Sounds as if you are hoping that Obama will stand tall on the LGBT issues.

He’s already done more than all previous presidents put together on that score. Which was completely unexpected. I thought that he’d be reticent on those issues and maybe get us out of the bombing wedding parties industry. At least he did something meaningful. Romney would have plowed us under while fapping to Gitmo torture videos.

Just like he did on Gitmo, bank fraudsters and the “Patriot” Act.

Who knows????  It may work out for you.

One thing’s for sure.  He got your vote.  Second time round – he won’t need to ask for that again.

Your entire “skating on privilege” view is reductionist, dismissive, and is divisive sophistry of the worst kind.

No, it’s reality. Do you have legal rights that I don’t have? Then you have privilege.

As it stands, I’m a second class citizen. I reserve the right to consider that in my voting choices. You can continue your gormless strategy to put more right wing Republicans in government.

And I voted for a candidate who was in favor of your being allowed to marry the person of your choice, too.

So I concede not a millimeter of moral high ground to you on that point.

All I’m asking you to do is say “I understand that Obama may interpret my vote for him as an endorsement of his military and civil liberties policies, even though I don’t agree with them.”

You say that, and we have no argument with one another.

Except when I say it to pass some sort of creepy discussion-forum apartheid screening in which a moderator has determined that certain opinions are apparently only validly expressable by those with a particular DNA configuration.

Then I feel a little bit scummy about it.

It’s that kind of thinking that got us in to this two party rut to begin with. If everyone continues to vote for their favorite side of the same coin, we will never see change. 

“Obama is doing enough good on the issues which are most important to me, that I’m willing to accept all the evil and corruption he engages in on the issues that are not so important to me”.

Selfishness is as selfishness does, Antinous.

Your dream candidates are never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to win. So you’ll end up putting a right-wing Republican in office, and you can feel smug and satisfied knowing that you appeased your conscience while those of us who live as second class citizens see our quest for human rights bulldozed.

Your ideas are just selfishness masquerading as principle.

In other words, you put party in front of principle.

I’m not a Democrat. I’ve consistently criticized Obama, since before his first election. The alternatives are vastly worse for those of us who don’t enjoy the triple crown of privilege of being white, male and heterosexual.

If you’re choosing your candidate using other criteria then you are part of the problem in my opinion.

But you didn’t throw your vote away, right?

Fair enough as long as you are candid about that.

I don’t criticize anyone who voted for Obama in 2008.  There was at least reason to hope he would end some wars, prosecute some bankers, and stop some civil liberties violations.

By 2012, it was incontrovertibly crystal fucking clear that -none- of those things were ever going to happen.

Certainly the people who were not in swing states who voted for Nader had nothing to do with the actions of the Bush administration.  And it can reasonably be argued that even the folks in Florida who voted for Nader are less responsible for invading Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the Patriot Act) than all the leading Democrats who supported those actions.

Finally, the idea that voting one’s conscience is “throwing your vote away” is statistically questionable and philosophically shallow.

Gary too bigoted for ya?  Jill Stein was on my ballot too.  She was not my first choice, but I sure as heck would have voted for her over either of the Wall Street, surveillance state candidates.

If Jill’s too “racist, sexist, homophobic”, you maybe wrote in yourself for president?? Hard to go wrong there I guess.

There are always other choices.

And they’re noted for being racist, sexist, homophobic demagogues.

Anyone with three functioning brain cells could see by 2012 that he was Dubya Junior.

There are always other choices.