Wooing the Right Wing

Alvin McEwen, the excellent blogger at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, provides yet another example of how politicians go from doing the right thing to wooing the right wing.  Today's example?  Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (left).  Back in 1993 he voted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, public accommodations, and employment.  Now Governor Pawlenty is seriously considering a run for the Republican nomination for President.  Do I even have to finish this entry to tell you what he says about that law now?

It's become all too familiar.  Governor Pawlenty, of course, has pulled a Mitt Romney (right).  Says Pawlenty:

I regretted the vote later because it included things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren't based on sexual orientation, just a preference for the way they dressed and behaved. So it was overly broad. So if you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday as Mr. Johnson and you show up on Tuesday as Mrs. Johnson, that is a little confusing to the kids. So I don't like that.

Thank goodness someone is saving third graders from cross-dressing teachers!  Of course, Pawlenty is playing on fear of transgendered people in a very ugly way.  And Freud might have something to say about him choosing the name "Mr. Johnson"-- but I won't go there.

When history is finally written about the LGBT fight for equal rights, there will be a special chapter on cowards like Pawlenty who backtracked after doing the right thing for their own political gain.

Houston, we have a problem

 After our loss on the Maine ballot initiative, I wrote about some of the LGBT candidates who had won elections across the country.  Especially encouraging was Annise Parker, who topped the ticket to win one of two run-off slots for Mayor of Houston.  Her sexual orientation was not really an issue in her campaign.  She has children and has been with her partner for two decades.  She never focused on her identity, and most politicians didn’t either.

Well, that has all changed.  Anti-gay activists are in panic mode over the possibility that one of the top ten US cities could be run by a --gasp--lesbian. In fact they are so panicked that they are launching a campaign not against what Parker stands for, but who she is.  They are warning people of the “gay takeover” of Houston.  (Their words, not mine.)  I’ve tried to envision what that might look like.  Hmmm.  Pink Fridays instead of casual Fridays?  Changing the name of the Houston Astros to the Houston Castros?  Making heterosexual marriage unconstitutional?  Replacing the Star Spangled Banner with  YMCA or In the Navy? The possibilities are endless.

But the opponents are dead serious.  The other candidate in the race, Gene Locke, had previously distanced himself from the anti-gay groups.  Now he’s not so sure he can live without them.  He is courting endorsements from these folks, including a man named Steve Hotze, who in the past recruited eight city council candidates -- a straight slate -- to run solely on an anti-gay platform.  Said David Welch, the leader of one of these groups, “The bottom line is that we didn’t pick the battle, she did, by making her agenda and sexual preference a central part of her campaign.”  What’s so ironic is that she’s barely mentioned her orientation.  And by the way, aren’t candidates supposed to make agendas the central part of their campaigns?

Houston is generally a gay friendly city with a large LGBT population.  It remains to be seen whether LGBT folks will feel as welcome there after the vicious and hateful campaign.

Thanks to Gaypolitics.com and Gayrights.change.org for much of the info in this post.