Many Of The GOP’s Anti-Gay Bigots Defeated in Midterms

In the 2018 midterm elections some studies suggest that 82% of LGBT voters voted for Democrat candidates.  Given the homophobia and anti-gay animus that defines today's Christofascist dominated GOP, it should come as no surprise,   And, while the "blue wave" could have been far stronger and failed to wrest control of the U.S. Senate from Republicans - the projected GOP margin went down by one this evening as  Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema finally was called the winner against anti-gay extremist Martha McSally - many of homophobic Republicans lost at the ballot box.  Whether or not the GOP will get the message that its anti-gay agenda is a losing proposition outside of Christofascist circles and backwater red states remains to be seen.  Blogger friend Michelangelo Signorile has a piece in Huffington Post looks at the blood bath experienced by anti-gay Republicans last week.  Here in Virginia, the roster of the defeated includes soon to be former members of Congress David Brat, Barbara Comstock and Scott Taylor (I include Taylor because I believe he has never been truly gay friendly, but rather has tried to play the local LGBT community for fools).  Here are excerpts from Michelangelo's piece:

Dana Rohrabacher, the 15-term Republican incumbent washed away by Democratic challenger Harley Rouda when the blue wave came ashore in Southern California’s 48th Congressional District last week, isn’t your average homophobic extremist.

He is, in fact, an architect of the decades-long battle against LGBTQ rights and a politician, among many others, whose bigotry is partly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people from AIDS.

Rohrabacher was a lieutenant of President Ronald Reagan throughout his two terms as a speechwriter and special assistant, helping Reagan court the evangelical right, which Reagan has been credited with bringing into politics. Reagan, bowing to the zealots from whom he helped amass enormous power (power they still wield with President Donald Trump), was among the most anti-gay presidents in history, ignoring the AIDS epidemic until far too late.

Rohrabacher was . . . . was among a trio of California right-wing Republican congressmen ― including Bob Dornan and William Dannemeyer ― who demonized people with AIDS in that era, voted against efforts to stem the epidemic and battle discrimination and pushed legislation that was discriminatory against LGBTQ people. 

Now, after 30 years, this bigot has finally been booted. And he’s not the only one.

There has been much discussion in the aftermath of last week’s midterms about the rainbow wave, a record number of LGBTQ candidates elected in races across the country ― over 150 at last count. But on the other side of the coin, many ardent homophobes and anti-gay candidates were taken down too. 

In Minnesota, Rep. Jason Lewis, a Republican who equated gay couples with rapists, lost his House seat to Democrat Angie Craig ― the first lesbian mom elected to Congress.

In another case of poetic justice, openly bisexual California Democrat Katie Hill defeated Republican House member Steve Knight, who supported Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, and voted against banning “ex-gay” therapy during his time in the California Senate.

In Georgia’s now-famous 6th Congressional District, short-lived GOP incumbent Karen Handel, who said last year while running in a special election against Democrat Jon Ossoff that she didn’t support allowing adoption by gay and lesbian couples, was beaten by African-American Democrat and gun reform advocate Lucy McBath.

Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions, who claimed the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida ― the site of a 2016 gun massacre ― wasn’t actually a gay club (and who voted anti-gay every chance he got in his more than 20 years in Congress, garnering a score of zero every year from the Human Rights Campaign) was defeated by African-American civil rights lawyer Colin Allred. 

In a huge upset in Oklahoma, Republican Steve Russell, who in 2016 introduced a bill that would have provided religious exemptions to President Barack Obama’s executive order banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination among federal contractors, lost to Kendra Horn, the first Democrat to win the state’s 5th Congressional District in 44 years. 

Former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin took down Republican Rep. Mike Bishop in Michigan. He voted last year to deny transgender service members medically necessary transition-related health care and was an ardent opponent of marriage equality, seeking religious exemptions. 

In fact, the list of GOP House members opposed to marriage equality who came crashing down last week goes on and on: Dave Brat and Barbara Comstock in Virginia, Iowa’s Rod Blum, Illinois’ Randy Hultgren, Mike Coffman in Colorado and Keith Rothfus in Pennsylvania.

In the Senate, GOP marriage equality opponent Dean Heller went down in Nevada against Jacky Rosen. And in Arizona, . . . .  Martha McSally, another equality opponent, could lose in [lost] the fight for the open seat to replace marriage equality opponent Jeff Flake ― to openly bisexual Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema.

Far-right Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who once compared homosexuality to polygamy, was stopped from taking the governor’s seat and continuing the Kansas GOP’s anti-LGBTQ agenda. Democrat Laura Kelly flipped the state and has already vowed to reinstate protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender government employees, which were rescinded in 2015 by then-Gov. Sam Brownback. 

In Wisconsin, anti-LGBTQ Republican Scott Walker lost his governorship to Tony Evers, after nearly eight years, in a major win for equality. 

Democrat Gretchen Whitmer flipped Michigan in its governor’s race, preventing Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette ― who rejected the Michigan Civil Rights Commission’s expansion of state law to protect LGBTQ people ― from continuing GOP Gov. Rick Snyder’s hostile agenda.

And in the open governor’s race in Maine, Democrat Janet Mills flipped the state, ensuring right-wing extremist Gov. Paul LePage’s horrifically anti-LGBTQ agenda won’t continue under Shawn Moody, who similarly opposed marriage equality.

In many state legislatures, the blue wave washed away the hate last week. In Texas, where anti-LGBTQ Republicans in recent years introduced more than a dozen bills harmful to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people each session, Democrats flipped 12 House seats, in the biggest shift since 2010. In an upset, Ron Simmons, who authored an infamous anti-transgender “bathroom” bill ― which died in the Texas House last session but which conservatives vowed to bring back next year ― was defeated by Michelle Beckley.

Much work remains to be done and here in Virginia all in the LGBT community need to work to assist Democrats in retaking control of both houses of the Virginia General Assembly so that bills that have been blocked for years - if not decades - by Republicans can be enacted. Virginia started the blue wave in 2017 and we need to complete the job in Virginia in November 2019.  

I Don’t Want "Thoughts and Prayers. I Want Gun Control

Telemachus Orfanos (right), a 27-year-old Navy veteran, was among
the victims of the shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif. (Facebook).

Stunned and distraught families deal with the needless loss of loved ones in the wake of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California - often rated among the safest places in America - one is hearing the usual disingenuous refrain from legislators (especially Republicans) of sending "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families.  I'm sorry, but when one has failed and refused to enact strict gun control that could have prevented such often repeating tragedy's the statement is nothing short of a complete insult to the dead and their families since actions demonstrate that the speakers don't even mean the words. Thoughts and prayers are bullshit uttered by those complicit in the slaughter.  As is the case over and over, the shooter had "legally purchased" the gun used to commit 12 murders.  Thankfully, the parents of one of the victims are rejecting the meaningless, dishonest statements of "thoughts and prayers" and speaking out for gun control now.  Only a mass movement demanding gun legislation and a repudiation of "thoughts and prayers" for the enablers of mass murder will bring America the legislative change it so desperately needs.  A piece in the Washington  Post looks at this rejection of the bullshit response so favored by legislators in the pockets of the gun lobby.  Here are excerpts:

Marc and Susan Orfanos awoke at 2 a.m. on Thursday in Thousand Oaks, Calif., to a call from a relative in New York. The groggy-eyed couple stumbled into a ritual that is familiar to parents in Columbine, Blacksburg, Aurora, Newtown, Orlando, Parkland — and, as of this week, also in the quiet outpost of Los Angeles.

They waited to find out if their child, who had survived the deadliest gun massacre in modern American history last year in Las Vegas, had perished in another mass-casualty shooting.

It wasn’t until noon on Thursday that a police officer told them the news: Their 27-year-old son, Telemachus Orfanos, was dead.

That marked the end of one grim ritual, and the beginning of another, as the Orfanos parents channeled their private anguish into a public cry for gun control — a cry that has echoed from Aurora to Newtown and beyond.

But what distinguished their plea was an utter disavowal of the stock response to the violence that claimed their son’s life.

“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control," Susan Orfanos said on local TV.

“And I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers," she said, vigorously shaking her head. She emphasized each word, demanding: "No more guns.”

Whether anyone will listen, her husband said, the victim’s parents know that’s hardly certain.

“If mowing down 5-year-olds at Sandy Hook didn’t make an impression, nothing will,” said Orfanos, a semiretired substitute teacher. “The bottom line is the NRA owns most of the Republican Party, and probably some of the Democratic Party as well. Until that vise is broken, this is not going to end.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, founded and financed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, urged “common-sense, strategic actions” to reduce gun violence. Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in 2011, said she was “heartbroken, angry, and never going to accept this as normal.”

The NRA, meanwhile, pointed to California’s already-tight controls — the state was the first to ban assault rifles, nearly 30 years ago. The organization’s spokesman, Dana Loesch, [dishonestly] aimed to make the debate about mental illness, which is a problem that is not particular to the United States, where the rate of gun homicides is nevertheless much [much] higher than it is in other high-income countries.

Authorities said Ian David Long, 28, had legally purchased the .45-caliber handgun he had wielded inside the bar. He also used an extended magazine, which officials said required additional analysis to determine how many rounds it could hold, and whether it may have violated state law.

Democratic lawmakers expressed hope that the new balance of power in Washington, ratified by the midterm election on Tuesday, would shift the debate. There were notable victories for gun control advocates, including Lucy McBath, whose son was killed in a 2012 shooting. The Democrat seized a closely watched House seat in the Atlanta suburbs.

“It is unfortunately not surprising that on the same day I officially became a congresswoman-elect, other families in this country are receiving the same exact call that I did six years ago when I learned my son had been murdered,” McBath said in a Thursday statement posted on Twitter. She said she would work to “make our communities safer.”

In the Colorado district that includes Aurora, the Denver suburb where 12 people were killed in a movie theater in 2012, Democrat Jason Crow unseated Republican Rep. Mike Coffman. Guns were also a fault line in Northern Virginia, where Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock fell to Democrat Jennifer Wexton.

But the NRA also had gains to celebrate. . . . The NRA helped oust Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and it helped elevate Senator-elect Marsha Blackburn, a Republican congresswoman in Tennessee.

He [Marc Orfanos] said the country’s “gun culture" is the cause of his son’s death — a culture maintained by what he condemned as the fearmongering of the NRA.

“I blame flat out the Wayne LaPierres of the world, the Dana Loesches, because they put the fear of God in some of these people who think they need to have guns up the wazoo,” Orfanos said, referring to the executive vice president of the NRA and the group’s prominent spokeswoman.

The only way to change the culture, he said, is to pass “rational gun legislation” that protects people’s ability to arm themselves in the interest of self-defense but prohibits weapons such as AR-15s and high-power handguns.

To pass such legislation, it will be necessary to defeat more Republicans, the handmaidens of the NRA.  In Virginia, 2019 will offer the opportunity to have the Democrats take control of the Virginia legislature and pass legislation that has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans.  Thus, in Virginia, if you support gun control, it's not too early to get involved in targeting Republicans for defeat. 

The Only Way to Stop the GOP/Trump

If readers are like me and fearful for the future under the misrule of Trump and the now thoroughly foul Republican Party, there is only one way - actually two to stop the madness.  The first is to get as many sane, non-Trump base Americans of voting age to register to vote as possible.  The second step is to make sure they go to the polls in November and vote for Democrats with a goal of defeating as many Republicans as possible and putting fear into those who manage to survive by their fingernails.  Two pieces look at this issue, one in the Washington Post and one in the New York Times.  First, these highlights from the Times piece:

We got it wrong in 2016. We can get it right in 2018. There’s a far side to this American disgrace, a way to contain the damage, and it’s both utterly straightforward and entirely effective.

It’s called voting. And from now until Nov. 6, we must stay fanatically focused on that — on registering voters, turning them out, directing money to the right candidates, donating time in the right places.

The moral of the Helsinki freak show, the NATO tragicomedy and the children in cages near the border isn’t just that Donald Trump lacks any discernible conscience, real regard for this country or mature appreciation of history and our exalted part in it. It’s that this next election matters — immeasurably.

There’s no hyperbole in the frequent assertion that it’s the most important midterm in a generation. And those of us rightly appalled by this president must devote as much energy to giving Democrats control of at least one chamber of Congress — and the ability to restrain him — as to finding fresh methods for mocking him. A blimp in a diaper is a hoot. A legislature with its foot on his throat is an insurance policy.

My plea isn’t a partisan one, nor am I romanticizing the Democratic Party, which has problems galore. I’m recognizing that when it comes to babysitting this president, the Republican Party is a lost cause. 79 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s sycophantic performance at the news conference with Vladimir Putin, while 85 percent deem the investigation of Russian intrusion into our elections a distraction. They bear less and less resemblance to the followers of a coherent ideology and more and more to the members of a cult. Congressional Republicans have decided that to cross Trump is to commit suicide. They need to be convinced that not crossing him is as fatal a course. That’s what a big-enough blue wave would do, and that’s why once loyal Republicans who cannot abide him — the columnist George Will, for one prominent example — have gone from chastising the Republican Party to cheerleading for the Democratic Party and urging Americans to support it in November. It’s the last resort.

I don’t believe, nor see any evidence, that more Americans wanted him as our president than wanted Hillary Clinton. But roughly 40 percent of Americans who were eligible to vote didn’t. Clinton was much preferred by the youngest voters, ages 18 to 29. But fewer than one in two of them cast a ballot. We can’t count on Robert Mueller, the special counsel, because we don’t know what he’ll ultimately report or whether, after the perfervid campaign to discredit him, it will stick to Trump. But elections do stick. Ask Hillary Clinton.

To blunt Trump’s attack on our democracy, we have to use our democracy. We can restore faith in it by showing faith in it. For all its corruptions and imperfections, it still gives us a power — through our ballots — that exceeds even the most power-hungry president’s.

The piece in the Post echos similar exhortations.  Get registered to vote and turn out and vote in November.  No excuses and no procrastinating.  Simply do it.  Here are highlights from the Post piece:

Last week it was Russia, Russia, Russia. This week began with a bombastic, all-caps screed about Iran — and, of course, more wailing about the purported “Mueller Witch Hunt.” In between was a stray tweet about football and the national anthem, just to stir the racial pot. President Trump is wagging the dog so hard, . . . Through it all, we must keep our eyes on the prize.

There is just one realistic way to constrain this lunatic administration and hold it accountable: Vote in November to snatch control of Congress away from the quisling Republicans and hand it to the Democrats.

If I sound like a broken record on this subject, too bad. You can shut me up by generating a gigantic midterm turnout and flipping at least the House. Otherwise, prepare to be reminded, repeatedly and perhaps obnoxiously, that I told you so.

It is possible that Mueller will reveal something so shocking that even House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will choose country over party. But it is not likely. 

Presciently, the framers of the Constitution gave Congress the power to check an erratic or power-mad president. But Congress has to be willing to use that power, and Republicans seem afraid to do so. We can only hope that Democrats are up to the task. 

Democrats can systematically level the playing field — once they achieve power. To do so, they need to win elections.  And to win elections, they need new faces, new ideas and a new attitude. Fortunately, all three are present — and must not be quashed.

There will be plenty of time to worry about the 2020 presidential election. Right now, the Democratic Party’s exclusive focus should be on registering new voters and ensuring that constituencies with a habit of voting only in presidential years — especially minorities and young people — come out in November.

Are you registered? Do you not just plan to vote but swear you will vote? Do you know where your polling place is? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you are not part of the solution. You’re part of the problem.

If you love this country and/or want to make it better, it is utterly crucial that you register to vote, if not currently registered, and actual get to the polls and cast your ballot in November. Vote Democrat whenever and wherever possible.  Republicans have betrayed this country and its future and must be driven from office. It is really that simple.