Opinions
Ron Paul’s heartless stance on health care
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul apparently learned nothing from the death of his 2008 campaign chairman, a gay man named Kent Snyder.
Snyder, 49, died of pneumonia in 2008. He was uninsured and left about $400,000 in unpaid medical bills to his surviving mother. Paul was criticized at the time for failing to offer his campaign staffers medical insurance. The Blade covered the story extensively back then and interviewed Paul about it. His lame defense was that no campaign offered health insurance, a false claim — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s campaigns all offered health insurance to staff.
At last week’s Tea Party debate, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Paul what should happen to an uninsured 30-year-old man who needed six months of hospitalization.
“In a society that you accept socialism and welfarism, he expects the government to take care of him … he should assume responsibility for himself,” came Paul’s heartless response.
Blitzer replied, “Are you saying society should just let him die?”
In response, the bloodthirsty, unsympathetic crowd yelled, “Yeah!”
You’d think that the death of a trusted campaign aide — who Paul said was instrumental in helping him decide to run in 2008 — would prompt some soul-searching and deeper thinking about the state of America’s health care system. But obviously that’s not the case for Paul, who happens to be a medical doctor.
The full 2008 Blade story is re-posted below:
Ron Paul supporters mourn death of gay campaign chair
With no health insurance, Snyder leaves $400K in hospital bills
By LOU CHIBBARO JR.
Activists belonging to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party continue to mourn the loss of Kent Snyder, a 49-year-old gay political operative credited with propelling the presidential campaign of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) into a national, grassroots movement that raised more than $35 million.
Snyder, who served as Paul’s campaign chair, died of pneumonia on June 26 after being hospitalized for about two months and after running up medical bills exceeding $400,000, according to friends and family members, who said he did not have health insurance.
Gay staffers from the Paul campaign, some speaking on condition that they not be identified, said they learned about Snyder’s unpaid medical bills from a web site created by his friends that calls on Paul supporters to contribute to a special fund to help Snyder’s family pay the bills, which come mostly from a two-month hospitalization. So far, the site (kentsnyder.com) has raised about $32,000.
“I can’t believe he didn’t have health insurance,” said one political activist who read about Snyder’s unpaid medical bills in a story published last month in the Wall Street Journal. “I can’t believe that Ron Paul didn’t give him health insurance,” said the activist, who asked not to be identified.
The Journal story did not identify Snyder as gay; a Washington Post obituary reported Snyder died of viral pneumonia but did not mention his sexual orientation.
Craig Max, a D.C. gay Republican activist who sought to become a Ron Paul delegate to the Republican National Convention, said news of Snyder’s death and his lack of health insurance has triggered a behind-the-scenes debate among Paul supporters and libertarian activists over whether or not the Paul campaign should have provided health insurance to its staff.
Among the points raised, according to Max and others involved in the Paul campaign, is the fact that Paul is a practicing physician. Some of the Paul supporters are asking why a medical doctor, whose campaign raised $35 million in contributions, chose not to offer health insurance for his staff.
When asked at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday about concerns raised by critics that his presidential campaign did not provide employee health insurance, Paul said only that he doesn’t believe any political campaigns offer health insurance.
“I don’t know of any campaign that has health insurance for temporary and other employees,” he said. “I’ve never had it and I’ve been in this business for 30 years. I don’t know any campaign that does.”
At least three gay Paul supporters said it was well known among Paul campaign insiders that Snyder was gay. Although Snyder shunned the public spotlight, activists and political operatives working on the campaigns of rival GOP presidential candidates, including officials with the McCain campaign, recognized Snyder’s efforts in building a major campaign operation for Paul, Paul’s gay supporters said.
“As far as his being out, I don’t think that he was ever in or anything like that,” said Jesse Benton, who served as communications director for the Paul presidential campaign. “But his romantic life was just not something that was discussed. He was the boss and that was that.”
Benton said Snyder confided in him that he had a chronic blood disorder. He said that Snyder told him the name of the disorder but Benton said he does not remember it.
“To my knowledge, Kent did not have HIV,” Benton said. “He expressed to me a couple of times what his blood disorder was, but I believe [the HIV speculation] to just be a rumor.”
Benton said it was Snyder himself who made the decision not to provide health insurance to the campaign staff.
“Kent Snyder as the chairman of the campaign ran the business operation,” Benton said. “So it was his decision as to what would be offered to employees.”
Benton said Snyder’s decision was not unusual in the realm of political campaigns.
“As a general practice, virtually no political campaigns offer health insurance,” Benton said. “It’s just not done. A campaign is a temporary organization that could disband at any minute.”
But gay Democratic activist and political consultant Steve Elmendorf disputes Benton’s assessment, saying that in recent years, a growing number of campaigns have begun providing health insurance to paid staffers, with the campaigns of Democratic candidates offering medical coverage in greater numbers than Republican candidates.
Jordan Lieberman, publisher of Campaigns and Elections’ Politics Magazine, which is considered an authority on American political campaigns, said that in the recent past, health insurance was almost never offered by campaigns operated by either Republicans or Democrats. Now, Lieberman said, the trend among larger campaigns, especially presidential campaigns, is to offer health insurance benefits.
Spokespersons for the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain said both campaigns provide full health insurance coverage to their paid staff. A spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign said Clinton also provided health insurance coverage to campaign staffers before she ended her campaign in early June.
On his own web site, Paul called Snyder’s death a “great loss” to the libertarian movement.
“Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom,” Paul said. “He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family. We deeply mourn his loss.”
Paul praised Snyder for playing a key role in advancing libertarian causes and noted that Snyder began his association with him in 1987, when he worked on Paul’s first run for president.
“Over the next 20 years, we worked together on countless projects in the name of freedom,” Paul said. “It was Kent, more than anyone else, who urged me to run again for president” in 2008.
Gay libertarian activists have praised Paul for his longstanding views calling for all Americans to be free from government intrusion into their private lives through laws and regulations. Paul voted against a proposed U.S. constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
But according to a scorecard on the voting records of members of Congress on gay-related issues, Paul voted against the interests of gays on all issues other than the marriage amendment. In the Human Rights Campaign scorecard for the 109th Congress (2005-2006), the latest scorecard that the group has issued, Paul received a score of 38 on a scale from 0 to 100. According to HRC, Paul received a score of 25 for the 108th Congress (2003-2004) and a 0 in the 107th Congress (2000-2002).
Similar to most libertarians, Paul opposed bills like the Employment Non- Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and a hate crimes bill, which would authorize the federal government to prosecute anti-gay hate crimes, on grounds that such legislation improperly expands government powers.
Liberal blogger Rob Kall, in a July 5 posting on Opednews.com, called Kent Snyder’s death and his unpaid medical bills an ironic twist to Snyder’s libertarian philosophy.
“What a testament to the libertarian creed, which abhors the idea of universal health care,” Kall wrote. “This loyal, passionate man who died too young left his family a debt of $400,000 in medical bills,” he said. “Sadly, the libertarian heart apparently does not include health care.”
Benton and others who knew Snyder said he gave up a lucrative career as a telecommunications industry executive to work for one of Paul’s libertarian organizations before becoming the head of the Paul for president campaign. Benton said Snyder’s friends and associates from the campaign are now especially concerned that Snyder’s unpaid medical bills could adversely impact Snyder’s mother.
“I do know that Kent was an extremely proud man and he was basically financially supporting his mother and allowing her to live in a property he owned,” Benton said. “As someone who respected him very much — he had a lot of people who respected him a lot — we all know that he would turn over in his grave if his mother has to leave that property.
“So it was important for us to do what we could,” Benton said. “And I’m not a wealthy man but I made a small contribution, Dr. Paul has made a personal contribution, and a lot of the campaign staff have given what they could,” he said, referring to the special fund to help pay off Snyder’s medical bills.
Commentary
What LGBTQ veterans are building after ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
DADT repeal took effect on Sept. 20, 2011. Trans servicemember ban reinstated
Fifteen years ago this month, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” took effect. At the time, the importance of the change was obvious: gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans would no longer have to hide who they were to wear the uniform. What was harder to see was what would follow: a generation of LGBTQ veterans able to carry their service openly into American civic life.
Earlier this month, Alaska state Rep. Andrew Gray, an Army veteran, stood before the Anchorage Assembly and asked the city to recognize Sept. 20 as LGBTQ Veterans Day.
His former command sergeant major, Mike Grunst, followed him to the microphone. A 35-year veteran who had served in combat, Grunst called troops who had served while hiding who they were “the bravest I have ever served with.”
Then Denise Sudbeck stepped forward. A Vietnam-era Navy veteran, she thanked the country for the privilege of serving and asked that the next generation have the same chance.
The Assembly approved the recognition.
Nothing about the scene required a new vocabulary. A veteran made a request of his community. A commander vouched for those who served beside him. Another veteran asked that younger Americans inherit the opportunity she valued. They entered the civic record simply as veterans.
That identity can do more than win recognition.
When federal policy abruptly ended the careers of transgender servicemembers this year, veterans and servicemembers in California began asking a practical question: What happens when those Americans come home?
Republican Assemblyman Jeff Gonzalez, a Marine combat veteran, began one hearing with questions about transgender military service. He listened as veterans explained how the military handles medical care and deployment case by case.
Then the discussion turned to separation.
“I don’t wanna see any veteran homeless,” Gonzalez said. Before the hearing ended, he was asking: “How can I help? How can I understand? How can I be a good advocate?”
The legislation that followed would provide housing, employment and transition assistance to discharged servicemembers. Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove spoke for it. The Senate passed it 32 to 0.
Americans have plainly not settled their disagreements over transgender people. Nor should military service be a prerequisite for rights that belong to every citizen.
But military service creates relationships that are difficult to reduce to the abstractions of the culture war. Before a legislature, “the transgender issue” can become a veteran who deployed, an officer who led troops, or the person who once stood beside you.
The political question changes because the human relationship has already changed.
The pattern is beginning to appear across the country. Kansas is among the states recognizing LGBTQ Veterans Day for the first time this year. New York and Virginia are pursuing broader state-level programs for LGBTQ veterans.
Sept. 20 is deliberate. On that day in 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ended.
We usually remember repeal for what LGBTQ Americans gained: the ability to serve openly. Fifteen years later, we can also see what the country gained.
A gay veteran can stand before his local government beside the commander who once led him. A transgender servicemember can sit before a legislator who begins with doubts and ends by asking how he can help. A veteran from an older generation can ask her neighbors to give those who follow her the same chance to serve.
This is citizenship in practice.
The enduring legacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal is not only that Americans were finally allowed to serve openly. It is also what they can now build after coming home.
Opinions
Gun reform is an LGBTQ rights issue
‘I am sick of Congress refusing to lift a finger to protect our communities’
Earlier this month, 44-year-old Ousman Ceesay allegedly shot two people in the parking lot of Venture-N, a well-known gay bar in Tucson, Ariz. Both victims — Vincent Anthony Siquerioes and Cameron Davis Capara — died at the scene. Police discovered a list of several LGBTQ businesses on Ceesay’s person, and evidence points to how Ceesay confronted Siquerios and Capara in the bar’s parking lot before killing them. According to a news release, police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
The event was reminiscent of the 2022 Club Q shooting and the Pulse nightclub shooting, where Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 more at the gay nightclub in Orlando. Survivors and the wider queer community recognized the 10th anniversary of the shooting this past June 12. As the queer community grieved another shooting targeting LGBTQ safe spaces this month, some members of the LGBTQ community are raising the call for gun reform as a key step to protect LGBTQ rights.
Gun violence is a major issue for the LGBTQ community. LGBTQ people are more than twice as likely to be the victims of violent crime than straight and cisgender people, with one in five hate crimes in the United States motivated by queer phobia. This means that LGBTQ folks are more likely to be violently attacked by a stranger compared to their cisgender, straight counterparts. In school settings, 29% of transgender youth and 16% of gay and lesbian youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon, compared to 7% of cisgender youth.
There is an ongoing epidemic of gun violence injuring and killing trans women of color in the United States today. One study by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety identified that the number of trans people who were murdered in the U.S. doubled between 2017 and 2021, increasing 93% in that time period. Everytown for Gun Safety recognizes that these aren’t even the actual numbers as many trans people are misgendered or deadnamed by the police, media, or their families so their deaths are not incorporated into these numbers and tied to systemic gun violence against the wider LGBTQ community.
As a community with higher rates of self harm and suicide, easy access to firearms increases the risk that a suicide attempt will end in death. This does not mean that LGBTQ people are mentally ill, a popular far right talking point. LGBTQ people are not more likely to experience suicidal ideations and die by suicide not because they are LGBTQ but because of the stigma surrounding their identities. LGBTQ young people are more than four times likely than their non-LGBTQ peers to attempt suicide, and the Trevor Project estimates that 1.8 million LGBTQ people between the ages of 13 and 24 consider suicide in the United States.
As the Williams Institute shows, this makes gun violence a serious public health concern for the queer community. As Dr. David Hemenway, co-author of a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Medicine said, “differences in overall suicide rates across cities, states, and regions in the United States are best explained not by differences in mental health, suicide ideation, or even suicide attempts, but by availability of firearms.”
Gun violence is also a major queer issue given that trans and gender expansive individuals are at greater risk of experiencing intimate partner violence. Compared to the 35% of straight women who experience intimate partner violence, 44% of lesbian and 61% of bisexual women report experiencing rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. This number is also higher for bisexual men (37% of whom experience intimate partner violence compared to 29% of straight men). This number is much higher for trans folks; more than half of people surveyed reported some form of intimate partner violence, according to a 2015 survey.
During the second Trump administration, ongoing legal attacks on LGBTQ rights, executive orders that deny the existence and protections of trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive individuals, and virulent opposition to and disbanding and defunding of DEI initiatives, LGBTQ employee resource groups, queer history collections, exhibitions, and education, LGBTQ representation in libraries and school settings, and the firing of federal workers allegedly because they are queer — realizing a new Lavender Scare — have emboldened violent homophobes.
After the Club Q shooting, Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, explained that “the rhetoric and the legislative attempts to erase transgender people sends a signal that violence toward us is tolerated.” This has become even more dire after a 2025 White House memo prioritized identifying “radically pro-transgender” groups as national security threats, in line with the Heritage Foundation’s plan to designate trans people terrorists. In response, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici shared, “the Trump administration’s endorsement and proliferation of hateful and violent rhetoric against the trans community is putting lives at risk,” particularly the push to label trans people and their allies as terrorists.
As Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva said on the House Floor following this latest tragedy, “when that [anti-LGBTQ+] hate is combined with easy access to firearms, the consequences can be deadly. I am sick and tired of Congress refusing to lift a finger to protect our communities while, every day, dozens of people are shot and killed across the country.”
A 2018 survey shows that the wider LGBTQ community supports gun reform — with 93% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults supporting background checks and 72% opposing legislation and procedural changes that make it easier to obtain concealed weapon permits. This is not to say that the wider LGBTQ community opposes gun ownership. In fact, a growing cohort of LGBTQ individuals and other members of minority and marginalized groups are investigating gun training and ownership to protect themselves. Part of their motivation is not just protecting themselves against perpetrators of hate-motivated gun violence but also against state and federal agents that are increasingly attacking the LGBTQ community.
After the shooting, Tucson police increased their presence at other LGBTQ businesses in the city, but locals expressed concern that this would alienate some LGBTQ patrons, especially queer and trans patrons of color, and might also lead to further violence knowing that police continue to be instigators in and perpetrators of queer phobic violence. A Williams Institute study published this past year highlighted how LGBTQ people, especially queer people of color, LGBTQ youth, and trans and gender expansive individuals experience higher rates of profiling, discrimination, harassment, and entrapment from law enforcement.
This is one of the reasons that police presence at Pride events continue to be controversial, as community members remember how the police were the major antagonists at the Stonewall and Compton’s Cafeteria riots. The LGBTQ rights movement came to be largely because queer and trans people of color fought back against violent police harassment and abuse.
As someone who was traumatized by active shooter drills in elementary, middle, and high school, I am exhausted and heartbroken by continued gun violence and politicians’ refusal to consider and take action through gun reform legislation. Whether intentional or not, their hesitation to discuss and address this issue publicly and to use their political power to prevent future shootings communicates to LGBTQ+ people that they do not care about us. With gun violence disproportionately affecting our community, their silence and inaction is a form of queer phobic violence itself allowing tragedies like Tucson to continue happening.
(If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources. You are not alone.)
Emma Cieslik is a D.C.-based museum worker and public historian.
Opinions
Trump’s Cabinet: Dumb, dumber, dumbest, and evil
Corrupt officials working to undo 250 years of progress
Dumb, dumber, dumbest, and evil. Any of the felon’s Cabinet and close aides could fit these terms depending on the discussion.
You have Commerce Secretary Lutnick saying “no American military were killed in Iran war.” Then it was reported our venal Vice President JD Vance said, “The current hostilities shouldn’t even be called a war, since ‘active combat operations’ ended months ago. Right now, there is no active shooting, Vance insisted. This despite the U.S. and Iran still currently exchanging fire, including around the Strait of Hormuz.
Then the fool-in-chief, the felon in the White House, said about Vance’s comments, “U.S. strikes on Iran are now “intermittent” and a lot of people don’t call it a war. I can understand what he’s saying. I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.” All this even though this so called “conflict” has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 U.S. service members dead, hundreds injured.
All this after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “the Trump administration’s objective in the conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is to restore shipping conditions to what they were before the war with Iran began.” Then self-hating, gay, Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, chimed in, after two days of meetings with finance ministers from around the world, blaming Ukraine for high oil prices citing “Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure as part of the reason for the global energy shock.” These people all belong in an asylum, or jail.
When not talking about the war, as he is losing it badly, the felon-in-chief talks BS at a rally in Texas. Then he talks about redesigning Washington. Lutnick, speaking at a judicial hearing on whether Trump can put his name on the National Monument honoring JFK, said, “Donald Trump is the most credible person in the world” while arguing that the Kennedy Center should bear his name because he’s vowed to raise the funds to renovate it. That, even though the funds were approved by Congress and not raised by Trump. Then Trump’s tariff war on the world, now focused on Canada, which is screwing the American people, and his believing an Executive Order can get the world to call bodies of water like the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Ontario, by different names. Or that he can change the name of the Department of Defense, to the Department of War, which only Congress can do. With the help of the fascist sycophants around him, he creates chaos in the world.
He has torn down part of the White House, and tries to build an arch. Spent millions and caused the destruction of the reflecting pool. Some of these things will be undone, others will remain, but his name will go down in history, not on buildings, as the worst president ever. People will laugh at him as they move to remove his name from everything they can, just as New Yorkers did when he was first elected, embarrassed to be associated with him.
Now for any sane person looking at, and listening to, this chaos, it is abundantly clear how embarrassing all this is for the country. It is clear he is moving the nation backwards when it comes to the equality and equity we have fought so hard to accomplish. Our country began with us killing, and taking land, from Native Americans. The founders of our nation 250 years ago only recognized white men. They left out women and Black men. We have spent the past 250 years trying to move forward from that beginning. Trying to live up to the statement in the Declaration of Independence that said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We have come a long way, but still have not been able to add women’s equality to our Constitution. But Trump, along with his fascist aides and sycophants in Congress, is trying his best to undo all we have accomplished in those 250 years. Trying either to take away the right to vote, or make it harder to do. They took away the right of women to control their own healthcare, and are making it harder for Black people and the LGBTQ community, to live their lives fully, with dignity and safety. They will accomplish all this, and more, if not enough people come out on Nov. 3 and say, NO MORE. However, if enough decent people vote, we can take back our country, and our future.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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