Rep. Steve King (R-IA) - The Face of GOP Anti-Gay Animus

Rep. Steve King - certified douche bag

By almost any standard I view Rep. Steve King (R-IA) as a veritable douche bag.  He hates immigrants, he hates gays, he hates minorities - indeed, he hates everyone other than angry aging white conservatives.  The man is a poster boy for the swamp fever that afflicts today's GOP which is alienating anyone sane and making the GOP look more like a KKK gathering or chapter of the Spanish Inquisition than anything else.  In King's latest bout of batshitery, he is arguing that Gov. Jan Brewer erred in vetoing Arizona SB 1062 because "self-professed gays" will fabricate examples of anti-gay discrimination.  Moreover, he repeats the Christofascist myth that sexual orientation is not immutable - something rejected by all of the legitimate medical and mental health associations and that, therefore, we do not deserve non-discrimination protections. The ultimate irony is, however, that King blathers about "self-professed behavior" but ignores the biggest self-professed behavior of them all: religious belief/affiliation.  The Raw Story looks at King's disgusting lies and demagoguery.  Here are excerpts:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Sunday said that he opposed protecting LGBT people in hate crimes legislation because their attributes were not “immutable,” and so they couldn’t prove their sexual orientation.

During an interview with WHO-TV, King expressed regret that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) had vetoed a bill that would have allowed business owners to use their religion as reason to discriminate against LGBT people. 

“You’re an individual entrepreneur with God-given rights that our founders defined in the Declaration of Independence,” he explained. “You should be able to make your own decisions with what you do in that private business.”

King acknowledged that the public accommodation section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected individuals based on race, religion and other characteristics.

“And there’s nothing mentioned in there on self-professed behavior,” he said, referring to homosexuality. “And that’s what they’re trying to perfect, is special rights for self-professed behavior. And I think it’s difficult for us to define a law that would protect self-professed behavior.”

But when asked if his use of the term “self-professed behavior” meant that being LGBT was a choice, King said that he wasn’t sure. 

In the end, King argued that LGBT people didn’t deserve equal protection because their sexual orientation could not be “independently verified” and can be “willfully changed.”

“And when we get into area of hate crimes legislation, I’ve opposed that because you’re punishing people for what you think went on in their head at the time they perpetuated a crime,” he said.

Using King's own logic - or lack thereof - let's eliminate non-discrimination protections based on religion and religious belief.  Religious belief/affiliation is "self-professed" and cannot be  determined by viewing a group of people in a room.