Tag: gay rights

New in the collection: Winston-Salem debate pinback

Pinback featuring photo of Al Gore for 2000 Presidential Debate in Winston-Salem

 

” Guns, gay rights and health care drew the hottest exchanges in the second presidential debate between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush….

“On gay rights, the two agreed that marriage is a union ‘between a man and a woman,’ but Gore pointed out that he and both  vice presidential candidates, Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney, backed anti-discrimination protections for gay unions while Bush did not. Bush defended his support for equal not ‘special’ rights for minority groups….”

— From “Sit-Down Debate Makes For Fewer Bush, Gore Jabs in Round Two” on NPR Online (Oct. 12, 2000)

Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Bush version of this handsomely designed pinback, but I can’t recall seeing it.

 

Hoey stood in for McCarthy in investigating gays

“Despite much speculation, no one really knows why longtime bachelor Senator [Joe] McCarthy was significantly uninterested in the problem of homosexuals in the United States government, but the task was left to North Carolina Democratic senator Clyde Hoey and Nebraska Republican senator Kenneth Wherry….

“Senator Hoey’s investigations produced the ‘finding’ that homosexuals threatened national security. A scant seven years later, a Navy Department report concluded that the Hoey report was, well, hooey, but after 1950 the homosexual security threat was a legislative fact. In April 1953, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450 barring ‘sexual perverts’ from federal employment.”

— From “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution” by Linda Hirshman (2012)