As the 2012 presidential contests unfolded in Iowa and New Hampshire, here! TV premiered its new original series For & Against with progressive commentator Jim Morrison.
The first-of-its-kind 30-minute LGBT political analysis series began airing on Jan. 6th with the charge of engaging viewers on variety of issues from marriage equality to hookup sites.
Morrison gives us politics from the outside: Engaging, exploring and even debunking political issues from a decidedly upfront and proud queer lens.
The show was born from the host’s frustration after engaging with people—gay and straight alike—who have checked out on the pressing issues of our day. Like when Morrison encountered a 20-something gay friend in New York who said he didn’t believe in “gay marriage” because he thought it part of the “gay agenda.”
“I was blown away,” Morrison told Vital VOICE. “It’s not only apathy—it’s apathy and almost being lazy that you end up adopting the very terminology that our enemies have mapped out to use against us. It’s apathy that’s doing us a disservice.”
Morrison brings an undeniably progressive vent to the show, but For & Against hopes to bridge the political spectrum. The show is extending invites to each candidate running in the 2012 Republican primaries to join Morrison to discuss their platform on issues important to LGBT Americans.
“The gay community isn’t really taken as seriously as a lot of these other groups,” says Morrison. “I don’t think we’ve wielded that power very well. Not to say that there is a monolithic gay community, but I think it’s important that there are issues that do touch all of us.”
The New Jersey native points to the AARP as a master of shepherding their respective voting block and wielding influence in the political process.
“Someone should be able to say, hey look—if you don’t deliver on our issues—you are going to lose,” he explains. “I feel like we are taken for granted. Like our choice is—oh, they’re going to vote Democratic anyway.”
A range of topics will be discussed over the next several episodes of For & Against, including gay Republicans, marriage equality, HIV criminalization, and the power of words and terminology—particularly “bullying” and how the term is doing the LGBT community a disservice.
“There’s no way in hell that a kid who gets beaten up and tormented and harassed is merely bullied—and that word diminishes the problem,” he explains. “If a black kid or a Jewish kid or a Chinese kid—if that kid is attacked, he’s not bullied and our society doesn’t call that bullying. They call it hate crime.”
“That’s the energy of For & Against, Morrison continues. “To try to tell you something new and to tie it into something really important.”
Looking toward November’s presidential election, the politico admits that President Obama has done more than any of his predecessors when it comes to LGBT equality. Still many (including Morrison) believe he could have done more with Democratic control at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave.
“I don’t really agree with the political calculus that seems to have been done by Obama or the people around him,” says Morrison. “The people who are out there who don’t like Obama already think that he’s in favor of marriage equality. So if he would actually come out and be in favor of marriage equality he is not going to lose those votes because those votes already think he supports it.”
In fact Morrison points to the missed opportunity of the teachable moment around equality by one of the most gifted orators to occupy the presidency.
Not surprisingly—the president would be Morrison’s dream For & Against guest—and the one question he would ask??
“It would be president Obama and when he was a State Senator he was for marriage equality and now he has changed on that,” he says. “And I would want to know why and how it evolved backwards instead of evolving forwards.”
Morrison is a liberal-leaning pundit not afraid to challenge convention. He is a graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and holds a law degree from Columbia University, with an emphasis on Constitutional Law and Civil Rights. Jim ran for the New Jersey State Senate and successfully litigated the first sexual orientation discrimination case against a high school student. Additionally, he was a finalist on the first season of the reality series The Mole and was, subsequently, the first openly gay man to be placed on People magazine’s “Most Eligible Bachelor” list.
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BY: COLIN MURPHY – SENIOR WRITER
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