The Three-Fifths Compromise
When Will The Media Treat The LGBTQ Community As Equal To Everyone Else?
In 1787, as our Constitution was being drafted, the Three-Fifths Compromise was reached, forcing slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
Article 1 of the United States Constitution states,
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
In other words, there were “free persons,” and slaves. To calculate the number of representatives each state would have, our Founding Fathers came up with a formula: one slave equaled three-fifths of a person, or, to put it an other way, when counting people, it took almost 17 slaves to equal ten free people.
That was America two centuries ago. Seems like, when it comes to coverage by the media, the LGBTQ community is still there today.
On September 12, just one month ago, 60,000 to 70,000 people showed up for a Tea Party rally, AKA, Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project. There was great distortion about the number of people in attendance, but FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver writes,
“ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol.”
This past Sunday, 150,000 to 200,000 people showed up for the National Equality March, an event designed to remind our government that LGBTQs are people too.
Evidently, the mainstream media disagrees.
Coverage of the 9/12 event was non-stop, across all mainstream media outlets. Cable and broadcast TV, newspapers, and online media all devoted what felt like 24/7 coverage to a group of people who took six months to organize 60,000 people to make it to D.C. People a lot older and probably, overall, a lot more financially secure than the largely under-thirty crowd that flocked to the National Equality March on Sunday.
Coverage of the National Equality March, despite the fact that there were three times as many people at this Sunday’s March as there were “Teapartiers,” went all but unnoticed by much of the media.
CNN and FOX News (who is accused of co-sponsoring the Tea Party Movement) provided around-the-clock coverage of the 9/12 event. But neither CNN nor FOX sent any reporters to cover the march. A far different strategy than they used for the far-smaller crowd of Teapartiers.
CNN and FOX, along with the rest of the MSM, devoted little time or coverage to the National Equality March, despite the fact that there was a far-greater cross-section of America present, despite the fact that there were three times as many people in attendance, despite the fact that even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid publicly supported the March, and despite the fact that the President spoke at the HRC Annual Dinner the night before.
(In fairness, C-SPAN and CNN covered the President’s speech at the HRC Dinner, and did provide a small amount of coverage of the March. But by comparison to the Teaparty rallies, not even close.)
Jon Stewart weighed in last night. The Raw Story writes,
“You didn’t even send your own camera crew?” Stewart exhorted. “You have a Washington bureau. Tell them to go the window and point the camera down. Gay people aren’t vampires. They show up on camera.”
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Queer and Loathing in D.C. | ||||
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It bears noting, as author Alvin McEwen writes of those who attended the March,
They didn’t lie about attendance numbers,
They didn’t post any phony photographs,
These people who came to Washington yesterday was the true cross section of the country. They were mothers, fathers, and children who, while some may say that they had every reason to be rude and ugly (being denied your basic rights tends to bring the monster out in some people), came with reverence and respect.
So, Mainstream Media, my question to you is, how many gay folks does it take to equal one tea party protester?
Three? Five? Ten? At what point does quantity matter? At what point do you care more about civil rights than tax policy? At what point do you recognize the incredible inequity of our laws that are biased against an entire class of citizens? At what point do gays deserve equal treatment, under and by the law, and by the media?
At what point do gays stop being three-fifths of a person?
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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
