FAIL: Republican Outreach To Gay Community

Republican Tom Coburn co-author an article for The Advocate, the premiere “gay” magazine, where he tried to explain it to the gay community that they’re best interest is to oppose the Democrats’ healthcare reform attempts.

Why should the Gay community oppose the healthcare reform?

According to the Republican and obstetrician, Coburn of Oklahoma, the structural inefficiencies in the way the Ryan White CARE Act distributes AIDS prescriptions is an example of why public option will eventually kill us all.

"These bureaucratic inefficiencies and mismanagement have literally cost lives," the article said.

This is Tom Coburn, the man that said in 2004, while we were in a war with terrorism and extremism in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the greatest threat to Americans was the Gay Agenda.

While Americans were getting blown up in two foreign countries and while we were in danger of who knows what from Al Qaeda, Coburn said the “gay agenda” is the "greatest threat to our freedom that we face today.”

Coburn is against the gay community. Coburn has opposed gay marriage, gay adoption, and anonymous HIV testing.

His chief of staff a month ago said all pornography was “homosexual” pornography, as a way of warning Americans that watching porn will lead to the homosexual lifestyle.

What makes Coburn think the Gay community, that he is all in favor of denying basic rights to, will listen to what Coburn has to say?

I don’t know either.

Here are a few comments from readers of The Advocate about the article co-authored by Tom CoburnTom Coburn:

“Isn't it funny that when a GOP senator wants to talk to gay people, he thinks we all have the AIDS? He apparently missed the e-mail about how members of the LGBT community have jobs, buy homes, have long-term partners, sometimes have children and we get old. Like any straight American, we worry about losing our jobs if we have an accident or get sick; or that our employer will eliminate healthcare benefits; or that because an employer simply doesn't like gay people that we will get fired; or that if we get sick and aren't covered we'd lose our houses to exorbitant medical costs; or that our partners might have healthcare benefits but our family doesn't qualify for those benefits as do straight coworkers; or that maybe we do get partner benefits from one partner's employer, but have to pay income taxes on those benefits (when straight coworkers do not); or that many of us are entrepreneurial and therefore have to purchase health insurance on the open market. AIDS does not define us.”

“I can't figure out what's more repulsive, a gay "leader" teaming up with a loud-mouth ignorant bigot like Tom Coburn or the Advocate providing the two of them a platform. Although it is probably useful for us to see the true colors of GOProud. They seem to be much more interested in helping the GOP spread its lies regarding health care reform than standing up for gay people. Coburn & Barron's commentary is incredibly misleading. The health care reforms now being considered in the Congress would have saved thousands of gay people with HIV, and they will eventually save tens of thousands of Americans every year. Their contention that public insurance systems are costly & inefficient is belied by the model of both MediCare and the health insurance systems of every single other industrialized democracy, all of provide health care for substantially less than we do.”

The other co-author of the article is GOProud’s Christopher Barron. GOProud is a gay pride group with conservative views.

More responses from the readers:

“I have no problem with The Advocate hosting the discussion. If Senator Coburn wants to discuss an issue with us as equals, first, he will have to work to overturn DOMA, end DADT, pass ENDA and acknowledge publicly that we homosexuals are equals in all matter of civil law in all 50 states and at a federal level. Until then, I ignore him.”

“It is disgusting to see another short-lived GOP front group shilling for the Republicans (remember Mary Cheney's 'Republican Unity Coalition'?). As usual, their first point of reference with the gay community is to stereotype them as "AIDS people". It's common knowledge that if you don't have insurance and contract a serious chronic disease, you can sell hello to bankruptcy and goodbye to your savings, 401K, retirement, and nest egg. We are the only country in the world that rapes its people financially when they are the most vulnerable. Shame on you GOProud for spreading more lies and fear.”

All the comments were not negative. There were some that agreed with what Coburn had to say, though in my research I would estimate well over 90% of The Advocate readership did not buy Coburn’s viewpoints.

Just like they didn’t buy Coburn’s viewpoint on the rampant lesbianism in America:

“Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

Coburn thinks that just because schools in southeast Oklahoma have stopped sending girls to the bathroom in pairs is evidence that lesbians are popping up everywhere, even in (gasp) southeast Oklahoma.

No, the rule for girls to go alone to the bathroom isn’t because maybe the girls in that school district were given equal treatment as the boys. Or that girls were found abusing the buddy bathroom system by perhaps wasting more time in the bathroom than they would have without the buddy system (and not abusing the buddy system by having lesbian sex in the bathroom).

Did Coburn co-author the article because he cares about “the gays” and the “gay agenda” or because he just doesn’t want healthcare reform to pass?

On a more substantial note: here is a link to an article that counters Tom Coburn’s health care proposal. http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/14/questions-about-the-patients-choice-act/

Tom Coburn trying to help the gay community is like Ahmedinajad trying to help the Jewish community.