An Open Letter to Senator Jim Webb

On Friday I received an e-mail from Senator Jim Webb's communications director, Jessica Smith, that a first seemed like a genuine outreach by the Senator to LGBT Virginians. It turns out that it wasn't. It was part of a poorly executed PR effort. And as one commenter on one of my Bilerico Project posts rightly noted "It's called "damage control." The best part is that there have been several identical letters sent to various folks from multiple staffers. At least they could have tailored the e-mails to the audience if they didn't want to get busted." Apparently, the Senator underestimates his LGBT constituents and is clueless as to how we are able to quickly communicate among ourselves literally all over the state and the USA by the mere click of a "send button." The following is my personal response to the Senator's office.

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Dear Ms. Smith,

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I wanted to give an updated response to your message from Friday - and a similar one disseminated by Mr. Haskins to other opponents of DADT in Virginia. If the intention of your office was to placate the LGBT community, particularly those of us in the LGBT community in Virginia, suffice it to say that I do not believe it is working. Delay on DADT is simply not acceptable. The issue has already been studied to death. Therefore, the only purpose of further study is delay.

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Senator Webb can claim otherwise, but by doing so he is only throwing away his credibility with LGBT Virginians. The time has come for the Senator to stand up to Christianist bigots who want to denigrate and disparage gay Americans and make them second class citizens simply because we do not conform our lives to Christianist religious views. One could even make the argument that by not standing up to the Christianists, Senator Webb is failing to support the U.S. Constitution which guarantees freedom from religious based discrimination to all citizens. Senator Webb might do well to read Section 1 of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom as a refresher on what religious freedom means.

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I invite you to read this piece I posted on The Bilerico Project over the weekend (a similar piece appeared on my personal blog too) as well as the comments left by readers on that post as well as a prior one cited therein. As you will see, the sentiment of readers is running strongly in favor of not supporting Democrats in the November mid-terms because the Obama/Congressional Democrat campaign promises have not been kept. Indeed, other bloggers I know and with whom I have communicated are working up campaigns to (i) make sure that the LGBT ATM is turned off to Democrats who do not keep their promises and (ii) encourage LGBT voters to stay home.

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I sincerely hope that Senator Webb rethinks his position on the repeal of DADT THIS YEAR without unnecessay and (in my view) disingenuous delay.
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Sincerely,
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Michael Hamar, Hampton, Virginia 23661