, a democrat can’t win in this state. In rational politics one goes after the best compromise one can get, and hopes that people start responding differently. Wishing for the moon when you can’t get airborne is just plain silly.
FYI, I told Corey that I had posted what he’d sent me, and he replied, “Cool – Columbia media has been silent on it, and I bet the Sheheen camp is just fine with that.”
In response, I said:
What has Vincent Sheheen done as a legislator to further the causes of the LGBT community? Has he sponsored any bills? He has one very clear example of voting against gay equality.
What I don’t understand is how people (anyone) can support partial civil rights for any class of citizen? It’s as if certain politicians want to return us to the bad old days of segregated lunch counters and “separate but equal”. When it comes to fundamental human rights, there’s no half-assing things.
They don’t view it in the way you’ve framed the debate – which is entirely in favor of the way you view the issue.
What about this latest contretemps in the police department — the weird decision by Santiago to ORDER cops to participate in the march. Not work to provide security, but participate (if I read it correctly).
That’s like — I don’t know — requiring people to participate in the Walk for Life. (As we know, the proper way to get people to participate in the Walk isn’t to order them, but to nag them unmercifully.)
He backed down, in consultation with the city manager, who said, “Practically speaking, why not make it voluntary?” Practically? Not quite the word . Surely she meant to say, “ethically.”
Anyway, another unnecessary tangle involving the CPD. At least this one was resolved. Others are still out there..
I just finished reading the article about the SC Pride march in The State. My first question is, what is the protocol for “Parade Duty” in other departments, and in the CPD. Are detachments of officers typically required to march as part of their duties? Is it usually voluntary, or mandatory? If it’s voluntary, are they paid for their time and covered by the city’s liability? Who requested and who authorized the CPD to march? What is the process for that? Having and adhering to written policy would avert this kind of thing, so I think it’s important to know what the department’s or city’s policy is.
It’s a confusing story. It repeatedly uses the verb “march.” At no point does it say that the officers were refusing orders to provide security for the event. It keeps saying “march,” as in participate.
And yet, the message to Benjamin complaining about the situation is characterized this way:
… which seems to imply that they were refusing to perform police duties at the event. But the rest of the story reads like they were being ordered to be participants in the event. I don’t see any other way to read the verb “march.”
So which was it? Perhaps the writer was confused. I find that with issues such as this, people who feel passionately one way or the other tend to ignore distinctions. But this is a HUGE distinction, the difference between night and day.
So which was it? The State didn’t make it clear at all.
Heard that the State got it wrong. The officers were being tasked to work the festival, not March in a parade. Which makes their refusal inexcusable. Fire them. Done.
Except that the way things have been happening with the police department, the officers were probably confused as anyone in what they were being asked to do.
So slow down before you go firing people.
I think she meant exactly “practically”– if volunteers can avert forcing someone to do something that is threatened to result in a lawsuit, practically, that is a win. It is not ethically a win as the anonymous emailer points out. Ethically, the police cannot refuse to serve citizens because of who those citizens are. As you point out later, it is not clear if this was police service or not.
What if an officer refused to be in the funeral cortège for a gay officer?
Civil rights aren’t left or right.2nd class citizenship is just wrong.
It’s not against your civil rights or anyone else”s for someone to refuse to be required to MARCH in some “pride” parade.
I’ve never marched in or attended a ‘Pride’ festival.Pop culture;TV,movies,fiction lite,etc have done more to change the culture than any political action.The older generation,including myself,will die off,and homosexuality ,will not be an issue.Civil rights/gay marriage will be the law of the land…
probably so – and there will always be people like me that think it’s immoral – and no “law” will change that – and that’s fine. We’ll never agree on many laws I am sure.
But of course that’s not the issue I mentioned above.
It’s not a violation of your civil rights for someone to refuse to be required to march in any parade- including a gay one.