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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 25th, 2008
You bet they are. Yesterday, right on schedule, the Family “Research” Council sent out their daily Washington Update yesterday as they always do. Washington Updates typically consist of three stories, and yesterday’s top story was one which blamed Elaine Donnelly’s utterly deplorable testimony before the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee on “rude congressmen” instead of Donnelly’s own abysmal incompetence:
Rude Congressmen Tell and Don’t Ask at Hearing
For the first time since Congress beat back Bill Clinton’s effort to bring homosexuals into the military in 1993, there was a hearing on the topic yesterday on Capitol Hill, which FRC’s Vice President for Policy Peter Sprigg and several Witherspoon Fellows attended. The Democrats in Congress are laying the groundwork for action next year, when they hope Barack Obama will be president, to overturn the law which codified the military’s longstanding policy excluding homosexuals. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, and Sgt. Major Brian Jones, a veteran of the Army’s elite Delta Force, ably defended the law in the face of shockingly disrespectful and even abusive questioning by members of the House Military Personnel subcommittee. Particularly egregious was the behavior of Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), who said that Donnelly’s concern about the impact of HIV-positive soldiers was “dumb” and that her testimony about behaviors common among homosexuals was “bonkers.” Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) used the silly line, “When did you decide to be heterosexual?” The false assumptions that people are “born gay” and can never change, and that homosexuality is equivalent to race, permeated the questioning. Yet no one explained how it would benefit the military to recruit service members who plan to commit acts which are criminal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
This morning, that lame defense of Donnelly is gone, along with the rest of the entire Washington Update for the day.
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Regan DuCasse
July 25th, 2008
Of COURSE they are going to blame the Congressmen and soldiers who rightfully, put Donnelly in HER place!
This is the most pathetic spin yet. Stay tuned, perhaps they’ll eventually blame those ‘aggressive militant gays” like Sgt. Alva, who forced the congressmen to treat Donnelly like that!
Ya think?
Jeff
July 25th, 2008
I’m seriously starting to wonder if women like elaine donnelly are the result of a relationship that ends with the man leaving the woman for another man.
she seems too bitter about gay people, it really does seem personal to her.
Does she have the curse of the pink wand?
larry
July 25th, 2008
Is FRC not concerned at all with its credibility on issues besides homosexuality? Or are they so invested in this one issue that they are willing to go to any length – including allowing themselves to look like kooks by still defending the notion that sexual orientation is a choice? It’s almost as thought they care more about this issue than, say, abortion, where they still need to appear half sane to the general public in order to have any credibility.
If you’re a social conservative, roundly invested in moving public opinion on a number of causes, you can’t blow away your credibility on one issue and expect the public to listen to you on another. When will groups like FRC decide that this issue is a loser for them and, for the sake of their credibility on other issues, cut their losses an move on?
cd
July 25th, 2008
“When will groups like FRC decide that this issue is a loser for them and, for the sake of their credibility on other issues, cut their losses an move on?”
I think that is to misunderstand the motivation. It’s all a protest against the reality of things now, a world in which they once used to embody understanding and owned it all mentally if not physically. Now it’s a world to them that is a shell full of things that are alien, that they fear, that have displaced them from certainty and control.
So it’s mostly a matter of desire to them. Reality is not their care, nor responsibility, nor a thing they ever had a terribly solid relationship with. Losing grasp of it doesn’t bother them that much. Holding the right (and invariably highly selfserving) opinion about things is, I’ve come to think, their true psychological core and the value they esteem. It’s the crutch on which they prop themselves. Holding the right opinion means entitlement to Salvation, after all.
L. Junius Brutus
July 25th, 2008
1. “her testimony about behaviors common among homosexuals was “bonkers.—
Primarily because she offered no support for her outrageous and nebulous claim of ‘passive-aggressive behavior’. The Family Reserach Council, characteristically unconcerned with families, research, and evidence, breathlessly repeats these claims as though they were facts and blasts the Congressmen for questioning them.
2. “used the silly line, “When did you decide to be heterosexual?†”
For a silly line, it has been notoriously hard to answer for the crazies.
Jaft
July 26th, 2008
While I agree most of her testimony was rediculous, I watched the full 2 hours of the hearing. Some of the congressmen for us seemed to heckle her. Which is never a good thing, even if we know we’re right. It seemed more like we were preaching our beliefs than using her own incompetancy to prove our point.
Plus, I can’t deny she had a point when she pointed out that there’s a reason we have a bathroom for boys and girls in the 1st grade. It’s an issue we’ll have to address which may result in continuing as always (boy and girl bathrooms and gay people going to their respective gender as always), mixing bathrooms (in an extreme case, just having “any sex” bathrooms with the option of private bathrooms for one person for those that would feel uncomfortable), or having seperate bathrooms based on sex and sexuality. But I see much protest in the latter for those decisions. Either way, someday, I think this may change the way we view dealing with others’ naked bodies (or bodies and presence in general).
Dave
July 26th, 2008
“When will groups like FRC decide that this issue is a loser for them and, for the sake of their credibility on other issues, cut their losses an move on?â€
Answer: When it stops being a money-maker for them. As long as there are dolts who buy into their fear and misinformation campaigns and send them money, they’ll keep doing it.
homer
July 26th, 2008
She showed up and gave ill-prepared testimony, she deserved all of the harsh questions. She couldn’t answer anything intelligently because there are no cogent reasons to bans homosexuals from the military.
Jim Burroway
July 27th, 2008
This is a very common misperception about our opponents. Don’t think they only do this because it makes money for them. They do this because they are true and passionate believers.
They would be doing this even if it didn’t earn them a red cent. They just wouldn’t be putting it so prominently on their fundraising appeals. They’d use something else. But don’t every get the idea that if the money stops rolling in on their campaigns against us, that they’ll move on to something else. They haven’t on any other issues that doesn’t make money for them. They won’t on LGBT equality either.
Priya Lynn
July 27th, 2008
I don’t think that’s the case Jim. What issues are they working on that don’t make money for them? I can’t think of any.
ZRAinswVA
July 28th, 2008
Jaft, I’m going to respond, even though it’s off target with this conversation.
You wrote “she had a point when she pointed out that there’s a reason we have a bathroom for boys and girls”. Go to Europe, sometime, friend, and you will likely be very, very surprised about the restroom arrangement in many metropolitan cities. Unisex bathrooms? Sure? Female attendant within the mens’s restroom? Sure. Is it a problem?
Not hardly.
And point-of-fact, if the military is enforcing its’ standards of conduct, you could shower with anyone and it shouldn’t matter.
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