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.
First what isn’t. That would be snow removal in D.C. I understand the inches of sleet that fell on the nearly four inches of snow, and historic days of freezing weather, make it very difficult. But it took three days until they brought out the bigger equipment. Then businesses and homeowners were told they wouldn’t be fined for not clearing their sidewalks, which they have to do by law. That clearly made things worse. The elderly and disabled have an exemption from that, others shouldn’t be given one. Then there was no focus on crosswalks, so pedestrians couldn’t get around, and no apparent early coordination with the BIDS.
Then there are about 2,200 National Guard troops strolling D.C., yes strolling, at least before the snow. Why weren’t they given immediate snow removal duty. If the president gave a damn about our city he would have assigned them all to help dig out the city. We could have used their equipment, handed out shovels, and put the Guard to use immediately. Maybe the mayor put in her request for the Guard a little late.
I have met and chatted with many Guard members across the city. A group from Indiana regularly come to my coffee shop, though I haven’t seen them since the snow. I always thank them for their service — I just wish it wasn’t here. Nearly all agree with me, saying they would rather be home with their families, at jobs, or in school. I’ve met Guard members from D.C., West Virginia, Indiana, Mississippi, and Louisiana. My most poignant meeting was with one Guard member from West Virginia the day after his fellow Guard member was murdered. Incredibly sad, but avoidable; she should never have been assigned here to begin with. The government estimates it costs taxpayers $95,000 a year for each deployment. So, again, instead of strolling the streets, they should have been immediately assigned to assist with snow removal. Clearly the felon, his fascist aides, and incompetent Cabinet, are too busy supporting the killing of American citizens in Minneapolis, to care about this. I thank those Guard members now helping nearly a week after the snow began to fall. I recognize this was a difficult storm. I hope the city will learn from this for the future.
Now for something happening in D.C. that shouldn’t be. A host of retreads have announced they are candidates for office in both the June Democratic primary, and general election. Some are names you might remember but hoped were long gone. Two left the Council under ethical clouds. One is Jack Evans. He announced his candidacy for City Council president. I like Jack personally, having known him since he served on a Dupont ANC. This race is a massive waste of time and money, as he will surely lose. Even before his ethics issues were made public, and his leaving the Council under a cloud in 2020, he ran for mayor in 2014. At that time, he received only 5% of the vote, even in his own Ward. At 73, he should accept his electoral career is over. Another person who left the Council over questionable ethics, Vincent Orange, who is nearly 70, announced he is running for mayor. He did that last in 2014, when he got only 2% of the vote in the primary. He is another one who will surely lose. Both will likely qualify for city funding, wasting taxpayer money. I know I will be called an ageist. But reality is, in most cases, it’s time for a new generation to take the lead. Another person who has served before, was defeated for reelection, is now trying for a comeback on the Council. I think the outsized egos of these individuals should not be foisted on the voters. If they are really interested in serving the community, there are many ways to do it without holding elective office.
Then there is ICE and the continuing situation in Minneapolis. I applaud Democrats in Congress for holding up long-term funding for ICE for at least two weeks and getting the felon to negotiate. Now not every ICE agent behaves like the gestapo, but their bosses condone the behavior of the ones who do. Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who shot her dog, and Trump’s Goebbels, Stephen Miller, seem to think nothing of causing the deaths of American citizens.
Now the felon’s FBI and DOJ are arresting journalists; then going to Georgia and removing stored ballots from the 2020 election, all because the felon is still obsessed with that loss. His disappearing DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, was involved in that for some reason. The felon is a sick, demented, old man. They must all be stopped before they completely destroy our democracy.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Some people excuse the sick felon in the White House for confusing Iceland and Greenland, after all, they are both cold. Actually, he is a senile old fool, and people must consider whether he should be locked up and kept out of trouble. The only problem with that is J.D. Vance. He could be worse, because however disgusting, he is smarter. After all, he once compared Trump to Hitler.
The felon creates problems and then thinks when he backtracks on what he said or did, he should get credit for solving the problem he created. Recently the stock market plummeted 800 points in one day, based on the stupid things he said about attacking Greenland and imposing tariffs on our allies. When he changed his mind and backtracked, he took credit for the market going up. In some ways it simply looks like insider trading, when his friends and family knew what he was going to do. To others, it is simply a ploy to get Epstein off the front pages, and based on our media not doing their job, it’s working.
His speech in Davos was totally embarrassing. Joe Biden clearly lives in his head since he defeated him in 2020. He apparently blames Biden for the fact that during Biden’s presidency, Trump was charged and convicted of various crimes including 34 felonies.
He recently told the New York Times he can do anything he wants as president, as long as it doesn’t conflict with his own morality. Since he has none, he believes he can do anything. Now we see being King of the United States is not enough; he wants to be an emperor. Hence his formation of the ‘Board of Peace.’ Simply another way of grifting, as he is asking for a billion dollars from each member, and there are no obvious controls on the money. It will not be a success, again except for his looting it, when you look at who signed up to join this organization. Members include: three ex-Soviet apparatchiks, two military-backed regimes, and a leader sought by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, with only two EU countries, Bulgaria and Viktor Orban’s Hungary, according to the Financial Times.
Then on his way out the door from Davos, he made the United States, and himself, look even worse, when as reported by CBS news, “President Trump claimed the U.S. had ‘never needed’ its NATO allies, and that allied troops had stayed ‘a little off the front lines’ during the 20-year war in Afghanistan.” This was entirely untrue and actually, “The only time NATO has ever enacted Article 5 was after the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and the world rallied to the support of the U.S.,” Alistair Carns, the U.K. government’s Minister of the Armed Forces and a veteran who served five tours in Afghanistan alongside American troops, said in a video posted Friday on social media. “We shed blood, sweat and tears together, and not everybody came home. These are bonds, I think, forged in fire, protecting U.S. or shared interests, but actually protecting democracy overall.”
More than 2,200 American troops were killed in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. The Reuters news agency says 457 British military personnel, 150 Canadians and 90 French troops died alongside them. Denmark lost 44 troops in Afghanistan — in per capita terms, about the same death rate as that of the United States.”
“Lucy Aldridge, the mother of the youngest British soldier killed in Afghanistan, told the BBC she was “deeply disgusted” by Mr. Trump’s comments. Her son William Aldridge was only 18 years old when he was killed in a 2009 bomb blast, while trying to save fellow troops.”
We are being represented on the world stage by a sick, evil, blathering idiot, who has no idea of history, no morality, and no decency. He was called out on this by the prime minister of the U.K., Keir Starmer, who normally appears to play up to the felon, when he called the remarks “insulting and frankly appalling.” He went on to say, “We expect an apology for this statement. Trump has “crossed a red line’, we paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”
Every day Trump slides more into the sewer, spreading hate, and violence, both here at home, and around the world. If there are any decent people left around him, unfortunately there may be none, for the good of humanity, they must stop him.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Commentary
Defunding LGBTQ groups is a warning sign for democracy
Global movement since January 2025 has lost more than $125 million in funding
In over 60 countries, same-sex relations are criminal. In many more, LGBTIQ people are discriminated against, harassed, or even persecuted. Yet, in most parts of the world, if you are an LGBTIQ person, there is an organization quietly working to keep people like you safe: a lawyer fighting an arrest, a shelter offering refuge from violence, a hotline answering a midnight call. Many of those organizations have now lost so much funding that they may be forced to close.
One year ago this week, the U.S. government froze foreign assistance to organizations working on human rights, democracy, and development worldwide. The effects were immediate. For LGBTIQ communities, the impact has been severe and far-reaching.
For 35 years, Outright International has helped build and sustain the global movement for the rights of LGBTIQ people, working with local partners in more than 75 countries. Many of those partners are now facing sudden closure.
Since January 2025, more than $125 million has been stripped from efforts advancing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people globally. That figure represents at least 30 percent of yearly international funding for this work. Organizations that ran emergency shelters, legal defense programs, and HIV prevention services have been forced to close or drastically scale back operations. At Outright alone, we lost funding for 120 grants across nearly 50 countries. We estimate that, without intervention, 20 to 25 percent of our grantee partners risk shutting down entirely.
But this is not only a story about one community. It is a story about how authoritarianism works, and what it costs when we fail to recognize the pattern.
The playbook is not subtle
Researchers at Outright and partners across human rights and democracy movements have documented the same sequence playing out across sectors worldwide: governments defund organizations before passing restrictive legislation, eliminating the groups most likely to document abuses before abuses occur.
In December, CIVICUS downgraded its assessment of U.S. civic freedoms from “narrowed” to “obstructed,” citing what it called a “rapid authoritarian shift.” The message was unmistakable: independent organizations that hold power to account are under growing pressure, in the United States and around the world.
And the effects have cascaded globally. When one of the world’s largest funders of democracy support and human rights work withdraws, it doesn’t just leave a funding gap. It sends a signal to authoritarians everywhere: the coast is clear.
The timing is not coincidental. In the super election year of 2024, 85 percent of countries with national elections featured anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric in campaigns. Across the 15 countries we tracked, governments proposed or enacted laws restricting gender-affirming care, rolling back legal gender recognition, and censoring LGBTIQ expression. The defunding often came first. Governments know that if they can starve the movement, there will be no one left to document what comes next.
Why US readers should care
It may be tempting to see this as a distant crisis, especially at a moment when LGBTIQ rights in the United States are under real pressure. But this story is closer to home than it appears. American funding decisions often help determine whether organizations protecting LGBTIQ people abroad can keep their doors open. And when independent organizations are weakened, no matter where they are, the consequences do not stay contained. The same political networks driving anti-LGBTIQ legislation in the United States share strategies and resources with movements abroad. Global repression and domestic rollback are not separate stories. They are the same story, unfolding in different places.
LGBTIQ organizations are often the first target, but never the last
Why target LGBTIQ communities first? Because we are politically easier to isolate. The same playbook — foreign funding restrictions, bureaucratic harassment, banking access denial — is now being deployed against environmental groups, independent media, women’s rights organizations, and election monitors. When one part of our community is silenced, all of us become more vulnerable. What happens to us is a preview of what happens to everyone.
This is not speculation. It is documented history. In Hungary, the government restricted foreign funding for civil society before passing its “anti-LGBTQ propaganda” law. In Russia, “foreign agent” designations preceded the criminalization of LGBTIQ identity. In Uganda, funding restrictions on human rights organizations came before the Anti-Homosexuality Act. The pattern repeats because it works.
And yet, even as these attacks intensify, victories continue. In 2025, Saint Lucia struck down a colonial-era law criminalizing consensual same-sex intimacy after a decade of regional planning and coalition-building. Courts in India, Japan, and Hong Kong upheld trans people’s rights. Budapest Pride became the largest in Hungarian history — and one of the country’s biggest public demonstrations — despite a government ban. In Thailand, years of patient advocacy culminated in marriage equality becoming law in 2025, the first such victory in Southeast Asia.
These wins happened because our movement built the capacity to survive hostility. Legal defense funds. Documented evidence. Regional coalitions. Emergency response networks. The organizations behind these victories are precisely the ones now facing drastic funding cuts and even closure.
What we are doing and what we need
On Jan. 20, 2026, Outright International publicly launched Funding Our Freedom, a $10 million emergency campaign running through June 30, 2026. We have already secured over $5 million in pledges from more than 150 donors. But the gap remains enormous.
The campaign supports two priorities that must move together. Half of the funds go directly to frontline LGBTIQ organizations facing sudden shortfalls: keeping staff paid, maintaining safe spaces, securing legal support, and continuing essential services. The other half supports Outright’s global work: documenting abuses, training activists, and advocating for LGBTIQ inclusion at the United Nations and other international forums. This is how LGBTIQ people remain seen, heard, and defended, even when governments attempt to erase them.
We structured Funding Our Freedom this way because frontline support without protection is fragile, and global advocacy without frontline truth is hollow. Both must survive.
Funding Our Freedom is not charity. It is how we keep the global LGBTIQ movement alive when governments try to erase it.
A call to those who believe in equality and democracy
If you are part of the LGBTIQ community, this moment is personal. Whether you give, share this work, host a small fundraiser, or bring others into the effort, you become part of what keeps our global community connected and protected.
If you are an ally or simply someone who believes in fairness, free expression, and accountable government, this fight is yours too. The defunding of LGBTIQ organizations is not an isolated decision. It is a test case. If it succeeds, the same tactics will be used against every group that challenges power and defends vulnerable people.
We are not asking for sympathy. We are asking for commitment. The organizations now being forced to close are the ones that document abuses, provide legal defense, support people in crisis, and show up when no one else will. If they disappear, we lose more than services. We lose the ability to know what is happening and to respond.
Authoritarians understand this. That is why they target us first.
The question is whether the rest of us understand it in time.
Maria Sjödin is the executive director of Outright International, where they has worked for over two decades advocating for LGBTIQ human rights worldwide. Learn more at outrightinternational.org/funding-our-freedom.
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