I have known likely GOP candidate for Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for over 14 years. In fact, he helped on my 1994 campaign for Virginia Beach School Board at which time I was labeled "Christian Right" by the Virginia Beach Education Association (the local NEA affiliate). Talk about getting your facts wrong!! *
I continued to know McDonnell while I served on the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach and later warned him - and the rest of the Virginia Beach delegation to the Virginia General Assembly - in January 2004 that the GOP had a real problem in the form of former Congressman Ed Schrock who was enraging the LGBT community with his anti-gay voting record in Congress. My warning went unheeded and the GOP controlled Virginia General Assembly enacted the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" later that year. Low and behold, in late summer of 2004 some woman - I have never figured out her identity - gave Mike Rogers recordings on Ed Schrock's Mega Phone ads for gay sex and the rest is history as they say with Schrock being outed.
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Over time Bob McDonnell seems to have become more homophobic with every passing year. Since I am now treated like a leper by most of my former GOP acquaintances, Bob McDonnell and I are not exactly chatting regularly. I truly do not know whether McDonnell's anti-gay beliefs are personal or merely a function of cow towing to the increasingly lunatic base of the Republican Party of Virginia which acts like it drinks Kool-Aid by the barrel full. The end result is that gay rights organizations in Virginia are very wary of what McDonnell might do if elected as Governor. Here are highlights from the Washington Blade:
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Gay rights advocates in Virginia are concerned that a Republican with a distinctly anti-gay record could be the state’s next governor.Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, the only Republican candidate to file for the governor’s race before last month’s deadline, is already the party’s presumptive nominee. Tom Osborne, treasurer of the Virginia Partisans, a gay Democratic group, called McDonnell “one of the most outspoken, homophobic elected officials in the state” and said he’s been the gay community’s “enemy at every opportunity.”
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In 2006, McDonnell issued an opinion that concluded Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s (D) executive order prohibiting discrimination against gays in the state and public workforce was unconstitutional.McDonnell, whose campaign declined an interview request for this article, also cast anti-gay votes while representing Virginia Beach, Va., in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2005. In 2006, he voted in favor of the Marshall-Newman Amendment when it came to the General Assembly. The measure, approved in 2006, made a prohibition on same-sex marriage and civil unions part of the Virginia Constitution.
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While he opposed Kaine’s non-discrimination order in 2006, McDonnell later that year issued an opinion stating that the Marshall-Newman Amendment would not interfere with contracts, wills, medical directives and other agreements in the state and “will not modify the application and enforcement of Virginia’s domestic violence laws.” McDonnell’s opinion empowered municipalities in Northern Virginia to issue directives requiring officials to treat domestic violence calls for gay couples in the same way that such cases are handled for straight couples.
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McDonnell is not the only Republican candidate with an anti-gay record running for statewide office next year. State Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax) announced in March that he intends to succeed McDonnell as attorney general.Cuccinelli voted in favor of the Marshall-Newman Amendment in 2005 and 2006. During debate on the measure in 2005, he was quoted as saying that there was nothing wrong with discriminating against gays. In an April interview with the Blade, Cuccinelli called himself “a traditional family guy” and said he doesn’t believe “homosexuality is something that’s right at a fundamental level.”In April, Lampo said Cuccinelli is “no friend of the Log Cabin Republicans,” and Osborne described Cuccinelli as a “shrill enemy of LGBT rights.”
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