Is Marriage Greatest Priority?

Posted on October 12, 2006 by David

Loudoun Observer
October 5, 2006
By Louis Horvath, Herndon

Kudos to our Republican representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, who are looking out for our best interest. Obviously, addressing the traffic problems in Northern Virginia is not as important as the constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage or civil unions (and maybe other unintended consequences).

This is without a doubt the most serious threat to our way of life in Virginia and the institution of marriage must be protected at all cost. Of course, Sen. George Allen and Del. Tom Rust will have to recuse themselves because, well, they didn’t quite follow through on their first set of vows.

In fact, the 50 percent of the population that has been divorced should not be permitted to vote on this issue. I submit that the best way to protect marriage is to outlaw divorce. Perhaps if prospective couples realized that getting out was not as easy as getting in, they would take marriage more seriously.

However, this could not pass since too many of our representatives would have to recuse themselves.

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Equal Rights for All

Posted on October 12, 2006 by David

Loudoun Connection
October 4, 2006
By Chris McHale, Potomac Falls

I would like to respond to the article, Black Proposes Debate in the Sept. 20 edition of the Loudoun Connection. I take exception to Mr. Black’s proposed debate in opposition to gay marriage.

Mr. Black is no longer a delegate, as the people have voiced their opinion of his politics and voted him out of office. Thus, his challenge is nothing more than grandstanding on his side. It is beyond me as to why the Loudoun Connection continues to give him a vehicle in which to remain in the spotlight.

The second point worth noting is that politicians take an oath to honor and uphold the United States Constitution. The Constitution provides equal rights to all. However, Mr. Black does not agree with this and has taken it upon himself to decide which people should have which rights. My concern is that we do not know which group Mr. Black may next decide does not deserve the protection of the Constitution.

Regardless of Mr. Black’s religious beliefs, which he clearly enjoys the Constitutional right to practice, his job, had he not lost the election, would have been to protect the rights of all citizens and not just those that agree with him.

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Not So Simple

Posted on October 12, 2006 by David

Loudoun Connection
September 27
By David Weintraub
President, Equality Loudoun

Thank you to Erika Jacobson for her sensitive article about The Cypress Project, the foundation formed to help those targeted by anti-gay hate crimes in the wake of the attack on our friends in Aldie.

I do have one small criticism, and I say this with the understanding that space is a precious commodity in newspapers. Brevity is important, but accuracy ought to be even more highly valued – especially when our fundamental rights are at stake. It is tempting to save space by describing the proposed amendment that will be on the ballot Nov. 7 with the shorthand “which would define marriage as between one man and one woman,” but that is only a small part of what it would do. In fact, the amendment would add language to Virginia’s Bill of Rights that is unprecedented both in current law and in the amendments passed in other states.

It would permanently bar our legislature from considering civil unions for same sex couples, a compromise that most Virginians say they support. The overly broad and ambiguous language would do even more than that, though. It would prohibit courts from enforcing a legal contract entered into by any unmarried couple – gay or straight – if that contract “intends to approximate” any of the rights or obligations normally obtained through marriage. The contracts that would be made vulnerable are ones made to ensure the very things that married couples take for granted – for example, the right to be with and make medical decisions for an injured loved one.

There are many compassionate people who believe that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman – as it already is in Virginia, but would not want to jeopardize rights so fundamental to the security and well being of their unmarried neighbors. Virginians should know how important it is for them to read the whole amendment and carefully consider the implications for everyone before they vote this November. Then they should do the right thing by voting no on No. 1.

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The company we keep

Posted on October 11, 2006 by David

Anti-gay blogger Jerry Fuhrman tells us that the Klan is having a little rally in Virginia. I’m not sure what Jerry is upset about – he must not realize that they are his political allies, or at least doesn’t want to draw attention to it. Maybe that’s what he meant by “of all the problems we need to be dealing with.” But hey, every vote counts, right?

This is what the KKK was up to at a rally exactly one year ago:

“We just want to come and encourage people to vote for Christian Family Values and against legalized homosexual marriage in the state of Texas.”

Steven Edwards, Grand Dragon of Texas for the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said the rally will help get the word out about the vote. He said his group, which won’t be wearing its white robes or hoods today, plans to keep the gathering peaceful and refrain from shouting racial epithets.

“We decided to rally so people would know about the election and come out to vote against the homosexual lifestyle,” Edwards, who lives in San Angelo, said in a telephone interview. “It’s time for Christians to come out of the closet and vote.”

Yeah, “Christians.”

As it happens, the KKK is also having a little rally over in Harper’s Ferry on Saturday – the same day that the Cypress Project will be bringing the community together to restore the property of the two Aldie men who were targeted in an anti-gay hate crime in July. It’s quite a juxtaposition. Which world do you want to live in?

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Here comes the hate parade

Posted on October 10, 2006 by David

…right on schedule.

Whoever is in charge of the pro-Marshall/Newman talking points is not having a good week.

After months of carefully constructed, monotonously repeated denials that the motivation behind Ballot Question #1 is animus toward the GLBT community, it’s over. Every argument in favor of the amendment has been refuted, the Some Families Foundation has been reduced to transparent attempts to change the subject, amendment patron Bob Marshall has gone off the deep end, and voters are quite understandably suspicious when they are handed “vote yes” propaganda that doesn’t include the text of the amendment they’re being told to vote for (even if it does come with candy). “You know, I thought there must be more to this,” voters told us at Sterlingfest.

The result? Amendment proponents have nothing left but to display their true anti-gay colors. At the October 5 GMU rally, the small band of protesters with their “vote yes 4 marriage” signs actually heckled faith leaders during a prayer vigil by shrieking about “sodomy.” After they were hushed by security, and not permitted to approach the stage, they could only stand belligerently in a line across the walkways, refusing to get out of the way of the crowd leaving the rally.

These people are angry.

The mask has come off in the wake of another revelation that “religious conservatives,” as sincere as they are misinformed about matters of sexual orientation, are being used. To cover up the cynicism and amorality of the anti-gay right, the explanations for the Foley scandal have descended in a downward spiral from the humorous (the suggestion that House leadership feared accusations of gay-bashing), to the alarming, to the outright dangerous.

Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson, supposedly a professional, a person with training and education in mental health issues, supposedly an advocate for children and families, supposedly someone with a working understanding of how power in relationships can be used to exploit the most vulnerable among us – is repeating the internet-fabricated rumor that the victims here were actually…Mark Foley and his hapless former colleagues.

As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages.

That’s right folks, it was just a prank. Boys will be boys. No one was harmed, nothing to see here, please move along. This rumor was spread by bloggers claiming that the teenage page “goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments.”

Silly, ignorant bloggers who know nothing about sexual harassment or predatory behavior patterns might be able to get away with this, but what’s Dr. Dobson’s excuse? Parents who have previously looked to this man for guidance should see this as their shocking wake up call – his loyalty isn’t to the truth, and it sure isn’t to family values or the protection of vulnerable young people. It’s to the protection of his political allies.

Even worse is the McCarthyist language fueling paranoid fantasies of a shadowy “network” of gay staffers and members of the legislature, not to mention what can only be called an ugly blood libel – the attempted association of predatory, abusive behavior with a gay orientation. More breathless prose from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins:

This raises yet another plausible question for values voters: has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder.

Wonder no longer, Tony. It’s well known that there is a deep split in the GOP between social issues ideologues like you and business interest conservatives, with a pronounced tendency for the latter to ridicule and ignore the former. While it might be more satisfying for your personal demons to dream up a vast gay conspiracy, that’s not the source of your troubles.

A note to those who will complain that the term “anti-gay” constitutes name-calling: Your feeling that this descriptor is an epithet demonstrates that you know it’s morally wrong. Congratulations. The first step on your road to recovery is recognizing that you have a problem.

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“An ugly, mean-spirited assault”

Posted on October 6, 2006 by David

This is how the recent focus of the Virginia General Assembly on the private lives of GLBT people was described in an editorial published Monday.

Was it in the Washington Post? The Connection? Some other mainstream newpaper?

No, it was the ultra-conservative Sun-Gazette, which commonly refers to such papers as “The Washington Post and its social-leftie wannabes in the Northern Virginia community press.”

When an attempt to write anti-gay prejudice into the constitution is too extreme even for the Sun-Gazette, the proponents of that attempt have a problem.

‘No’ on Constitutional Amendment
The Sun-Gazette
October 2, 2006

On principle, we should be in favor of the proposed state constitutional amendment banning so-called “gay marriage.”

…

Unfortunately, the proposed amendment Virginia voters will be casting ballots on this November is overreaching, ambiguous and clumsily written. This sloppiness has given the amendment’s opponents a great tool: A chance to reach out to moderates and conservatives with the argument that having no amendment is better than having this amendment.

We agree.

more»

For those who are trying so hard to change the subject by demanding that the Commonwealth Coaliton provide its “definition of marriage,” here’s your wake up call. There are as many answers to that question as there are people who oppose Ballot Question #1. Are you starting to get it now?

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Moral bankruptcy

Posted on October 3, 2006 by David

Between comments by Newt Gingrich and the Wall Street Journal, we’re getting a good idea of what’s wrong with the moral compass of the anti-gay right. They don’t have one.

Gingrich provided an unintentionally humorous defense of Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual harrassment of house pages, for which the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson put him in his place:

Former speaker Newt Gingrich suggested over the weekend that House leaders may have worried last year that if they pursued the Foley matter, they’d be “accused of gay-bashing.” Clearly, in terms of his spinning skills, Gingrich has lost a step. The issue was whether a congressman was having improper communications with a child, not whether the congressman was gay; it would have been just as troubling if the e-mail had been sent to a female page. And anyway, it’s a little late for the Republicans to denounce gay-bashing after raising it to an art form.

Gingrich’s framing of Foley’s predatory behavior and its subsequent cover-up as a partisan whine is high art, indeed – but it gets better. The WSJ thinks that the House leadership was somehow confused over what is and is not appropriate behavior for an adult Congressman toward a 16 year old former page; they may have thought that being “friendly” and sending “a few naughty emails” to a teenager was a legitimate “lifestyle choice.” Why? Well, because of “political correctness,” of course; it’s not their fault they didn’t realize that was wrong.

But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys.

Is it easy to understand? Only if you are unable to grasp the most fundamental differences between right and wrong. Only if you are so lacking an inner moral compass that you can’t make the distinction between normal adult sexual expression, regardless of orientation, and the use of powerful office to coerce and exploit powerless teenagers.

Maybe Newt and the WSJ received their talking points from the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins titled his brief article “Pro-Homosexual Political Correctness Sowed Seeds for Foley Scandal”. It’s more than a little ironic to think of professional gay-bashers practicing “Pro-Homosexual” anything, so this must be more of that high art. (Foley’s sexual orientation is, of course, irrelevent – unless the FRC wants to suggest that the highly disproportianate sexual harrassment of female employees is the result of “Pro-Heterosexual Political Correctness.” That probably isn’t what they had in mind.) Corruption is the problem. Powerbrokers and gatekeepers in government can do or say anything they want so long as they raise the money, vote the “right” way (Foley voted for the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment”), and win elections.

That problem might be solvable with appropriate oversight, but when those who are supposed to be accountable are supplied with morally bankrupt excuses by the FRC, it won’t happen. To paraphrase Mr. Perkins, the Foley scandal shows what happens when self-serving hypocrisy and anti-gay rhetoric is put ahead of protecting children.

If people don’t learn to question the twisted logic of these spinmeisters, democracy is in deep trouble. Please read the FRC article closely and tell us what you think of the “social science” therein – and then what you think of those who are trying to dismiss as unimportant a powerful man’s predatory sexual pursuit of vulnerable young teenagers. Can anyone actually be this amoral?

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