Here is an email from my son-in-law, James Tanner III:
From: jptanner3@hotmail.com
Subject: Why I can’t be a Republican
Date: October 14, 2004 10:13:28 PM CDT
To: jns@pubblog.com
John,
I have said some harsh things about President Bush, I am not voting for him. I am voting for Kerry but am not terribly happy with him. I vote for him because he is not George W. Bush. However Bush’s perfomance is not why I am now completely estranged from the Republican party.
You can choose to vote Democrat or you can choose to vote Republican, or you can choose to throw your vote away by voting for some other party.
What is kind of annoying is that when you side with one party or another you get a mixed variey of stances on issues you both agree with and disagree with. Sometimes you wind up choosing your party based on one key issue. A bitter pill sometimes, but you swallow whatever else is on their agenda to support that key issue.
This year the Republican party made a choice to press the issue of gay rights. it was intended as a method to strenghten the resolve of the Conservative Christian Republican base, and to shear off Catholic and minority Christians (odd how Black, Hispanic, and Asian Christians are so ready to defend discrimination against homosexuals). When they did this I turned by back on the Republican party.
There are a few voices that don’t join in the din of intolerance (The Governator, McCain, and a few others). I found it odd that these very few socially progressive Republicans were given the limelight at the Republican Convention when their message is so at odds with the core Republican views.
Perhaps it was because nobody would believe Bush as a “Compassionate Conservative” anymore.
When I was young, I was neat, polite, well groomed and constantly barraged with the moniker “faggot”. I remember distinctly being called that as I was beaten up in grade school. I got to experience to a very small degree what it must be like to be gay. While not a member of this minority I feel great empathy for it, and support it.
The Republicans are using them to instill fear in their Christian base. The subtext of George W.’s and the Republican party’s message is clear, “Vote Democrat and get Gay Marriage”. Will gay rights, even gay marriage really damage heterosexual marriage? Will it make the country weaker? Will it make the faithfull less faithfull?
It might win Bush and the Republicans four more years.
It probably will keep me from ever seriously considering a Republican for the Presidency.
Aloha
J III
Old Saying “To be under 30 and not vote Democrat is to have no heart, to be over 40 and not vote Republican is to have no brain”