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David Huebner, who served as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s general counsel, has been confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Karen Ocamb has the story.
We wrote about Huebner’s nomination last Oct. 7. His profile on Wikipedia has also been updated to reflect his new post. The news was posted today on the US Senate website and did not come through the White House’s LGBT Outreach Director Brian Bond (see Pam Spaulding’s startling interview with Bond here) or the White House communications department.
And here is the Senate announcement:
NOMINATIONS CONFIRMED (CIVILIAN)
The following civilian Executive Nominations were confirmed by the Senate during the current congress. Nominations flagged with an asterisk were approved subject to the nominee’s commitment to respond to requests to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of the Senate. The nominations are listed to reverse chronological order based on the date of confirmation.[snip]
PN1064 * DEPARTMENT OF STATE
David Huebner, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to New Zealand, and to serve concurrently and without additional compensation as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Samoa.
One of the questions Karen posed is whether Huebner’s partner — Dr. Duane McWaine – will accompany him to his foreign post or remain in L.A. in his psychiatric practice.
6 Comments
Hidden, but good news….While I watch (but do not listen to Bishop Tobin in Hardball with Chris Matthews pandering questions.)
Not announced by the White House yet???
Say it isn’t so. Oh, well, we know how busy Mr. Bond is “working on the inside”…behind closed doors…in the dark…without accountability…deep in the closet er bowels of the Straight er White House…counting all the token gays at SH er WH meetings.
Never fear. They’ll get around to it. And make it sound like they were the first Administration to ever do it. And, best of all, it’s only four months until the next White House Easter Egg Hunt!
But we trust….
Obama’s Ambassador to the Blend, Mr. Geek, will have an excuse…er explanation.
From THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY:
This is all very ice for Mr. Huebner. I wish him well. But it is the most minor of minor positions. And I can’t see that it does the rest of us any good at all. But as with every other crumb dropped to us by this administration, we’re supposed to be thrilled about it and, I can only assume, open up our wallets again. (Yeah, that’ll work.) Except in this case, we apparently weren’t even supposed to know about it. How clueless can a White House get?
What’ll it cost us this time? The first openly GLBT ambassador was James Hormel, who Clinton named ambassador to Luxembourg, population – 491,700. Luxembourg which is larger than Malta, Guam and Kiribati. Then, to demonstrate his even handedness Clinton championed DOMA and DADT, the two most bigoted laws ever enacted against us. He rammed them through Congress, rushed to sign them and then boasted about it.
Then it was Bush’s turn. In a big step forward he appointed Michael Guest ambassador to Romania, population 21,512,646, and home of Vlad the Impaler and Ion Antonescu the Stalinist monster. Emulating Clinton, Bush showed that he too was no captive of the LGBT agenda. Bush had Rove used Bill Clintons trick of using SSM to divide and conquer and managed to get duplicates of Clintons DOMA, many with even worse provisions, installed in dozens of states. Bush used Hillary Clinton’s “Workplace Religious Freedom Act” which she wrote and cosponsored with fellow christian Senator Rick Santorum to discriminate in hiring and Bill Clintons lead in using federal funds to bribe pulpit pimps, the so called ‘faith based initiative” to cater to bigots.
Now along comes ‘gawd’s in the mix”. He (ever so quietly) appointed David Huebner ambassador to New Zealand, population 4,268,600 and Samoa, population 181,528.
I shudder to think what we’re going to have to pay for Huebner’s appointment.
Thanks a lot guys …You know, speaking as someone that has just moved back home to New Zealand after nearly a decade in the US, can I just say; enough with the fucking American ethnocentric diminishing of NZ’s importance, ‘kay?
Look, we may not be a HUGE country, but are a 1st world developed nation, with international clout WAY bigger than our weight-class normally gives us.
You’re not going to be taken as creditable if you write off being ambassador to a western supposed ally as a nothing post.
Seriously, fucking insulting here.