Donna Milo --  a Cuban-American, conservative Republican, transgender woman running for Congress -- says she doesn't like labels.

``I'm an American. I make my way on the basis of ability. My triumphs are based on my abilities, not on a label or a crutch,'' said Milo, a Miami Planning Advisory Board member running to replace U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, one of the House's most liberal Democrats.

Milo, 48, will speak Monday night at Fort Lauderdale City Hall, a guest at the monthly meeting of the Sunshine Republicans club, a conservative group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender South Floridians.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/1632958/transgender-candidate-a-label.html#ixzz0oFnlPsVI

From what little I know of American politics, this can only be a positive step.

Seems she has an uphill struggle to win, given the incumbent, but her presence, as a candidate is a welcome drift.

As a conservative Republican, it will be difficult for the reactionaries and biggots to attack her as an example of the dangers of liberalism.

Over here, it is quite interesting that most of the progressive steps that have taken place over the last 300 years have been initiated by the conservative wings.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the vote, assuming she wins, to see whether she picks up more swinging Democrat votes than she loses from disaffected Republicans.

Florida's Fighting 20th Congressional District is one of the most liberal/Democratic districts outside of say Pelosi's San Fransisco district (which last had a Republican in 1953) or Barney's Massachusetts District - so its uphill all the way, and WS is a pretty good campaigner, not to mention that Donna is not Jewish, and that's going to hurt in this district.

I would vote the incumberment democrat. She is more pro-LGBT even she is a staight lady than this Donna.

the counterargument to that, though, is that (assuming she's not the swing vote) she's in a party that is more often T friendly in the first place - it's status quo.

On the other hand, electing Donna would be a significant inroad into the GOP caucus - a chance to "put a face on" our community which mitigates the stereotypes.

This has value I should think.

She's not label free if she labels herself a conservative and a republican.

As for a TG aligning with the Republican party, here's an article that echoes many of my sentiments...

Why Would A Transgendered Candidate Run As A Republican?

She's not label free if she labels herself a conservative and a republican.

Well yeah, I thought that just with the headline, but that's the kind of humor that just always makes my day, like my fav from 20 years ago in SF "Anarchists Lobby for More Police Protection."  I live for stuff like that.  Just one more clue as to how clueless it all is.

But I really love this, from her Kickoff speach:
I believe that we must responsibly expand the use of our national energy resources to end our dependence on foreign oil. This dependence makes our country vulnerable to many nations that are not our allies and, in fact, seek to do us harm. By depending on these foreign sources, we transfer both our wealth and our power abroad.

Didn't someone try that?  Oh yeah, Jimmy Carter.  Good luck convincing the Party of Big Oil of any of that.

Quote from: Julie Marie on May 19, 2010, 01:28:02 PM
She's not label free if she labels herself a conservative and a republican.

As for a TG aligning with the Republican party, here's an article that echoes many of my sentiments...

Why Would A Transgendered Candidate Run As A Republican?

I believe the writer and the headline writer (editor?) applied those labels, not the candidate herself.

Well if your running for a Republican nomination, then you're de facto, a Republican.  Though her site is so thin on policy that its non-existent, though she does make a point of saying "Many of you know me as a builder and developer. I AM NOT A POLITICIAN", which, of course, are labels.

And, again, de facto, if your running for Congress, your a politician.  She might not have been one before, but as soon as you announce that your running for Congress, your all the way there.

And its nice, I think its good for people to have hobbies and all that, but running against DW-S in that district is such a hard roe to hoe that some of it sounds like the trivial foibles of the entitled affluent class who have the luxury of indulging in such pursuits. That district has a CPV Index^* of D+13.  As a comparison, Vermont has a D+13, New York a D+12, Massacutes is D+13, while Alabama, Alaska and Kansas have R+ ratings at about that same level.  While it doesn't mean it will be impossible, its going to take the equivalent of DW-S getting caught with a live boy scout or a dead girl scout for it to happen.

But it does bother me that she makes part of her 'qualifications' that she is unqualified.  Being ignorant shouldn't be a desired quality in a leader. Our leaders should be the best and brightest of us. How they conned middle America into this ideal that the people in charge shouldn't be much smarter than themselves... well it's friggin' criminal.  One side is activity, and fervently advocating a dumbing down of government like that's a solution, and I don't see it working out well in the long run.  I'm glad she was very successful as a contractor, but what's does that have to do with writing and appraising legislation? (Not like it's going to matter, anymore the GOP just votes no.)  I have worked, and still do, for some awesome crackerjack contractors, but I'm not sure I would want them representing me in Congress. 

I mean reverse that and you'd sound like a total moron.  Check it out.  "Hey Ed, I found just the guy to be the contractor for our development."  "Yeah, what kind of contracting has he done."  "Well none really, he was a congressman before." 

Would you go to an amateur doctor who never studied medicine for your GRS?  Then why would you want someone writing law who has never studied it?  I don't think you need to be a lawyer, but you'd have to work really, really, really hard to convince me that a college degree from a mainline college or university is pretty close to a requirement for a Congresscritter.

And here is why.  I'll pick on Glenn Beck and El Rusbo here, because they among the chief proponents of this notion.  Glenn Beck's problem, and Rush too, is that he didn't go to college (neither did his listeners, which is how they fall for this time and time again), and didn't learn the basic lesson that college is supposed to teach, or at least used to - and that is that you can have all the 'facts' right, and still draw the wrong conclusions, particularly when the second drives the first.  And I'm afraid that's what's going on here.

But you never know, she could win the nomination, certainly Karen Harrington and Robert Lowry are not exactly the most awesome candidates either.  Nor are there all that many Republican in the 20th to begin with, so few I think they can all meet at Denny' s (see below).   It does bother me that at this point she does not have a single endorsement she can list.

But after that, she's just toast.  Here is the Presidential voting for the Fightin' 20th for the last 3 elections.
2008   President   Obama 63 - 36%
2004   President   Kerry 63 - 36%
2000   President   Gore 68 - 30%
She's better looking than Adlai Stevenson for sure, but she's going to have about the same luck with DW-S as old Adlai had against Ike.



* - a very reliable guide, read all about it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index
My district has a D+35, and the Republicans don't even really bother running anyone.



ADDED:
From Blogspot, the comments are interesting
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/05/florida-conservative-gop-transgender.html

Comments on Fark, which is wide open and a pretty good cross section, also interesting
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5321933

Six minute Utube Video of her in the flesh doing an interview, but I'm confused about the whole "I'm running for Congress as an American."  Isn't that a requirement?  Oh yeah, she makes the point about labels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCwt8kl93gg&feature=player_embedded#

Quote
How they conned middle America into this ideal that the people in charge shouldn't be much smarter than themselves... well it's friggin' criminal.

It might derive from all the astounding screw ups brought to us by those "smart people" (yes, in both parties)

that said, very very very few of those who gain positions of actual power are not smarter than the most of us - it's a necessary skill to achieve the position.

It was such a riot to watch the left tell themselves how stupid Bush was (all the while telling themselves what evil machinations he had devised) as if he took a back seat to his Democratic opponents.

GWB got a lot of things wrong, but telling yourself he's stupid is mental masturbation. You don't get to that point by being an idiot.

Who said anything about Bush?  And whatever else (evil) they were, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney et. all. were anything but stupid.  Lets see, between the three of them we have Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Phillips Academy, and the Harvard School of Business.

Yeah, real everyday guys there.

And that's the real rub here.  I just love the GOP stance that leaders should be relatable to the "average joe" when none of them are anything close to average. They're usually born into wealth and privilege.  They went to the very schools they decry.  They advocate 'home schooling' but send their kids to Phillps, Exeter, and the Sidwell Friends School (cost, oh about $40K a year, real average there) and then off to Yale and University of Texas-Austin.

Then they go off and cater to a group of people so dumbed down that they've developed the sort of cognitive dissonance that allows them to listen to a woman with an unwed teenage mother for a daughter who goes out clubbing getting sloshed while still underage talk about family values, who brags about using public assets to generate income which is redistributed to the population in the same breath she slams socialism.

The cognitive dissonance to listen to a guy claim he learned everything he needs to know about how socialism is evil by reading in the public library.

The cognitive dissonance to stand up and shout "IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US, YOU'RE AGAINST US! YOU HAVE TO SUPPORT YOUR PRESIDENT DURING WARTIME OR YOU'RE NOT AMERICAN!" then immediately switch gears to obstructing and protesting every single thing the President does, down to the jokes he makes at the Correspondent's Dinner, the second their party is out of power.

Bush is mentally defunct of intelligence. It was his staff that had the brains.

Bush is also evil in that his presidency was a manifestation of a psychotic idiot's dream world. God I hope his wife leaves him. Not because I care about her but he needs to suffer.

I understand that what I wrote here may sound cruel but when you rake up all the limbs of the people who were maimed in his fun little sidewar with a nation he assumed would roll over for his 'mighty imperial self', then you may see that some hard feelings are due for Bush.

His administration did the exact opposite from what needed to be done for us to get away from the stupid middle east.  Yes. I referred to the middle east as stupid. Despite their whining about inventing written language, what have they done in the past 3000 years?

There may have been a lot of cunning people on the staff, but I don't think they are particularly intelligent.  The likes of Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld were able to achieve their own goals, but they did not exhibit they could actually solve problems.

If Bush is an "idiot," it is perhaps relative to other Presidents on the dimension of leadership.  Relative to the masses, he's still above average, maybe even well above average (at least by the standards of the Republican masses).  However, that's nowhere near good enough to be an effective President, and he was no match against the ambition of the people who ostensibly "served" him.  Keep in mind that this same personnel was able to use a popular mildly-conservative four-star General as a tool for four years and destroyed probably the better part of his credibility.  Even though Bush (unlike Colin Powell) could call the shots about who serves in the administration, for a Republican President hearing a lot of what he wanted to hear, it would have taken a particularly bright, shrewd, and/or prepared one to not get suckered in.  Bush obviously is/was not such a person.

As for the topic itself, I get the sense that hopeless Republican races are where the GOP does not mind allowing token GLBTs to run to "prove" the party isn't actively denying them the rights available to everyone else -- and in this case, they are being offered the "right" to legislate what the Republican party wants (not like they are going to win anyway, of course).  Maybe the real test of Milo's leadership is her ability to articulate to her party (whether she wins or loses) that it should stop catering to the bigotry -- but even she herself isn't convinced that GLBTs should have the same rights.

Quote from: Laura Hope on May 17, 2010, 11:56:23 PM
Donna Milo --  a Cuban-American, conservative Republican, transgender woman running for Congress -- says she doesn't like labels.

``I'm an American. I make my way on the basis of ability. My triumphs are based on my abilities, not on a label or a crutch,'' said Milo, a Miami Planning Advisory Board member running to replace U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, one of the House's most liberal Democrats.

Milo, 48, will speak Monday night at Fort Lauderdale City Hall, a guest at the monthly meeting of the Sunshine Republicans club, a conservative group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender South Floridians.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/1632958/transgender-candidate-a-label.html#ixzz0oFnlPsVI

"Label-free conservative" is an oxymoron to begin with. And how you gonna run for office and not have labels apply? That's too tricky by half, I feel like a con job is going on.

Gotta love it, she's anti-gay marriage conservative, that's just for a "man" and a "woman" you know.

I wonder what percent of conservatives will buy a person born with male gonads as "a woman" in the first place.

Look, we are in the area of first principles here. So there are clear lines drawn 'in the first place'. IME a conservative transwoman who is arguing a fundamental biblical line in terms of personal sexuality is on less than firm terra.

I think the "mainline" conservative position on gay marriage is, in fact, wrong. but in that the nature of being "conservative" is to be cautious about changing that which you perceive to be working, I understand where that comes from.

However, I think the liberal position is wrong too. I take a libertarian type position - marriage isn't the government's business. For anyone.

if I were in charge, there would be no legal status at all for "marriage" any more than there is for baptism - it would be an entierly religious institution.

What the state would recognize would be a - for lack of an original term - domestic partnership contract.

A DPC would be available to ANY two people (or more? not sure about how the legalities of polys would work) - hetro, homo, sibling, whatever - could contract together to receive the privileges - and duties/obligations - which are currently allotted to married couples.

If you want to get married, bully for you - if you want the law to take note of it in ANY regard, you go and get a DPC.

I think that this is in line with conservative values (it keeps government out of your religious business) and liberal values (it makes no discernment or judgment between people) and libertarian values.

---

Post Merge: June 01, 2010, 12:40:47 AM

---

I think the "mainline" conservative position on gay marriage is, in fact, wrong. but in that the nature of being "conservative" is to be cautious about changing that which you perceive to be working, I understand where that comes from.

However, I think the liberal position is wrong too. I take a libertarian type position - marriage isn't the government's business. For anyone.

if I were in charge, there would be no legal status at all for "marriage" any more than there is for baptism - it would be an entierly religious institution.

What the state would recognize would be a - for lack of an original term - domestic partnership contract.

A DPC would be available to ANY two people (or more? not sure about how the legalities of polys would work) - hetro, homo, sibling, whatever - could contract together to receive the privileges - and duties/obligations - which are currently allotted to married couples.

If you want to get married, bully for you - if you want the law to take note of it in ANY regard, you go and get a DPC.

I think that this is in line with conservative values (it keeps government out of your religious business) and liberal values (it makes no discernment or judgment between people) and libertarian values.

I would generally agree with the appropriateness of the suggestion but not your assumptions of who believes what.  The idea that liberals as a whole expect same-sex marriage sex specifically is not true.  Liberals primarily want equal treatment, and that extends to institutions like unions/marriage.  Legalizing same-sex marriage is the "mainline" liberal position, but I suspect it is done more to be in the business of "giving" (legal marriage to same-sex couples) than "taking away" (legal marriage from mixed-sex couples).  However, if a majority of conservatives would back a proposal where the law is only concerned with a standard contract between two consenting adult that provides for things like visitation, inheritance, custody, and anything else we are traditionally fond of awarding to couples -- and if legal marriage reverts to this contract -- I bet most liberals would take it.

Regarding three+ unions, those can exist, but they would generally be weaker contracts (at least by default) for logistical reasons -- there are 2+ people who would enjoy certain access and could make certain decisions pertaining to another person in the union, and they may have difficulty sharing or agreeing.  As such, some work has to be done to draw up such a contract, but some rights should still be possible.

Quote from: Laura Hope on June 01, 2010, 12:34:47 AM
I think the "mainline" conservative position on gay marriage is, in fact, wrong. but in that the nature of being "conservative" is to be cautious about changing that which you perceive to be working, I understand where that comes from.

Interesting.  While I was aware that there was a resistance to change, I saw it as fear of the unknown or an irrational fear (phobia) that was the source of that resistance.  I think for your statement to be more accurate I'd change it to "that which you perceive to be working for you".  But there's no doubt there's a resistance to being open minded, a lack of willingness to educate oneself and a serious lack of empathy that keeps the resistance to change so strong.

When people are out there fighting for the same rights you (general usage) have and you want to fight to prevent them from having those rights, wouldn't it seem the rational thing to do would be to question yourself why you don't want them to have the same rights as you? 

There's an element of dehumanization that comes into play when you can justify this line of thinking.  "They are gay."  "They are freaks."  "They are black."  "They are immigrants."  "They are not human, like me."  This is how we justify prejudice.  This is how we can work to deny our fellow human being their rights.  This is how we can treat people like crap and still sleep at night.  Dehumanization is what murders, rapists, pedophiles all use while carrying out their crimes.  Denial of one's rights is a crime, just not one "on the books".

We, as a society, seem to be upset when someone is physically hurt but when they are emotionally hurt, we don't seem to respond quite so well.  Until we take the time to really get to know one another, we will continue to hurt one another.  And we won't be able to see our fellow human being as a fellow human being.

Quote from: Kaelin on June 02, 2010, 09:07:25 PM
Liberals primarily want equal treatment

There's something wrong with a society that labels someone liberal because they want equal treatment.

QuoteThere's something wrong with a society that labels someone liberal because they want equal treatment.

You are all different not equal it is only in treatment as a legal citizen that you are equal. Economically, socially, intellectually and patriarchy we all are in a hierarchy.

Of course, we can try to change it.  The "hierarchy" is much different than it was 200 years ago or even 50 years ago, so people are certainly inclined to shape it as they'd like.  Just because something is in place doesn't mean it has to stay that way.