So just so everybody is clear, nobody was thrown on the tracks yesterday. And it's not really clear what behavior is being excused here. Nobody was thrown on the tracks and nobody is excusing people throwing others on the tracks.

How many times were you thrown on the train tracks this year? And what did I excuse?

Where did I defend the behavior, exactly?

Nobody is defending that behavior. It just doesn’t warrant the hysterics that you’re perpetuating right now.

But you weren’t thrown on the tracks yesterday. As far as I am aware, nobody was.

One more budget increase!

Just one more increase! We’re almost there!

Just one more police budget increase and crime will finally be gone for good! /s

You gotta show up to work to fearmonger there.

It's easy to make the perception of crime go down when you're not inundating the public with headlines insinuating the city is a crime-ridden hellhole.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-stat-reality/

election over, sensationalized problem solved now

> this is no way shape or form related to outing anti gay politicians

If you say so, then it must totally be true.

I think you should refresh yourself on some gay history and how outing politicians who voted for anti-LGBTQ legislation was critical for the Queer rights movement: https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2019/11/14/how-outing-republican-25-years-ago-changed-politics-forever

In this case the idea is the same. Hold your Representatives who have power over your human rights accountable to honesty.

If a politician wants to use their sexuality to justify an anti-LGBTQ agenda, they can be very much held to account to answer questions about it. I still don’t understand why your indifference to asking politicians difficult questions should preclude anybody else from doing so.

You seem to be confused about what the problem is here. If Obama had lies about where he grew up, where he went to college, what his ethnicity was, or where he went to school, and there was clear evidence of this, it would be actual concrete evidence indicating he’s a deceptive person and not fit for office.

Of course one can be gay and married to a woman. It’s quite a bit more difficult to be married and “openly gay.” While that is still possible, certainly, it poses some major questions about the truthfulness of this man and his integrity as an elected official that he owes his constituency an answer for.

This isn’t a case of your accountant or mailman not telling you about their divorce, this is a U.S. Representative who will certainly be voting on critical legislation implicating gay rights multiple times through his term. His identity could potentially have no bearing on his job as a politician, but this man has already used his identity to justify anti-LGBTQ legislation. It’s clear it does have a bearing.

I understand you feel any questions about this are off limits and would be totally fine with him lying about his personal life— I do not. I really don’t understand why you feel you should get a veto on these sorts of questions, either, when it’s clear it’s relevant to so many others.

I think the pretty critical difference here is that Obama didn’t conceal a divorce or lie about his entire resume. Context is pretty important here.

Sounds like a question he should answer for the public.

Is is incredibly plausible to prove he was not “openly gay.”

Only okay to lie about your background and who you actually are. Gotcha.

It’s permissible for politicians to lie directly to their constituents so long as he votes for the platform he promised? The bar is in hell.

No. But politicians lying about every aspect of their identity to deceive voters is incredibly material to their role as a member of the U.S. House, one of the most powerful people in the country.

It’s our business because he elected to become a public figure and represent himself as openly gay.

At the very least you could verify the claim that he was “openly gay” for a decade. A fact that’s definitely complicated by the fact he had a wife.

He supports anti-gay legislation like the rest of them. The man also lied about being Jewish and his parents being Holocaust survivors, all to push the revisionist lie that the Nazis were Marxists. It’s very clear that this guy is foregrounding this identity, whether it be real or manufactured, to deflect any criticism for his awful right-wing bullshit.

So if he was lying about his sexuality but not anything else, that would be okay?

His sexuality matters because he foregrounded that identity and explicitly invoked it in his support of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” He’s very much advocating for policies that threaten gay people, and he’s using his identity as a gay man, manufactured or real, to justify that.

Groundbreaking we stopped there. Missing, you know, the dozens of allegations that followed. The fact you find this response and research adequate is depressing.