The Washington Blade has an interesting exchange between various Virginia GLBT leaders. Check this out.David Lampo, vice president of the Virginia Log Cabin Republicans, said the gay-specific items in McDonnell’s thesis “represent the antithesis of the generally libertarian principles upon which this country was founded.” However, Lampo noted that he doesn’t believe McDonnell still holds those views.A couple of comments. First, how on earth could any GLBT person in their right mind still be a member of a virulently homophobic party like today's Republican Party? Sure, they can call themselves "Log Cabin" in reference to Abraham Lincoln (who was born in a log cabin), but that doesn't mean today's Republican Party bears any resemblance whatsoever to the Party of Lincoln. For that matter, it also bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Progressive party of Teddy Roosevelt, or the moderate Republicanism of presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon (aside from the scandals, remember that Nixon pursued detente, went to China, established the EPA, imposed wage and price controls, etc.), and Gerald Ford. Heck, this isn't even the party of George HW Bush. It's also not the party of the moderate or even socially liberal Republicans who used to reside in places like New England and the Midwest. So what's a nice GLBT like David Lampo doing in a party like this? Got me.
“The belief in the theocracy that these statements represent are a repudiation of the traditional principles of limited government and individual rights the Republican Party has usually espoused, and I think Mr. McDonnell himself no longer believes many of these,” Lampo said.
Lampo said he was “heartened” by McDonnell’s statement that government shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and noted this pledge “represents a genuine evolution of his views over the 20 years since this dissertation was written.”
But Charley Conrad, president of the Virginia Partisans, an LGBT Democratic group, criticized McDonnell for writing the thesis and said it reveals “the true content of his thinking and of his character.”
“Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s hard to put it back in,” Conrad said. “He may try to say that he doesn’t feel like that way now, but I just find that hard to believe. I mean, he comes from that Regent University mindset where that’s how they think.”
Del. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), the only openly gay member of the Virginia General Assembly, also said the publication of the thesis dispels any notion that McDonnell is a moderate candidate.
“I think that it takes off the mask that he’s been wearing as a candidate and it’s an exposé of his core beliefs,” he said. “There’s been no evidence of change from what he wrote years ago to what he believes in and has legislated in recent years.”
Second, why on earth would anyone believe the words of a politician ambitious to be elected governor, in the midst of a heated political campaign, as opposed to that person's legislative and public record over nearly 20 years? Has Bob McDonnell walked us systematically through the process by which his thinking on social issues has changed since his 1989 thesis, or since the 1990s and 2000's? So far, I haven't heard it, except for him to try and claim that he was "only" 34 years old when he wrote the thesis and then to deny his far-right-wing record in the General Assembly, as former Republican colleagues like Russ Potts, Marty Williams, Jim Dillard and Katherine Waddell discussed at length the other day? Anyway, the bottom line is that there's no reason for any of us to believe the candidate in the midst of the race of his life, when saying whatever it takes to get elected is his prime motive. McDonnell's public record since he was 34 years old - including his persecution of Verbena Askew for supposedly violating Virginia's (bizarre) "crimes against nature" law - is far more revealing.
