As you may have seen in the news yesterday, Virginia Grand Inquisitor Attorney General Ken “The Cooch” Cuccinelli is busy waging his crusade against gay people, advising the State Board of Social Services that it “lacks the authority to adopt this proposed language” that could “for the first time allow gay couples to adopt children in Virginia.” Other than being disgusted and horrified that this ignorant bigot is Virginia’s Attorney General (hello, everyone who stayed home in 2009 and didn’t vote for Steve Shannon, are you still thinking your vote didn’t matter?!?), I’m curious what’s behind all this. I saw this analysis and thought it worth passing along:
What is really important in that statement is what The Cooch, Conservatives and Gov. McDonnell are trying to do is keep sexual orientation from being recognized as protected class in terms of discrimination law. As long as that does not happen it allows Republican governors to use administrative decisions to keep from providing things like health care for the partners of gay state employees and from having to provide the same kinds of protections from discrimination that African Americans or women receive.
However, the tide on this issue is turning. The ability to treat gay citizens as somehow other, as people just engaging in behavior that has wide spread social disapproval is ending. More and more people from the Right are seeing the reality that gay people are not materially different from anyone else. The fact of who they are attracted to sexually is, when you get right down to it, one of the least important things about them and should not be used as a way to deny them rights that all other citizens enjoy.
Unfortunately, here in Virginia, notorious gay bashers (all Republicans, of course) like Cooch, “Sideshow Bob” Marshall, Eugene Delgaudio, and Dick Black, aren’t “seeing the reality that gay people are not materially different from anyone else.” Instead, they’re totally mired in their medieval worldview, one which demonizes GLBT people, and one that America as a whole is rapidly rejecting. The only question is, will America as a whole also reject the politicians – overwhelmingly Republican, I’d point out – who espouse these hateful, misguided, ignorant views?
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