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Even committed progressives should understand why the Republican Party needs LGBT voters and why LGBT voters need the Republican Party.

As a gay man living in Los Angeles for two years now, Ive been asked more than a few times how I could be both gay and Republican. It can be such a contentious issue that I feel compelled to bring it right out in the open on a first date. The whole process is like coming out for a second time, with the latter being almost as harrowing.

When I mention I serve on the board of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group that advocates for pro-LGBT Republicans, the bewilderment grows: You mean there are more of you out there?

Its not lost on me why there is so much animosity in our community toward the GOP. But even if you are a committed Democrat, you should support the work being done by gay Republicans and other allies within the party.

More will be done for our community in terms of equality and representation if both parties believe our vote is up for grabs. If youve watched cable news at all lately, its clear the GOP is a party in transition. Candidates and many in the leadership want to engage the LGBT community, seeing that freedom for all is truly consistent with their conservative ethos. I still consider myself a Republican despite the disagreements I have with certain politicians and policies largely because I, as a gay American, agree with the partys call for a limited-government approach that expands freedom by staying out of our pocketbooks and our bedrooms. If more members of our community become open to that dialogue, we have an opportunity to help change the party on issues where evolution is necessary.

It was Prime Minister David Cameron, after all, who ushered in marriage equality in Britain based on those conservative principles. As he puts it, Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us. Society is stronger when we make vows to each other and we support each other. I dont support gay marriage in spite of being a conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a conservative.

Those sentiments have started making their way across the pond as well. Earlier this year, Ohio Republican senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate Rob Portman had this to say: I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married. Hes not alone. Many prominent Republicans are coming out in support of marriage equality. Judges appointed by Republican presidents are overturning referendums that ban same-sex marriage, as was the case with Proposition 8 in California. And San Diego is likely to elect the first openly gay Republican to Congress this November. The ads for that candidate, Carl DeMaio, prominently feature him and his partner, Johnathan Hale. California Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari is vocally supportive of marriage equality and even marched in San Diegos Pride Parade this year. The list goes on. And even better yet, these are the candidates winning primary elections among Republican voters.

We all know that the final leg in the cause for equality for LGBT Americans is convincing some religious conservatives of the virtues of inclusion. If there is any hope that this can ever be accomplished, it will be through enlisting the support of those who can speak the language of faith, family, and freedom while communicating why its consistent to make those values accessible to everyone. Republicans can successfully make the case to those individuals and churches that in a secular society they should fight for everyones right to be married, while also protecting the right of religious institutions to determine who can be married in their faith.

Many in the LGBT community agree with the GOP on most issues but not on LGBT equality. As a result, they feel compelled to vote Democratic. I have many friends who would be proud Republicans if it werent for this issue. If the party and more of its candidates are finally able to be truly inclusive, supporting LGBT equality in all forms, these people can finally vote Republican without feeling like they are somehow betraying the LGBT community.

The LGBT community should truly have a choice. My hope is that regardless of your political identification, we can all agree that our community is better served when both political parties are working to serve us.

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Op-ed: Why LGBT and the GOP Are Better Together

President Goodluck Jonathan | credits: File photo

The Ondo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress says the people of the state will vote against President Goodluck Jonathan in the coming presidential election.

The party said in a statement that the imposition of Jonathan on Nigerians by the Peoples Democratic Party confirmed that the party was the problem of Nigerias democracy.

The statement which was issued by its Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Adesanya, said: In view of the precarious and unhealthy state of the nation, the good people of Ondo State are eagerly waiting to vote out President Jonathan.

The APC also rejected the recent endorsement of the President by a group known as the Jonathan Actualisation Movement, noting that the group did not have the strength to deliver the state to the PDP.

It warned Jonathan to be wary of political sycophants and attention-seeking groups like JAM, stating that the group lacked the power to save him from imminent electoral failure.

The recent wish expressed by the south-west coordinator of the attention-seeking Jonathan Actualisation Movement, Mr. Victor Olabimtan, that majority of votes for President Jonathan, from the South-West zone will come from Ondo State is sycophantic and unrealistic, the statement said.

The party further argued that the state had yet to benefit from the Jonathan-led government in spite of his promises of industrialisation and stable power supply.

It said, In the same vein, Ondo APC believes the imposition of President Jonathan as the sole candidate of the PDP for 2015 presidential election is not only a mockery of democracy but also the glorification of failure.

Nigeria is bleeding. Our country needs us more than ever. All Nigerians across political folds, ethnic bias and religious affiliations must unite to vote out this bad government.

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Jonathanll lose in Ondo APC

Obama And Liberals Suffer From the DunningKruger Effect
Many Liberals suffer from the DunningKruger effect. This has been proved and well-documented. This bias causes incompetent individuals to believe they are superior. The effect has become...

By: Maglioso Jones

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Obama And Liberals Suffer From the DunningKruger Effect - Video

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Brent McGillvray / Global News

MONCTON, N.B. A New Brunswick business is calling on the new Liberal government to reinstate the provinces residential energy efficiency program, scheduled to end Tuesday.

The current program offers financial incentives to homeowners who retrofit their houses to make them more efficient. But the program stopped accepting new applicants in February and homeowners have until Tuesday to complete their renovations and finish their final assessments.

Cody Firth, an energy adviser for EnerCheck Solutions, says his employer is facing a large backlog of clients.

It was very busy. A lot of people were last minute to book the assessment, he said. So with one day left, to call in and book, its very tight. And a lot of people may end up losing out on financial incentives.

Firth estimated there were close to 800 homes waiting to have their final assessment done for the program. He explained that his employer was given an exemption by the government to book into October as long as residents called before September 30, because they did not have the capacity to see all the clients before the deadline.

Theres only so many advisers with each company. So we could not provide enough appointments, for the amount of people calling in, he said. For example, I had four today. I have five tomorrow.

Reinstating the program was one of the Liberals campaign promises, but they havent given a timeline on when they will be doing it or whether the program will be the same.

To qualify for a rebate under the current program, homeowners had to contact an energy efficiency company like EnerCheck Solutions to complete an initial assessment on their homes. During the assessments, advisers like Firth, calculated the volume of the homes, checked insulation levels and the efficiency of current heating and cooling systems, and how air-tight the home was, before making recommendations.

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Liberals urged to renew energy efficiency program

Want to find all the bigpolitical discussions that are taking place on the Internet? For the most part, they don't exist, according to data released earlier this month by Quantcast -- a service that tracks the demographics of Internet users.

In the aggregate, social media users are younger, more liberal ... andless politically engaged than the general populace. Facebook is the closest thing we have to a neutral and all-inclusive public forum -- and that's only because so many people are onit that the overall politics and demographics of the platform are a wash.

But looking at the demographics ofall people using a social media servicekind of misses the point. In fact,these serviceshost many different groups who often use them in very productive ways (journalists on Twitter, for example). At this point, looking at the demographics of social media site is kind of like looking at the demographics of people who have mailboxes; you can learn a lot more from digging into what people are receiving in them than the fact that they have an address.

Regardless, it is kind of fun to look at how politics function on these different sites.

Herearea few scenes from the front.

Pinterest is one of the most conservative social networking sites -- something that was already established bya Harvard Institute of Politics study of young adults from earlier this year. In 2012, Gawker called Pinterest"the mostinoffensive, white-bread place on the internet, a gated community of perfectly curated boards sprinkled with Etsy-made children's toys and food blog recipes, sheltered from the blasted racist hellscape of the rest of the web."

This photo posted by Ann Romney is what all posts on Pinterest aspire to be.

Quantcast also found that Pinterest users were wealthier and older than the users of other major social-media platforms. Since the site gathers those who want their apartments to look like the unrealistic living spaces in sitcoms, this is not surprising.

Twitter, on the other hand, leans the furthest left and features far more active political creatures than Pinterest. Quantcast found that Twitter users were the one exception to the rule that social media users tend to pay attention to politics far less thanmost Americans. The Harvard Institute of Politics study also found that Twitter users aremore likely to be Democrats.

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The Fix: Twitter is for liberals; Pinterest is for conservatives