The entire Virginia GOP statewide ticket - Cuccinelli, Jackson and Obenshain - is horrifically anti-gay although none of his ticket mates reach quite the foaming at the mouth level of Lt. Candidate E.W. Jackson. A column in the National Journal suggests that this virulent level of homophobia and anti-gay preaching could prove damaging for the GOP ticket and for Jackson in particular given the rapid shift in societal views on gays. A shift that seems to be causing the anti-gay crowd to become more hysterically vocal and, hence the appeal of Jackson to the audience at the recent GOP state convention where attendees were largely devotees of The Family Foundation. Here are some highlights from the column:
For a moment last week, Ari Fleischer found a subject more worthy of derision than Benghazi or the Internal Revenue Service. President George W. Bush’s former press secretary took aim at a fellow Republican named E.W. Jackson.
A day earlier, Jackson had improbably won the GOP’s lieutenant-governor nomination in Virginia, taking advantage of a party convention controlled by conservative activists who didn’t mind the Chesapeake-area minister’s relative anonymity. (Only a year ago, Jackson won less than 5 percent of the vote in a GOP Senate primary.) They also didn’t seem to know, or care, that Jackson had a long history of antigay rhetoric, the most incendiary of which includes saying that gay men and women are “very sick people psychologically, mentally, and emotionally,” calling them “perverted,” and comparing homosexuality to pedophilia.
That’s what drew Fleischer’s ire. “Jackson’s antigay slurs are indefensible,” he tweeted.
That a prominent Republican—one whose president only nine years earlier had successfully used gay rights as a wedge issue during his reelection campaign—would offer such a blunt, caveat-free condemnation is a testament to how gay politics has changed in a decade. And Fleischer’s comment is indicative of the fact that Jackson’s week-old campaign is already under siege, so much so that some operatives are speculating he might yet drop out of the race.
All of which suggests that gay politics is nearing a critical threshold: Candidates with a known bias against homosexuals might now face close to the same impenetrable barrier to office as politicians biased against blacks, Jews, or women. Candidates known to be racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynistic are all effectively barred from winning elections in the 21st century—and homophobes might be joining that list.
[F]ew doubt that antigay slurs carry far more consequence than they did just several elections ago. A Gallup Poll released last week found that 59 percent of Americans consider gay relations morally acceptable—a 19-point shift toward that viewpoint from a survey in 2001. Of the 20 moral issues Gallup polled over the 12-year span, no other issue had such a large swing in its favor. “If he had said this six or eight years ago, I don’t know if we’d be having this conversation, quite frankly,” said one Republican strategist in Virginia, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “I do think it’s moved forward to a point where this has potential to be a real disqualifier as a candidate.”
To some analysts, the shift is about more than how the public views gay men and lesbians. There’s a larger ongoing evolution, they say, in which voters are far less tolerant of intolerance, period. . . . . The source added, “White women are not going to go for that. There is a large group of white men who won’t go for that. There are a lot of Republicans who don’t go for that. This is a question about humanity.”
In an off-year election that could hinge on base turnout, Republicans point out that Jackson might prevail. If he does, antigay politics may not yet be a disqualifier. But if he loses, don’t be surprised if conservative activists do a little more homework before picking their candidates in the future.
Many of us will be working hard to turn out the Democrat base which needs to understand that the Virginia GOP isn't just anti-gay. It's anti-minorities, it's anti-women and it's anti-modernity and equality under the law.
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