Florida Agenda

By DMITRY RASHNITSOV

Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a man who has had two marriages for a combined less than three years in his life and has no legitimate children that he acknowledges, has come out with an interesting opinion on exactly those two subjects: marriage and child rearing.

After spending most of his political career fighting to deny the GLBT community the right to marry or adopt children, Crist — the now independent candidate for United States Senate — has changed his mind about GLBT rights.

While Crist’s current Senate website, www.charliecrist.com does not mention his recent change of heart, a position paper with the governor’s letterhead states some of his new positions regarding the toughest situations that are facing the GLBT community including adopting children, marriage rights, hospital visitation rights and the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

“I believe that the government should not make it harder for people to take care of their loved ones,” Crist wrote in his position paper. “I believe civil unions that provide the full range of legal protections should be available to gay couples. That includes access to a loved one in the hospital, inheritance rights, the fundamental things people need to take care of their families.”

The one-page paper articulates ten different policy points related to gay rights.

The positions that Crist now supports for GLBT individuals include:

• Civil Unions
• Hospital visitation
• Inheritance rights
• Adoption rights
• Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
• Employment Non-Disimination Act
• The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act
• Uniting American Families Act
• Appropriations for HIV/AIDS Programs
• Federal Safe Schools Improvement Act

Signs that the Crist campaign were thinking of targeting the GLBT vote came out this summer when the Governor mentioned a change of heart during a television appearance on CNN.

“I feel that marriage is a sacred institution, if you will.

But I do believe in tolerance. I’m a ‘live and let live’ kind of guy, and while I feel that way about marriage, I think if partners want to have the opportunity to live together, I don’t have a problem with that.

And I think that’s where most of America is. So I think that you know, you have to speak from the heart about these issues. They are very personal. They have a significant impact on an awful lot of people and the less the government is telling people what to do, the better off we’re all going to be. But when it comes to marriage, I think it is a sacred institution. I believe it is between a man and woman, but partners living together, I don’t have a problem with,” Crist said on TV, kind of playing both sides of the issue.

In 2008 Crist supported Amendment 2, a constitutional ban on gays and lesbians getting married in Florida that passed by less than 2 percent of the vote. Crist’s democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate Race, Kendrick Meek, immediately attacked his newfound position.

“Can anyone believe anything Charlie Crist says anymore?,” said Abe Dyk, Kendrick Meek’s campaign manager. “It’s obvious Charlie Crist is willing to say anything. The only thing Charlie Crist says today that you can believe tomorrow is that he wants to be elected. Kendrick, in contrast, has been a champion of LGBT rights. He co-sponsored multiple attempts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and has been a leader in calling for the repeal of Florida’s gay adoption ban. Unlike Charlie Crist, Kendrick stood against Florida’s gay marriage ban, Amendment 2.”

A spokeswoman for one prominent Florida gay rights group praised Crist’s position paper. “This is the furthest a sitting Florida governor has ever gone in publicly supporting [gay rights] issues,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida. “There’s no position he’s taken that a majority of Floridians and Americans don’t already support.”

His whole political career, Crist has fought rumors that he himself is a gay man who has been in the closet. These rumors were fueled on by allegations from former interns, but Crist has never publicly acknowledged that he has engaged in homosexual behavior. Crist and Meek are also running against the Republican Senate nominee Marco Rubio in what’s amounting to be the most exciting political race in the midterm elections.

Election Day is November 2. The three candidates have agreed to participate in a series of debates on national television.