“As Maine Goes, So Goes The Nation?” Bull. Part Two.
The Tyranny Of The Majority Is Unacceptable
This is Part II. You can read Part I here.
So, the results in Maine suck.
I need you to take a deep breath and stay with me for a minute.
If someone came up to you and said, “Hi! I’m going to give you this fabulous prize – which you already deserve – and all you have to do is jump fifty hurdles, which no one has ever cleared even one of before, what do you think? Are you ready?” You’d say, bullshit.
Right?
“Hi! I’m going to give you marriage equality – which you already deserve – and all you have to do is get the majority of voters to say yes in each of our fifty states, which no one has ever won even once before, what do you think? Are you ready?”
That’s right.
Bullshit.
Take another deep breath.
There are several truths I need you to accept.
Marriage is a civil right. Disagree? The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t. It’s already stated marriage is a civil right.
The United States was designed to protect the rights of all people, and to free them from the “tyranny of the majority.” Think it doesn’t exist? Plato did. He first floated the concept back in 380 B.C. Disagree that America was designed to protect minorities? Founding Father James Madison thought it was. So did did Alexis de Tocqueville – he coined the term in 1835 when he wrote “Democracy in America.”
If you live in this country and do not identify 100% as heterosexual, you are oppressed. You are automatically and effectively judged and treated differently than those who do. To what degree depends on your socio-economic status and geographic location.
David Mixner yesterday called this “Gay Apartheid.” I have struggled with the term all day. While I agree we share many of the same challenges in theory as Blacks in South Africa, the practices against us are not so blatant. That’s the beauty of oppression executed well – accomplishing it so the oppressed do not recognize their own oppression. In the end, the term doesn’t help us win hearts and minds, and that is still a battle I’m struggling with as well.
While we’re on the subject of the LGBTQ community’s relationship with the African American community, let me say this. Our struggle is similar. Our challenges were and continue to be similar. African Americans in this country are in terrible straits, and they, too, have every right to be angry. Just as we say no one is equal if we’re not, we must say no one is equal if they’re not. And they – African Americans – are not treated equally. We all can learn so much from each other. And we must.
It’s time to partner with the African American community. It’s time to understand their anger and their pain and realize that they are us in a few short decades if we don’t work together to solve the problem of class and inequality.
One of the “perks,” if you will, of being gay was that we were indoctrinated almost from birth with the supposition that we couldn’t possibly get married and have families. We ended up working a lot and making a lot of money. It’s true, the disposable income of gays and lesbians in America was the focus of marketing studies and every CEO ten years ago.
But now we’re forming families and raising children and you know what? That “perk,” that extra disposable income factor is slipping away. I was talking yesterday with Justin Elzie, the first Marine to come out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993. He asked me, “Are we going to be able to afford all these marriage battles?” The answer, quite frankly, is, “No.”
We’re not going to win marriage equality at the ballot box. Nor should we be forced to try. Nor should we ever have agreed to it. It is morally reprehensible to ever have asked us to offer our rights up for a vote. No other group in this country ever had to try to secure equality at the ballot box. It has always come from the judicial or legislative branches of government, not from the people. As former governor Jesse Ventura said election night, “If you put it up to the vote of the people, we’d have slavery again.”
So should we, as I wrote the Washington Blade mused yesterday, “make the more pragmatic push for civil unions?†Hell no.
Can you imagine if African Americans or interracial couples had been offered domestic partnerships but not full marriage equality, in essence and in name? Can you imagine, for example, Asians, banding together to secure “everything but marriage,” as we did on Tuesday in Washington state? What if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” were applied to Hispanics? Or if you could be fired in twenty-nine states just because you were blond?
Americans today would never stand for that. Nor should we.
It is time for this country to cease half-measured attempts at solving full-measured crises. As I wrote in Part I, this Rumsfeldian battle-on-the-cheap didn’t work in Iraq, it didn’t work in California, and it didn’t work in Maine.
It’s time to demand full equality, in essence and in name, in every aspect of our lives. And it’s time to look at our leaders and say, “We’ve grown up. We’re not playing your games anymore.”
Oh, I know. “Be patient.” “Work with your elected representatives.” “No battle for civil rights was ever easy.” “It’s a long hard slog.” (Sorry, that “Rumsfeldian” thread is still in my head.)
I disagree.
We can no longer continue to buy into the concept of incrementalism, getting and giving up and getting and giving up our rights, slowly but surely, for decades to come. Win marriage in California. Lose marriage in California. Win marriage in Maine. Lose marriage in Maine. And yes, forces are forming now to repeal New Hampshire’s hard-won gay marriage law.
The time has come to say to Uncle Sam, enough.
Civil rights are federal.
Who investigates civil rights abuses? The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Because civil rights are federally protected. And marriage is a civil right.
In a country that tells us from the moment we’re born that we can be fired in twenty-nine states – just for being gay, that you cannot marry in forty-five states, that your government will not recognize your marriage at the federal level, that you cannot serve in the military, well, tell me that is a free society that offers full equality for all its citizens?
There is a difference between society not accepting groups of people (which is wrong to begin with,) and the government actively making laws against a group of people, taking away rights from them – rights enjoyed by the majority. And that’s what has happened here. Laws have been made that take away rights that exist because we are human beings. Inherent rights all humans possess, by virtue of their being. We cannot allow this to continue. We must find a different path to secure our equality.
So, you will ask, will I continue to fight for marriage? Yes. Will I continue to fight for marriage state by state? Yes. Because to not would be unfair to us all. Will I continue to fight for repeal of DADT and DOMA, and enactment of ENDA? Yes. Will I continue to fight to have the LGBTQ community included in the Civil Rights Act of 1969? Yes.
But will I work to take us out of what I call the “whack-a-mole marriage machine?” Will I work to get us to the point where we decide what the game is and how we’re going to play it? Hell yes.
This is Part II. You can read Part I here.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
