Your opponent has a lower rating than Leech & Rep. Frank supports him? Mind boggling. Has HRC endorsed you?

This is exactly the kind of candidate (and with the exact type of opponent) that progressives should support. My admittedly modest contribution is on the way.

Thanks future Rep. Fallon.

I wish you the best in your race. We need people like you, not practitioners of HRC-think.

I'd like to say I'd vote for you if I was still living on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, but even then I was in Rep. Loebsack's district (which I am HAPPY is no longer Jim Leach's) and later in Rep. Braley's (which I am HAPPY is no longer Jim Nussle's).

I know...technicalities.

Serioualy, though. I wish you the absolute best.

I'm a transgender woman but I'm not a single-issue voter. Honestly, ending the occupation of Iraq and providing universal health care are very very high priorities for me and are more important to me than whether ENDA passes with or without gender identity protections. Passing an inclusive ENDA is important too, don't get me wrong. What I am reacting to is the idea that as LGBT people, we only care about LGBT issues, or as trans people we only care about trans issues, and that this is what politicians are pandering to. As a human I care about human issues, and I will vote for candidates who resolve to work to make things better for all of us humans.

I think you'll like Ed's positions on these other progressive issues, Vivian. Check out his website for more info on those issues.

We have 3 Blue Dog dems here in Indiana that I'd love to see a true progressive run against. Unfortunately, the true progressive wouldn't win. :(

Bil, I went to his website and you are right -- I like his positions a lot and hope he wins! We need more people like him in Congress if we want to really change things.

Please take my rant as a rant against single issue politics in general, not as a rant against progressive politicians.

Ed is all those things Vivian cares about and Boswell's not. In fact, Boswell, in his position on the House Intelligence committee, has a long history of supporting Shrub's neocon policies of pre-emptive war, torture, rendition, and other erosions of the Bill of Rights, choosing only, for instance, to vote for the weakest habeas corpus reinstatement possible (after voting to zap it altogether) and only when his loathesome votes earned him progressive opposition.

Send Ed money. His polling numbers say he can win if he gets the money to necessary to fight the good fight.

If you think this is just an Iowa thing, think again. An active, pro-gay straight guy from the Midwest who's not afraid to speak his mind and who consistently does the right thing would do wonders for us all.

Imagine how things might have gone differently, for instance, if there had been someone in the freshman caucus able to say, from experience, that fears about voter backlash on gender identity inclusion were unfounded, or someone who can articulately explain -- and regularly does to everyday folks -- that civil unions cannot ever be equal to civil marriage and with the same live-it-as-he-calls-it honesty as he supports public transportation and eating local foods to save energy -- as a straight guy ... from the heart of corn and pig country.

He's the real thing. Phyllis and I have no reservations -- except maybe to bring dinner weekly to his campaign workers!

Submitted today to the Des Moines Register:

Every good soldier knows you don’t leave a man down on the field--everyone it seems except Boswell and the glib Barney Frank. The two old war horses got together this past spring to do Nancy Pelosi’s bidding disguised as a gay civil rights vote (ENDA), thinking those who’d benefit were fools enough to think that throwing the neediest of us, the transgendered, under the bus, would get the newly dysfunctional shell of a bill passed into law. Instead, the gutted, gutless bill died in the Senate as predicted, doing a great deal of harm to the LGBT community to boot.

Boswell’s designated April 19th as payback time. In other words, Frank’s the guest at a Boswell pony-up party. But it’s just going to be a festival for out-of-touch has-beens. Iowa has already bitten the gender identity inclusion bullet and knows it’s not the poison pill Frank and Boswell treated it as.

Frank and Boswell are quite the matched pair—two congressmen too long in office who are out of touch with their constituents, who engage in dirty tricks and old style politics only to leave the job undone. Why would self aware LGBT people – or anyone who cares about civil liberties, for that matter – be for Boswell when they have a proven champion in Fallon……why indeed.

We need more people like Ed Fallon in Congress. The current folks like Mr. Frank (sadly) care more about buddy politics than about creating a more equal, just America. We need to join together and speak with our wallets and hearts to create a better country for generations to come. I hope others will follow my lead and donate what they can to oust Fallon's status quo opponent.

Regarding single-issue queer politics:

It's not that I don't care about other things -- I put plenty of time and effort and treasure into other issues.

But, if we don't care enough about ourselves to put those issues we face -- entirely worthy issues -- first -- literally to take our issues seriously enough to put them at the head of the line, then how can we expect others to?

I repeat that our issues are very serious ones -- at the cutting edge of social justice so much so that, when our issues are resolved, it benefits others significantly, too.

When people have to stop and consider us, they have to stop and consider the meaning of what it is to be human and what it means to be compassionate and just even with people others might be uncomfortable about or feel significantly different than. To do so cannot help but increase the general peace and justice in the world. (And, while not always the case, more often than not, the people who stand for us are pretty darned good on many other things, too.)