With Friends Like This.....

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, says it was a mistake when he threw the GLBT community under the bus in an interview on The 700 Club Wednesday.

During this interview, Dean said "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman."

Actually, it did not say anything about marriage.

Dean issued the following statement on Thursday, "I misstated the Democratic Party's platform, which does not say that marriage should be limited to a man and a woman but says the party is committed to full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and leaves the issue to the states to decide. The Democratic Party remains committed to equal protection under the law for all Americans. How we achieve that goal continues to be the subject of a contentious debate, but our party continues to oppose constitutional amendments that seek to short-circuit the debate on how to achieve equality for all Americans."

First, let me say I applaud Dean for going into hostile territory to sell the Democratic message, and it doesn't get much more hostile than Pat Robertson's TV show. It is fair to ask, however, if he was pandering to The 700 Club's conservative audience or just made an honest mistake.

It is hard for me to believe that the chairman of a political party could make such a clear mistake on their most recent presidential platform. Could Dean and the Deomcratic leadership believe that they can get away with alternately ignoring and antagonizing their GLBT supporters, taking for granted the fact that they wouldn't vote Republican under any circumstances?

Are they willing to sell out on GLBT issues during campaigns, rationalizing that they need to do whatever is necessary to get elected, then address those concerns?

Is the GLBT community willing to take that chance, supporting Democrats at the polls on faith and as the lesser of the evils compared to Republicans?

There is still time for voters to let their candidates know this is not an acceptable course of action for them to take.