Philly Gay News (paper), Clinton, Obama

[anigbrowl]

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20080403/D8VQL5SG0.html

So Hillary Clinton gave an interview to the Philly Gay News (the interview is at http://www.epgn.com/). They say they asked Obama and McCain for an interview, but both of them declined.

I am a little mystified, since Obama was talking about gay marriage vs. civil unions and so forth the other day, and basically saying a lot of the same things as Hillary discusses in her interview, at least to my uneducated eyes. Both of them say that removing the legal obstacles that hold back civil unions (compared to marriage) is important for them. Neither of them endorse federal 'creation' of gay marriage by fiat - Hillary says it's a matter for the states.

She's cautious about saying that the Department of Education probably doesn't have the power to get involved in crafting gay-friendly school lesson plans (and I'm not surprised, since you know the idea would drive the wingnuts insane). Curiously, the interview never touches on the Defense of Marriage Act - I don't understand why this wouldn't have been discussed in an interview.

Now, I know Obama has come out strongly against DOMA, and spoken out against Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and just the other day he was going on about there being some 1200 different laws or regulations that created inequality between civil unions vs. heterosexual marriages. So I am also surprised that he declined PGN's request for an interview, since he and Clinton seem to be pretty much on the same page in terms of how they would approach the issue in office. Some gay posters here even argue that Obama's commitment to repeal DOMA one-ups Hillary's - I don't know, I'm just observing that gay Obama supporters have specific policy reasons why they support him.

Now, there might be some mundane practical reason for declining an interview, to do with deadlines, or so, but that seems somewhat unlikely. And in any case, it's too late - it now looks as if Obama would prefer not to talk to them (and is reported as such in the wire services, who said nothing at all about what Obama's actual positions are). But as I laid out above, I don't see why he would avoid it, when in fact he's seemed quite eager to engage the issue, eg bringing it up on Hardball the other day, recent ad buys specifically targeted at LGBT audiences (vs using a generic ad) and so on.

am I missing something? Is the PGN very pro-Hillary (eg completely avoiding questions about DOMA), or are they anti-Obama (eg lots of past editorials about McClurkin)? From a quick read online it seems very moderate (not to mention better than the Bay Area Reporter, the local gay newspaper here). Is there more than 1 gay newspaper in Philadelphia?

your thoughts?

[billbuckhead]

1. Hillary's opponent is all lip service about gay rights, no skin in it for him.

Remember, the redeemer didn't want his picture taken with Gavin Newsome. Though some thought he didn't want to be upstaged by a better looking guy.

[blm]

2. Open government is crucial to every issue including gay rights. Keep supporting closed government

Democrats and you'll keep seeing ALL our rights continued to be walked backwards just as much as gay rights were walked back in the 90s.

[anigbrowl]

3. Then why did he bring it up on Hardball the other day?

You say it's all lip service, but you don't address any of my specific questions. Plus you don't exactly strike me as an objective commentator, sorry.

[LadyVT]

4. Yes, this just came out on the AP wire, as well

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080403/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_gay_rights_2

Makes Obama look pretty bad, IMO.