Conservative argument for gay marriage

Conservative columnist David Brooks has an article in the New York Times (Nov. 22) making the "conservative case" for gay marriage. Its an interesting take.

"You would think that faced with this marriage crisis, we conservatives would do everything in our power to move as many people as possible from the path of contingency to the path of fidelity. But instead, many argue that gays must be banished from matrimony because gay marriage would weaken all marriage. A marriage is between a man and a woman, they say. It is women who domesticate men and make marriage work.

Well, if women really domesticated men, heterosexual marriage wouldn't be in crisis. In truth, it's moral commitment, renewed every day through faithfulness, that "domesticates" all people.

Some conservatives may have latched onto biological determinism (men are savages who need women to tame them) as a convenient way to oppose gay marriage. But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender. We're moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried."

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity."

Natalie Maines has the Big Quote of 2003

You remember the controversy that erupted last spring after Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines spoke out against President Bush. Well, it looks like that will really go down in history. As a prelude for what may be coming as everyone looks back on 2003, VH1 has named it the "Big Quote" of the year, and is giving Natalie an award. The VH1 show will air on November 30.

We think this rocks----she took a lot of heat from a lot of jerks for speaking out. When they try to beat up on Natalie and make her shut up, they are really trying to silence EVERYONE who disagrees with them.

And to her credit, Natalie isn't backing down. On NBC's Today Show recently, she said "I think people were misled and I think people are fighting a war that they didn't know they were going to be fighting. And I think they were misled by people who should have been asking questions and weren't."

Rock the Vote is proud to stand by her and all of the Dixie Chicks. We're working with them, as well as a number of women artists, on our Chicks Rock, Chicks Vote campaign to get young women excited about voting in the next election. Check it out at our website!

Sharpton goes after the youth vote

Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, says that young voters will be key for the upcoming election. "The key to victory is going to be young voters, African American voters, Latino voters," said Sharpton, in the news article below.

This underscores the point that if a candidate speaks to young voters, they will respond. Sharpton is doing very well with the youth vote, according to the polls. The recent CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll, for example, had him with 12% of the youth vote among the Democratic contenders, not far behind Clark and Dean and way ahead of Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, and the like.

The article is here: Sharpton goes after the youth vote

Macs vs. PC's
So, you might have seen some news about how, during the Rock the Vote / CNN candidates forum, a young woman named Alexandra Trustman asked a question about "Macs vs. PC's" that a CNN producer apparently urged on her.

No doubt, this blows. We have been assured by CNN that nothing similar happened with any of the other questions.

Alexandra apparently has had a rough go of it back at Brown University, where she has been pilloried for asking what was obviously a flop of a question.

At the end of the day, though, let's remember that the forum had a lot of very sharp, very incisive questions on key issues: Civil liberties in the post 9/11 era. Civil unions for gays. Jobs and education. Occupying Iraq. Funding for Americorps. Sex education in the schools. On the whole, the event was a smash success.

You can read the transcript of America Rocks the Vote here:

America Rocks the Vote transcript

More radio censorship

The band Jethro Tull has been banned by a radio station in New Jersey. The station rallied its listeners to ban the group because the lead singer said that a lot of the flag-waving that is going on out there is more nationalistic than patriotic.

What's the difference? A nationalist would censor artists in the name of the flag, a patriot would defend them.


Check out the story.

Washington DC's Rock the Vote party
More than 300 young political activists came together at club 1223 on Connecticut Avenue, to watch "AMERICA ROCKS THE VOTE". More than 20 groups rallied to the cause including: Young Democrats of America, College Democrats, Women's Information Network, Service Employees International Union, Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, Democratic GAIN, Friends of Hillary, Stonewall Democrats, Emily's List, Leader Pelosi's Office, and all of the Presidential campaigns.

During the event, debate watchers mingled and discussed issues important to young people such as the economy and the occupation of Iraq. The attendees were engaged in dialogue on issues pertinent to young Americans, and before the debate began heard from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who remarked about the role of young people in the political process. The Congresswoman also spoke about the upcoming DC Democratic primary and the effort to mobilize voters. At the end of the evening, Rock the Vote's DC Community Street Team raffled tickets to the Rock the Vote Post-Grammy party in LA, Outkast Vinyl, a CD gift pack from Tower Records, a Balanced Bodywork full body massage gift certificate, and "boy boy 80" clothing.

For more info, please contact the DC Rock the Vote Street Team at: washingtondc@rockthevote.com.

98 registered watch parties from Rock the Vote candidates forum
As part of the build-up to the Rock the Vote candidates forum, we reached out to our street teams and allied organizations across the country and encouraged them to throw their own Rock the Vote parties. Well-----we had 98 different events registered on our website at the time of the forum! That's spectacular.

So now we want to post results--send us a round-up, if you organized a watch party or participated in one.

How bad is the job market, anyway?

A new report has just come out about the economic situation facing young people today... unemployment is nearly TEN percent for 18-30 year olds, and it is SEVENTEEN percent for young African American men...

Check it out the new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Tell us what you think. See it at www.cepr.net

More on this later.