Update - Friday 11:00 a.m: Both the Anchorage Daily News and The Mudflats have today picked up on this snip from Gen. Powell's upcoming interview on CNN. And both have transcriptions of the important part of Powell's remarks. The Mudflats also offers a short essay on the importance of his statement. Here's a snip:
[A]ccording to Powell, there’s “nothing wrong with having socially conservative views.” While it sounds awfully nice and inclusive to say that, in many ways those views are part of the problem. There are some major land mines in social conservatism. Freedom to marry comes to mind. One could substitute the word “marriage” for the word “Virginia” and produce the same effect of alienating and demeaning an entire group of people. “Real marriage” is fine. “Other” marriage….well, that’s just plain wrong, even though it denies an entire group of people the freedoms, rights, benefits and privileges that the rest of us “real” married people enjoy. There are more straight people than gay people, so using Powell’s logic, that’s OK. It will “work” because it will win. There’s no problem.
I wanted to comment more on this yesterday, when I first saw the promo clip, but I was giving finals and grading papers from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. I think I'll wait until Monday to comment, after I'm done hosting Dr. Riki Ott's firedoglake Book Salon appearance on Sunday.
