With Dems like this, who needs Republicans.
Pryor, who dodged my question entirely, now tells the Democrat-Gazette that he opposes repeal; that he thinks homosexuality is a sin and that he has reservations about housing gay troops with straight troops (as if this hasn't occurred forever). He's been fully indoctrinated by the Religious Right's false arguments — that military chaplains won't be able to continue to preach morally justifiable discrimination; that gays are just lying in wait to assault straight soldiers if only given the cover of open service.
That's my junior senator, Mark Pryor from Arkansas (sadly), and if we can't hound him into changing his vote he's going to make DADT Repeal and the DREAM Act unnecessarily difficult.
We've put a lot of work in as Arkansas progressives to lobby Mark Pryor into voting for both DADT Repeal and the DREAM Act. Arkansas as a rapidly growing Latino population that in ten to twenty years will dramatically reshape the state's politics and we're working overtime to bring them into the party as Republicans here work to alienate them. But Pryor doesn't want to help with that effort.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, that little announcement he made on DADT (running from a reporter who runs a progressive paper to the state's leading right wing rag I might ad) came after a soldier from Arkansas was discharged for being gay:
The courageous one would be Brian Muller, a gay Arkansas native, discharged from duties disarming bombs in Afghanistan after his sexual orientation was revealed, as reported in today's Democrat-Gazette.
Talk about scum.
So if you would, for the victims of DADT and the good kids that could be brought out of the shadows with the DREAM Act, please, call Senator Pryor. He clearly won't listen to his own constituents who have worked their asses off to get him to change his votes. Maybe some national pressure will help. We can't promise anything, but it's worth a shot for the sake of the folks he's hurting as he sides with bigots. Here's his office number:
(202) 224-2353
Update: It didn't take long for Pryor to clarify his opposition to the DREAM Act.
Another day, more misinformation from Sen. Mark Pryor. Yesterday, it was gay bigotry. Today, it's the brown people he's after, according to a Democrat-Gazette interview with him on his opposition to the DREAM Act. He opposes giving a path to citizenship for children brought to the U.S. without papers by immigrant parents. He thinks that a college education or military service isn't a sufficient entry fee for long-time residents — local high school graduates — who committed no wrong themselves, except by their existence on U.S. soil. His misinformation is in suggesting 1) that the presence of these children would somehow deny a college spot to others and 2) that their families aren't paying taxes. They are, of course, and often not receiving the benefits — Social Security and Medicare, for example — that come from the taxes they pay. If they go to college, they pay higher tuition tham students from Texas and other surrounding states.