Harold Ford's New Gay Marriage Problem

[Bluebear]

Tennessee Democrat Harold E. Ford Jr. can never quite get on the most opportune side of the culture wars. :nopity:

Last year, he gave up his Memphis congressional seat to try for the Senate, and lost after the release of perhaps the most notorious attack ad of the 2006 campaign, which suggested that Ford fraternized with Playboy models and pornography producers. Now that he’s on course to become chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Ford is getting flak from the National Stonewall Democrats, an advocacy group named for the Greenwich Village bar where the modern gay rights movement was launched in 1969, for his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Ford cast one of only 36 Democratic votes in the House in 2004, and one of only 34 last year, for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Stonewall group finds those votes all the more upsetting, spokesman John Marble maintains, because before the 2004 vote Ford had privately assured gay and lesbian Democrats in Tennessee that he did not support the same-sex amendment.

He made no such assurances in last year’s campaign against Republican Bob Corker . Ford ran ads that explicitly contradicted Corker spots describing Ford as a backer of gay marriage. And when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in October that same-sex couples in the state are due the same rights and benefits as married heterosexuals, Ford demurred. “I oppose gay marriage,” he said. “This November, there’s a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage — I am voting for it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/22/cq_2161.html

[msongs]

1. evidently ford jr cant get a woman either nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Given The Way He Looks That's Impossible To Believe Unless He Doesn't Want One.

eom

[EFerrari]

2. He's not running for anything right now so can I call him a shallow mofo?

[Bluebear]

3. Not running for anything but DLC chair.

And you can call him whatever you want.

Shallow mofo is good for a start!

[BlueManDude]

5. Anyone who is so loved by Don Imus can't be all that great

Not that I wouldn't have wanted him to beat that shitbag Corker. Ford's doing what he's got to do to survive in TN politics.

[Bluebear]

6. I don't buy that "doing what he has to do to survive" business, though

Why, for instance, would he have to not only vote for the same-sex marriage amendment, but also endorse it?

[BlueManDude]

7. obviously he was burnishing his "pro-family" credentials as he

geared up for the senate run. Maybe he actually believes in his position? Anyway Ford has been doing this dance for years and he's not going to change.

[TerdlowSmedley]

8. As an expatriate Memphian, I'm glad to see Ford out of the House

and replaced by a TRUE progressive, Steve Cohen. Screw the DLC. They're DINOs, anyway.

[politicasista]

9. Like Harold, not a fan of his politics, but

I am glad that Cohen got in. The Tennessee Lottery has paid off well here.

[burythehatchet]

10. Ford, DLC chair

that's a match made in heaven.

[TornadoTN]

12. Precisely, take it from someone who worked with his campaign

I'm still exhausted from working for his campaign last year. While he is certainly much more preferable than Corker, in the end, they just weren't different enough on the issues to make a difference. His advisor's were so thoroughly entrenched in the DLC mindset that we lost a lot of good, dedicated people to their insistence that we formulate our strategy to appeal to Republicans.

I could wax poetic for hours about that experience, but lets just say that it was most certainly an unpleasant expierence in the realms of political campaigning.

[burythehatchet]

13. Sorry to hear about your experience

I have never liked Ford but would certainly have been happy to pick up one more seat. But when he pulled the stunt where he pulled his bus into the parking lot where Corker was holding his presser and started harassing him, I knew the race was lost. Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, I said to myself.

[lies and propaganda]

11. vomit... im not thrilled about him just wanting to be DLC Chair

much less his stance on gay rights. Hes a shcmuck who is being installed to a shcmucks position.