Virginia Is At A Crossroad

Last week's same sex marriage ruling ignited a furious number of spittle flecked rants from the usual suspects - e.g., hate merchants Victoria Cobb, Tony Perkins, Matt Staver, et al - but it also underscores the reality that Virginia is at a crossroads where the Virginia GOP's embrace of the past, including open racism and religious extremism, is about to be swept away as non-rural areas seek to embrace the 21st century and the future.  Lest there be any doubt, before their fantasy world is swept away for good, the Christofascists and white supremacists of today's Virginia GOP will become even more shrill, but the tide of change will not be stop in the long run.  A piece in Bacon's Rebellion looks at the crossroads that Virginia has reached.  Here are excerpts:

Standing before a trim, white, clapboard house off Lafayette Boulevard in Norfolk last week, friends and supporters of gay rights cheered loudly as two same sex couples approached a front-yard podium to celebrate their legal victory in having Virginia’s gay marriage ban overturned.

The night before, U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen, citing Abraham Lincoln and the unfairness of the state’s previous ban on interracial marriage, had declared Virginia’s ban unconstitutional.

It had been supported by the state’s conservatives and also by 57 percent of voters who approved a constitutional amendment in 2006 declaring marriage as only for men and women. Popular opinion, however, appears to have shifted.

It was an historic moment on a par with federal courts overturning racial segregation and other blunt violations of human rights. Seventeen states now allow gay marriage and a host of lawsuits tend to push overturning bans. Virginia is the first Southern state to do so.

Immediately, hard-right politicians such as Prince William County’s Bob Marshall called for the judge’s impeachment just as some demanded the ouster of the new state Attorney General, Mark Herring, for, correctly, refusing to defend the marriage ban.

The situation represents a huge shift in philosophy for the state. For years, Virginia has been dominated by conservative thinking that is enormously contradictory.  . . . promoting limited government and individual freedom in some areas (little regulation of business and politicians) and badly suppressing individual rights in cases such as marriage and abortion.

This comes after the state’s reputation was badly stained by the first-ever indictment of a former governor (Robert F. McDonnell) on federal corruption charges. So much for “the Virginia way” that touts Thomas Jefferson and the entire cadre for freedom.

I have always been frustrated by the state’s bi-polar attitudes about individual rights. Not a Virginian by birth, I was glad to leave the state in 1983 after reporting from it for about eight years. I was sick and tired of its genuflecting before big business on environment and labor issues. Little-regulated Big Business, after all, had given Virginians such presents the Kepone ecological disaster.

The philosophical contradictions are finally catching up. Even though proponents of gay rights at the Norfolk press conference made a big deal about Virginia being the first “southern” state to confront ending the gay marriage ban, I am not so sure the state is really “Southern” any more.

Social right conservatives have taken drubbings. Kenneth Cuccinelli lost his bid for governor. Mark Obenshain, who once wanted to require any woman who miscarried a child to have to report it to police, narrowly lost his race for attorney general. (What’s his name) Jackson, a true crazy, lost his race for lieutenant governor.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are trying to reinvent themselves. True, some are screaming death to anyone who disagrees with them, sort of like the queen in “Alice in Wonderland.” Others are trying to find new issues to distance themselves from what is now a sure political loser – hard-right social issues.

Others are scrambling to discover new issues, such as recruiting business, reforming education, whatever. At the same time, they are straining to protect the status quo, such as ensuring that Virginia keeps its weak ethics laws.

They will lose because the handwriting is on the wall. Judge Wright Allen has helped script it.