It’s going to be a tense Thanksgiving at the McCain manse. Please pass the thinly veiled contempt? The NOH8 Campaign, a photo project that collected images of people with duct tape over their mouths to protest Prop 8, released a video yesterday about bullying and suicides among gay youth. The video features celebrities like Denise Richards, Gene Simmons, Dave Navarro — and Cindy McCain, whose husband led the GOP filibuster that prevented Congress from voting on a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and whose presidential campaign ran on a platform that opposed gay marriage. After sharing statistics like the fact that a gay teen commits suicide in America every seventeen minutes, the video says, “You might be asking yourself, how can these statistics be so high? What’s convincing these kids that things won’t get better?”

At which point, we see Cindy McCain for the first time, saying, “Our political and religious leaders tell LGBT youth that they have no future … They can’t serve our country openly … Our government treats the LGBT community like second-class citizens, why shouldn’t [the bullies]?”

This isn’t the first time John McCain’s wife has publicly campaigned against his policies. Earlier this year, she surprised NOH8 organizers by volunteering to pose for one of their photographs. But the video directly ties the culture of bullying and suicides among gay youth back to government policies, and it’s Cindy McCain’s words that point the finger at her husband.



Cindy McCain does video opposing DADT [AMERICAblog Gay via Daily Beast]