09/04/2007
High School Student Slams McCain After Gay Rights Question
In New Hampshire today, John McCain was slammed by a Concord high school student after responding to a question about gay rights, ABC reports.
After McCain reportedly answered student William Sleaster's question by reiterating his support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and "his belief in the sanctity of marriage" the student spoke up again:
SLEASTER: "Do you support civil unions or gay marriage?"
MCCAIN: "I do not. I think that they impinge on the status and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman."
SLEASTER: "So you believe in taking away someone’s rights because you believe it’s wrong?"
MCCAIN: "I wouldn’t put that interpretation on my position, but I understand yours."
ABC adds, "Sleaster went on to ask another question about how to help the working class in America, which McCain fielded by talking about the country’s need to figure out education and health care, and to secure the environment. Sleaster indicated that he wanted to follow up again."
MCCAIN: "You have one more? Go ahead you’re doing good."
SLEASTER: "I came here looking to see a leader. I don’t."
MCCAIN: "I understand. I thank you. That’s what America is all about."
High School Student to McCain: You're No Leader [political radar - abc blogs]
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 12:35 PM EST by Andy in Election 2008, Gay Rights, John McCain, News, Republican Party | Permalink
Like it?
Subscribe to FREE Towleroad daily headlines with our RSS feed!
RECENT STORIES:
William Sleaster would have my vote in a few years.
Posted by: dave | Sep 4, 2007 12:47:18 PM
Hot.
Posted by: Br!on | Sep 4, 2007 12:55:49 PM
Ballsy!
Posted by: David | Sep 4, 2007 1:11:53 PM
Cheers for William Sleaster, more of us should publicly challenge these guys when the opportunities arise.
Posted by: mike | Sep 4, 2007 1:16:32 PM
DA-YUM!
This kid ROCKS!
If only someone in the mainstream media would have those kind of balls.
McCain got punked!
Posted by: Zeke | Sep 4, 2007 1:17:40 PM
I'm all for challenging the candidates.
Posted by: Allen | Sep 4, 2007 1:19:03 PM
Damn, I wish I'd had cojones like that when I was in high school. Makes me think that all hope is not lost.
Posted by: Frank L | Sep 4, 2007 1:19:04 PM
At last SOMEONE has started asking the tough questions and pointing out these hypocrisies. I love that it came from a high school student... Sleaster rocks.
Posted by: Brian | Sep 4, 2007 1:21:33 PM
If McCain (or any other president - insert candidate name here) were to provide any rights to Sleaster, but call them something else, it isn't taking away rights. Sleaster's attempt to twist McCain's response to the question - and subsequent answer - is blatant and typical of militant gays.
Posted by: Stephen | Sep 4, 2007 1:23:40 PM
John McCain divorced his first wife for a younger, richer wife before carpet-bagging himself to Arizona to get a Senatorial seat by playing up his POW-ness. Why the views on marriage by a confessed cheater should be respected is something I don't understand.
Posted by: homer | Sep 4, 2007 1:26:27 PM
"Sleaster's attempt to twist McCain's response to the question - and subsequent answer - is blatant and typical of militant gays."
Actually, what you're talking about (which is not what the high school student did) is much more typical of right-wing religious fundamentalists and zealots, but whatever.
Posted by: Frank L | Sep 4, 2007 1:34:21 PM
Stephen, John Mccain said he would be against both gay marriage and civil unions, so yes Mccain would be taking rights away from the LGBT community. In other words your comment "to provide any rights to Sleaster, but call them something else" is completely inaccurate. Next time you type something as rude as this, try to read the whole story. This student was simply asking the questions that the media does not have the nerve or gumption to ask. Also, in response to your militant gays remark, I would rather be a militant gay than a bigot.
Posted by: matthew | Sep 4, 2007 1:36:31 PM
Warning, everyone. "Stephen" is the same Right Wing Troll who has infested Towleroad for quite a while now pretending to be gay but he's actually just a part of the Repug Noise Machine. Ignoring him won't make him go away any more than your ignoring a cockroach with more than two legs but you're wasting your time trying to change his mind because he doesn't have one.
Posted by: Leland Frances | Sep 4, 2007 1:48:52 PM
The McCain campaign is in a tailspin. He's socially conservative and fiscally liberal--quite the opposite of Ron Paul. Log Cabinites should come out and endorse someone before the first primary. It better not be McCain.
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Sep 4, 2007 1:50:35 PM
Stephen, John Mccain said he would be against both gay marriage and civil unions, so yes Mccain would be taking rights away from the LGBT community."
Not to mention that civil unions don't provide all the rights of marriage and never could anyway. There's over a thousand rights and privileges that come with marriage. Just because homophobes are desperate for there to be a "separate but equal" answer to the gay marriage issue, doesn't mean civil unions do, or ever could equal the rights bestowed by marriage. And I'm beginning to lose my patience with people who expound on the subject, but are totally ignorant to that fact (referring to Stephen.)
Posted by: Johnny | Sep 4, 2007 1:53:24 PM
Stephen's twisting of Sleaster's questions and observations is typical of self-loathing conservative closet cases.
Posted by: DB | Sep 4, 2007 2:04:22 PM
See? Even high school kids are better than "professional" journalists from the "mainstream."
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | Sep 4, 2007 2:07:40 PM
I'm sorry Stephen, but where does it say that this high school student was gay at all, much less a "militant gay"?
Posted by: Gregoire | Sep 4, 2007 2:22:22 PM
Gregoire:
I don't know that the student is gay. I assume he is.
General comment:
Much like the Federal ADA, if Congress wanted to write and enact laws that provide EVERY benefit to same sex couples (that married couples possess), they could do so - and call it civil union, domestic partnership, or the fruit loops law. Anyone touting "separate but equal" becomes an orstrich on this point, sticking their head in the sand.
Posted by: Stephen | Sep 4, 2007 2:41:15 PM
What's an orstrich?
Posted by: Scooter | Sep 4, 2007 3:04:40 PM
time for the token yay canada comment. yay canada. and thanks, god.
Posted by: brad | Sep 4, 2007 3:15:48 PM
time for the token yay canada comment. yay canada. and thanks, god.
Posted by: brad | Sep 4, 2007 3:16:52 PM
Oh god, Stephen's back.
At least he's being a bit more honest with his comments than he used to be when he was pretending to be just another gay man with a different point of view. "Militant gays" is much more in line with his real Focus on the Family way of thinking.
Where have ya been the last couple of weeks Stephen? Was there a FOF or Exodus convention in town that I didn't hear about?
Posted by: Zeke | Sep 4, 2007 3:43:04 PM
Wow Josh. How manly of you. We're all very impressed. Just make sure you don't skip English class to jump him as your grammar is quite awful.
Posted by: Scooter | Sep 4, 2007 3:43:30 PM
Typical hypocritical hetero politcial pig-someone get the pie out.
Stupid straights that believe in the sanctity of marriage decry homosexuality as the cause of the declline of marrige when clearly it's their own doings (divorce,extreme differences between the sexes,adultery,etc.)that cause the breakdown of family values and they have the gall to point the fingers at homos!!!!??
Hey stupid masses, take the plank out of your eyes before pointing the fingers at others,bunch of f*tards.
Posted by: Nikko | Sep 4, 2007 4:00:17 PM
STEPHEN,
The last time I posed this question to you, you failed to respond. I'll ask you again: are you a man who has sex with other men?
I look forward to your answer, sweetie.
xo,
peterparker
Posted by: peterparker | Sep 4, 2007 4:55:42 PM
thanks andy for deleting my comment because it also meant deleting josh's. strategy.
Posted by: sean | Sep 4, 2007 5:07:19 PM
Sleaster should have said responded to McCain's absurd comment, "I do not (support gay marriages). I think that they impinge on the status and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman" by asking, "Is it the status or the sanctity of your THREE marriages that you feel would be MOST impinged upon by gay marriage?"
Andy, thanks for deleting Josh's vile comment.
Posted by: Zeke | Sep 4, 2007 5:26:20 PM
sleaster just needed to point out to the senator that neither the federal government or the state governments are in the business of sanctifying ANYTHING.
Posted by: paul bartoloni | Sep 4, 2007 6:09:17 PM
Sleasters gutsy jabing at Republican/Democrat antigay politician McCain may seem like a minor incident in the campaign, but it represents a sea change in American politics. Our agenda against the Democrat/Republican Parties DADT and DOMA and for a tough EDNA are integrated into the politics of a new generation unburdened as never before by bigotry.
Sleaster’s linking that to “how to help the working class in America” represents the next big break for our movement – using the connectivity of our issues with those of our natural allies and working with them in independent political actions away from the treachery, corruption and ‘politics as usual’ of the Democrat/Republicans, the political organ of the billionaires.
Sleaster is light years ahead of the frauds masquerading as leaders who hustle and shills for the old politics that have kept us in chains for generations. Sleasters generation is ringing the death knell for sellouts like HRC, the Logheads and the Stoneheads.
I hope Sleaster can hook up with Pride at Work, the AFL-CIO’s GLBT organizing group, and the Youth for Socialist Action. Good job, bud.
www.prideatwork.org
http://www.socialistaction.org/ysa.htm
Posted by: Bill Perdue, RainbowRED Organization | Sep 4, 2007 6:55:10 PM
No one challenges what Congress COULD do for same sex couples, i.e., enact a law just as they did with the ADA. Civil unions with the SAME benefits could be afforded to same sex couples if they SIMPLY relax the campaign to call it marriage.
Posted by: Stephen | Sep 4, 2007 7:35:54 PM
Keep stamping your foot Stephen. You and your kind are losing your grip on this country.
The homos are taking over. We will soon accomplish the goals of our vast homa-sek-shul agenda by destroying marriage, families, this country and all civilization.
Bwaaaah ah ah ah!
It must be killing you to see that marriage equality in inevitable and that the younger generation will probably bring it to fruition faster than any of us would have imagined.
Now that I know who you really are, where you're coming from (Focus on the Anus headquarters) and what your real motivations are, I find you incredibly amusing.
Keep it up.
Posted by: Zeke | Sep 4, 2007 8:58:12 PM
It warms my heart to return to towleroad after a hiatus and find the same conservatives trolling here.
And I'm not being flippant. It really does bring a smile to my face.
Only a frightened Conservative - someone who's truly horrified that the Democrats are now the "Sexy" Party and the Republican Party has become a sad joke of closet cases and hypocritical deviants - would go out of their way to lurk on these threads.
Imagine the panic that drives a person like Stephen to come here and post his rhetoric in a flaccid attempt to obfuscate.
So what if he gets in a jab or two? Who cares if a few liberals take the bait and try to engage him? The best he can hope for is a brief distraction from just how irrelevent his social views have become in the 21st Century.
I couldn't ask for better validation of my own beliefs than that.
Posted by: mark m | Sep 4, 2007 10:03:50 PM
How does it turn out that high school kids are better at asking questions than CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the fucking retarded journalist who pussy foot around every question and have their lips surgically planted on to Bush's white ass.
jack jett
Posted by: Jack E. Jett | Sep 4, 2007 10:14:58 PM
Welcome back Mark!
You've been missed!
If you like the conservative trolls then you will be in hog heaven here at Towleroad lately. They have been swarming here like hornets lately. I guess that's what happens when their nest catches fire.
I find them to be sad but amusing.
Stephen most of all.
Posted by: Zeke | Sep 4, 2007 10:44:20 PM
The sanctity of marriage! I can't believe that any of these straight thugs can say it with a straight face. Just look at the divorce rate, violence against women, child abuse, all the straight idiots that stalk and/or murder women for breaking up with them. Straight marriage is a bad joke.
And what is it with the gay movement these days? We have no leaders at all and the organizations we have don't seem to do much except issue press releases.
Posted by: KeyWestDan | Sep 5, 2007 12:32:23 AM
Zeke,
Didn't you mean to say the "much maligned younger generation?"
Still you don't address my point: Congress can ink civil unions into law which would provide the same benefits that married couples have. But all you want to do is go on ranting that it's got to be called marriage, and then go ranting-at-large.
It's a childish form of behavior, you know.
Posted by: Stephen | Sep 5, 2007 1:48:08 AM
Does anyone else find it interesting that STEPHEN refuses to answer my question about whether or not he is a man who has sex with other men?
Posted by: peterparker | Sep 5, 2007 2:45:57 AM
I'd like to know why "Stephen" (or anyone else for that matter) thinks they have the right to decide what MY relationship is called.
I've tried to make this point before (I'm not sure if I've made it here)... These bigots CANNOT stop gay marriage. We HAVE gay marriage now. I decide what kind of ceremony I wish to have (whether it be religious or non... and yes, there are churches in just about every religion that will do a gay wedding ceremony) and I'll decide what I want to call it afterward. The only card these trolls seem to hold is the one granting the rights of marriage.
So, they may as well give it up... gay marriage is already here. You've lost. Game over.
Oh, and strangely enough, I haven't seen any straight marriages burst into flames just because gay people can and do marry. Hmmm... it MIGHT, however, stop a gay person from marrying a straight person. Something to consider the next time the rights issue comes up for a vote. As a straight person, would you REALLY want a gay/lesbian spouse????
Posted by: Dean | Sep 5, 2007 8:13:25 AM
I hate John McCain so much I could just shit! He needs to retire his sorry granny ass, check into Shady Pines, and sit in bed with a pudding cup.
Posted by: eric | Sep 5, 2007 9:40:03 AM
I feel like having an Olbermann moment. It's becoming clear that the US has reached a point where its leaders have no connection with their constituency except as a means of gaining & retaining power. If US politicians can't have an honest dialog with US citizens that doesn't fall back on hypocritical soundbites, then it's no wonder that the rest of the world finds it difficult to believe that the US can engage with them.
Posted by: Mike | Sep 5, 2007 10:32:01 AM
I applaud the young highschooler for his refusal to take idiot responses to his questions.
I have often wondered how we as Americans came to relegate "authority on marriage" to the religious institutions. Why should any cleric/priest have the authority to say who can marry and who cannot? If it is a legal status, why is their religious intervention?
As to gay marriage (and yes, I'm gay and in the fifth year of our relationship which was blessed by a church), I propose the following:
1. Why do we give clerics/priests the "authority vested in me" to pronounce the marriage in the first place? This violates the separation of church & state.
2. Use the term "civil union" to recognize the civil contract and joined legal status of two adults (regardless of their individual genders). This legal status should confer their rights & responsibilities in our society at large. Furthermore, the civil union must be performed by civil authority, NOT the religious institutions.
3. Let the religious groups define "marriage" and perform their marriage rites as they may. This is reasonable given the idea of freedom of religion.
4. Make it clear that a marriage does not make a civil union.
Posted by: Erwin | Sep 6, 2007 7:03:08 AM
The authority vested in me by god because my religion sez so. Who wouldn't perp that scam. LOL. Religion is and always has been a con mans game. I think if any of the religious from the pope down to the local evangelical preacher ever had 'god' appear to them, their hair would turn white just before they keeled over dead from fright.
Posted by: Bebe Rebozo | Sep 8, 2007 11:50:55 AM
Lets get the government and law out of the business of marriage. Leave marriage to the churches or other private groups. For immigration purposes and taxes etc. let everyone be available for civil unions. To me it seems the root of the problem is the government's recognition of any marriage.
Posted by: Steven | Sep 8, 2007 10:19:46 PM
Lets get the government and law out of the business of marriage. Leave marriage to the churches or other private groups. For immigration purposes and taxes etc. let everyone be available for civil unions. To me it seems the root of the problem is the government's recognition of any marriage.
Posted by: Steven | Sep 8, 2007 10:20:29 PM