Republican Ward 2 City Council candiate Lori Oien missed a fine time at the Equality Arizona candidate’s forum last night. According to organizers, Oien recinded the invite a week ago.

Too bad for us. We’ll probably never know how she feels about LGBT issues, or if she has a gay friend.

The forum’s sponsor, Equality Arizona, helped defeat Proposition 107 in 2006, which would have banned gay marriage and domestic-partnership benefits.

Candidates were asked about LBGT issues, like how they feel about a federal amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and woman, and even whether or not they know anyone, you know, gay. If scared of a mostly LBGT audience, Oien didn’t need to be: Two other Republican cadidates joined the table: Mayor Bob Walkup and estate planner Daniel Spahr. Walkup faces Green Party candiate Dave Croteau, and Spahr is up against city council incumbent Shirley Scott in Ward 4.

Walkup and Spahr had a chance to show that they aren’t your typical Republican candidates, with Spahr going so far as to read a statement of apology for nasty anti-gay comments those other Republicans seem to make from time to time, especially during those election seasons.

While last night could have separated the good and the bad, it actually gave a glimpse of the cluelessness of some candidates regarding LBGT issues–despite the fact that everyone had loads to say about diversity and equality. Some candidates didn’t really answer the questions and found those written statements on diversity super handy.

Green Party write-in candidate Beryl Baker, running against Democrat Regina Romero in Ward 1, particularly relied on her notes. Baker seemed stumped on LBGT-related questions, and when asked if she had been involved in defeating 107 and if she knew anyone LBGT, Baker said she wasn’t aware of 107. She said she was focused on local issues and her neighborhood (I guess from a Green Party perspective, Prop. 107 wasn’t a local issue), but yes, she has a few gay aquaintences.

The only candidates to give their two-cents on what presidential candidates they supported were Walkup and Spahr: Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney, respectively.

“I think we should really give a close look at Romney,” Spahr told the crowd. (Now I know what car Spahr drives–the one with the Romney 2008 bumbersticker that forced a double-take on the walk into the El Pueblo Community Center.)

Although Rodney Glassman, Oien’s Democrat opponent, started his opening statements with a nicey, nicey moment–giving a balloon boquet to Romero and getting the audience to sing Happy Birthday (awww)–he faced audience wrath as he defended his seat on the local Boy Scouts of America board. The Eagle Scout was told he should resign from the scouts. He responded he felt he could change the system from inside.

I guess that no matter how many times you bring out your liberal credentials–like working for Raul Grijalva– things like the Boy Scouts can still rub people the wrong way. The Boy Scouts national office doesn’t allow openly gay scouts or leaders to participate. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the organization’s policy when a gay Eagle Scout took the group to task for revoking his adult membership.

Oien, where were you? You missed a nice time to let us know how you feel about diversity, Prop. 107 and even issues like water and development. Thanks to Equality Arizona for the candidate show. Even if it wasn’t about who is good and who is bad, at times it sure was fun to see who is full of cuacha.

This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2007.

20 replies on “Boy Scouts, Mitt Romney and a Night of 1,000 Unanswered Questions”

  2. Actually, Glassman also named the candidate he supports — John Edwards. And you’ll find more about Oien’s disappearing act in next week’s issue of…

    …hey, Jimmy, can I plug my publication here? If not, pretend I finished that sentence with “the Weekly.”

  4. Kynn: Why couldn’t you plug?

    The Emailman: Don’t you find it ironic that someone using a pseudonym is asking about someone’s identity?

  6. Emailman: OK, OK, I’ll fill ya in: Mari Herreras is the brand spankin’ new staff writer for the Tucson Weekly. Everyone, welcome her.

    As for readers blogging … readers can only comment, not blog, at this time. But we’re looking at ways to get readers more involved with community forums, etc. We may also let some readers on the blog. This is all being discussed, and we’ll jump deeper into these issues after the post-BOT haze has lifted.

  8. Yes, too bad Oien didn’t show as other Republicans did (Mayor Walkup, whose talked about his lesbian step daughter) and Ward 4 candidate Dan Spahr, who was obviously caring & sympathetic, and there to learn about GLBT issues.) I would have liked to know if she was supportive of Tucson’s domestic registry, etc. The Mayor did make it a point to say that the City of Tucson did not financially support any organizations that openly discriminated against anyone, after Glassman tried to defend his membership on the local Boy Scout’s board.

  9. Mari writes, “According to organizers, Oien recinded the invite a week ago.”

    I got stuck on this sentence. Since when is “recind” a word? If she means “rescind,” then it’s a misuse since only the inviter can rescind, not the invitee.

  11. Glassman is a Democrat?? Then, why is he on the board of an organization, the Desert Caucus Political Action Committee, that gave the majority of their donationas to REPUBLICANS in the 2006 election cycle? What kind of Democrats support that type of funding in a critical race like the 2006 congressional elections? SHAME ON YOU RODNEY! Check it out at the Center for Responsive Politics website: http://www.opensecrets.org

  12. Though I think homosexuals should have all the rights everybody else has, and though I think politicians with homophobic views deserve to lose votes, there is something unseemly about trotting candidates out to find out whether they live up to a gold standard of homosexual acceptability.

    I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the gay-marriage issue is one of the key reasons John Kerry lost to Bush in 2004. The homosexual agenda was pushed much too hard at a time when the Iraq War should have been the single most important issue affecting the election.

    Karl Rove and other right-wingers jumped on the homosexual issue to divert attention from the war and other failed Bush policies. They push-polled people in such a way as to make it seem Kerry advocated gay marriage (when he was merely for the wimpy but step-in-the-right-direction “civil unions” compromise). Average Americans fell for it — including my father, much to my disappointment. With homosexual marriage as a key element in the election, people in polling booths thought, “A vote for Kerry will lead to lots of gay marriages,” and pushed buttons to vote for Bush. It’s an emotional and taste issue for many people, in a way that, unfortunately, a far-away war is not.

    I am going to go further on a limb and suggest that gay marriage is relatively unimportant compared to other civil rights. I do think it should be legal, but I don’t see a need to rush it and bring it to the forefront at key election times. Show me statistics that suggest the majority of gays/lesbians want to get married. Marriage is historically a path for heterosexuals who have children and want to rear them in a cohesive environment. (At this point I am not even sure heterosexuals have a good reason to get married, but that’s another story.) Gay males especially, with their often non-monogomous and more aggressive sexuality, do not have much inclination toward marriage. This is not a homophobic statement on my part, it’s what several gay males have told me.

    Gay marriage is low on the priority list among other political issues. The Iraq War is far more important, as is global warming. In wars, people die. In environmental catastrophe, people die. A lack of gay marriage leads to a reduced social standing and loss of work benefits. Granted these are important matters. But not as important as a gutted economy and $10 trillion debt and the sale of our government to corporate interests and rotting infrastructure and…

    Personally I am all for gay marriage. But it really stirs some people up in a gut-level way. And those people vote against it. And they can be easily manipulated. I hope activists will keep this in mind.

  14. I’ll see your neeners and raise you a nanny boo-boo.

    And to those who call me a snob, I can only say: Au contraire.

  15. There’s more to the story about why Oien didn’t show up. While I think she should have showed, I can’t really blame her that much for not doing so.

    More in next week’s issue of Colorez!, southern Arizona’s GLBTS newsmagazine.

  17. Aha figured it out — “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Support” (or Supporters)

    See http://www.yc.edu/content/campusactivities/PrescottCampus/clubs/glbts.htm

    I figured it related to either Gay-Straight Alliances or for Suggesting (in place of Questioning). Or “Str8” – although http://mindprod.com/ggloss/str8.html says that means “a manly gay” instead of what I guess is meant to be “what a normal gay is supposed to be” ? (raised eyebrow to promotion of stereotype)

  18. The gay marriage pushers are the reason Bush won in 2004. What were they trying to accomplish by making it an election issue? It’s like they wanted Bush to win.

  19. So what that gays only comprise 10% of the US population? Does that still make it right for someone seeking a public office to belong to a group that openly discriminates against a segment of our population, that is trying to attain equality? Would you say that if your son was gay and was denied admission to the Boys Scouts because of that?

  20. Nah, our “S” is for Straight — Hugh Dougherty, our publisher, wrote a column about it lately; we made the switch from GLBT to GLBTS as of issue three. I’m not sure if it’s still on the web, though — our site isn’t set up for archives yet, alas.

    It’s hard to tell what set of letters to use, really. I prefer — as does Wingspan — LGBT, but GLBT was set as our tagline just before I jumped on with issue one.

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