“Can You Still Win an Election If You’re Against Gay People?”

Can you still win an election if you’re against gay people? It’s an important question for Virginia this year.

… “Even those people who are, based on their faith, against homosexuality, they do not want someone who is going to legislate based on hate toward any group,” said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic consultant and a veteran of Virginia politics. “It is disqualifying. Nothing else he says is ever going to be heard.”

The campaign for lieutenant governor is a good test case in a purple state, but it’s not perfect. Jackson, who is black, also compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and suggested that President Obama holds a Muslim worldview-meaning that he’ll not only be labeled antigay, he’ll also be labeled as an extremist. Some Republicans continue to believe that although he faces a daunting challenge, Jackson could still win. And Republicans and Democrats agree that even if Jackson, whose invective personally maligns the gay community, loses in November, opposition to gay marriage will still remain politically viable.

Also note that Ari Fleischer, who was George W. Bush’s press secretary, tweeted, “Jackson’s antigay slurs are indefensible.” The question is, are there enough Virginia Republicans and independents who will refuse to vote for an ant-gay bigot in the year 2013? If so, then that pretty much eliminates not just EW Jackson, but also his ticketmates Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Obenshain (note the Human Rights Campaign called this ticket “rabidly anti gay,” and they’re right). Regarding Cuccinelli, there’s a massive amount of evidence that he’s a homophobic bigot. For now, I’ll just quote the Virginian Pilot, which wrote that Cuccinelli:

…declined to commit to a nondiscrimination policy against gays and lesbians observed by former Attorney General Bob McDonnell: “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that… They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

To put it politely, Cuccinelli’s election would bring embarrassment to Virginia, instability to the state’s law firm and untold harm to the long list of people who don’t fit his personal definition of morality.

Yep, that just about sums it up.

Finally, as for Mark Obenshain, he walked out of the chamber rather than vote on Judge Tracy Thorne-Begland’s confirmation, simply because Thorne-Begland is openly gay. Also, Equality Virginia gave Obenshain a ZERO rating in 2012, and an also abysmal 25% rating in 2013. Any further questions about this anti-gay ticket from hell?