ONE: And a Little Child Shall Impede Them
Tennessee Republican state senator Stacey Campfield describes himself on his blog as “just an average guy….with a real cool job.” The trouble is that Campfield seems to believe his job is to be an utter dick. Take for example his newest idea, noted here a couple of weeks back, a bill to slash TANF benefits by 30 percent for households with children performing unsatisfactorily in school.
Last week, Campfield asked fellow legislators to hold the bill “for further study,” shortly after he was shown up by an eight-year-old girl. Aamira Fetuga confronted Campfield in the state Capitol and handed him a petition with 2,500 signatures in opposition to the legislation. Campfield’s immediate reaction, as expected, was to be a complete dick:
“How are you? Thanks for coming,” Campfield said, taking the petition. “I love it when people use children as props.”
And I love it when a politician who once proposed issuing death certificates for aborted fetuses lectures other people about props. Campfield quickly cut and ran from his pint-sized nemesis, or tried to:
He then set off on the three-minute walk to the Senate chamber. Rasheedat Fetuga, founder of child advocacy group Gideon’s Army, which organized the protest along with Clergy for Justice and Stand for Children, shouted after him that her daughter was not a prop and that he works for the people…
Well, Rasheedat was half right; her daughter is certainly not a prop. In fact, Aamira was a full participant, and seemed admirably self-possessed and engagingly direct:
“I’m worried about the lights being cut off,” she said.
“That won’t happen as long as you have a decent parent who can show up for two conferences,” Campfield replied.
He was referring to a provision in the bill stipulating that parents could avoid having their family’s benefits slashed by jumping through one of a number of possible hoops: “an eight-hour parenting class, meeting twice with teachers, enrolling a child in summer school or arranging tutoring.”
After taking refuge in the Senate chamber only to find that several Republican senators previously onside were now opposed, Campfield finally withdrew the bill. For now, anyway; a crucial element of Campfield’s comprehensive dickishness is his persistence. I offer as Exhibit A the fact that he has been introducing various iterations of his “Don’t Say Gay” bill for fully half a decade now.
For more context, check out Les Leopold’s horrifying new overview of what happened in Tennessee while civilization had its back turned and absolute dicks like Stacey Campfield were elected to positions of power.
Last word goes to the wholly unreconstructed dick himself, an exceedingly rare example of Campfield actually being correct about something:
“There’s always going to be detractors.”
TWO: Love and Marriage
A recent poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal finds that 53 percent of respondents support same-sex marriage. Among Democrats, it was favored by 73 percent of respondents, while 66 percent of Republicans continue to support discrimination.
So it wasn’t exactly shocking that the RNC, at its spring meeting in LA, decided to renew its official opposition to marriage equality, by supposedly unanimous voice vote:
Resolved, the Republican National Committee affirms its support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and as the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America; and be it further
Resolved, the Republican National Committee implores the U. S. Supreme Court to uphold the sanctity of marriage in its rulings on California’s Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.
Now, a cynical observer just might think the Republican Party’s definitive reaffirmation of institutional bigotry is a response to the threat of reliable money spigots being turned off, but of course it could be simply a remarkable coincidence:
After the Republican National Committee hinted at new outreach to gay voters, and possibly changing its stance or at least its tone on gay-rights issues, 11 influential social-conservative groups aired their grievances in a letter addressed to [Reince] Priebus timed to coincide with the start of the RNC’s meeting…
“We respectfully warn GOP leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support…”
Even more suspiciously, the “unanimous” aspect of the resolution’s approval was cast into doubt by an unfortunately soft-spoken attendee:
… Robert Kabel, a gay committeeman from the District of Columbia who supports allowing same sex nuptials, didn’t speak up. At least not loud enough for anyone to hear him.
Immediately after the vote… Priebus declared that all 157 members present had supported the measure.
… Kabel insists he dissented.
“I voted against the resolution. I did, it just wasn’t very vocal,” Kabel said after the meeting. “It’s hard to hear in here.”
Others, however, made themselves heard loudly, one being Michigan’s Dave Agema, the resolution’s sponsor. Agema appeared on a Family Research Council radio show to expound on his views in more detail:
“What I’d like to have the homosexual community know is I don’t hate them,” he said. “As a matter of fact when Jesus caught a woman in the act of adultery when they brought her to him he said, ‘I don’t condemn you but go and sin no more.’ That ought to be the church’s goal here. We ought to be saying to these people, ‘Hey, we don’t agree with your lifestyle and we’ll help you get out of it, but we want you to know the facts of what’s going to happen to you if you stay in this lifestyle.’”
The former state representative from West Michigan entered the national debate on gay marriage two weeks ago by sharing an article on Facebook titled “Everyone Should Know These Statistics on Homosexuality,” which began with a warning to parents that their children could be “indoctrinated” at public schools.
Agema repeated that claim on Wednesday, saying that school kids are already being conditioned to accept homosexuality and that “the next thing that will occur is your kids will come home and say, ‘I think this is a good thing and I think I want to be one.’”
Yet when it comes to ludicrous views about homosexuality, Agema is a callow hobbyist compared with Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who recently treated his radio audience to this sarcastic tirade:
“We’re getting to the point where these homofascists are going to force us to wear on our sleeves some kind of identifying marker so people will know who the racists and the homophobes and the bigots are, and can stay away from them.”
The very same day, a different but equally appalling take was offered up by the reflexively offensive Bill Donohue, loosely hinged president of the Catholic League, in a television appearance on Current:
“This idea of two men getting married is the most bizarre idea in human history,” Donohue told host John Fugelsang, adding that the purpose of marriage is a “duty” to procreate.
“The whole purpose of marriage is to have a family,” he said. “It’s not about making people happy. It’s not about love.”
I’m beginning to understand why Donohue’s marriage ended in divorce.
THREE: Ladies’ Choice
The poll mentioned above also asked respondents for their views on abortion, with less encouraging results:
… 52 percent say that abortion should be illegal either with exceptions or without them, versus… 45 percent who say it should be legal either “always” or “most of the time.”
And Republicans (along with some conservative Democrats) have done their utmost to play these percentages:
In 2013, as in recent years, state legislatures are devoting significant attention to issues related to reproductive health and rights. During the first three months of the year, legislators have introduced 694 provisions on these issues, and 93 have been approved by at least one legislative body.
Nearly half of the proposed laws concerned restrictions on abortion, but women threaten the sprawling, uncomprehending, unreachable right in more ways than with their demand for reproductive rights, so don’t expect a cessation of hostilities in the War on Women anytime soon. Another new poll shows that women are significantly more progressive than men on the issue of gun control:
Sixty-five percent of women said they favor stricter laws governing the sale of firearms… Twenty-seven percent of women said the law should be kept as it is now. By comparison, 44 percent of men favor stricter gun laws, while 41 percent said laws should stay the same… 70 percent of mothers with children in the home said that laws governing firearm sales should be tightened.
FOUR: Grave and Gathering Paranoia
But forget what women have to say about gun control. In light of this week’s shameful defeat of the Senate bill to expand background checks, the national conversation seems doomed to remain dominated by the likes of South Carolina Congressman Jeff Duncan, whose recent Facebook post on gun control attains a level of frothing-mouthed hysteria that might embarrass Wayne LaPierre (though probably not):
Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives.
Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu…
Not with firearms, mind you, but with machetes.
I use this example to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.
This is followed by one of the least self-aware statements by a politician I’ve ever read:
Preying on the fears of the American citizenry is not good governance.
Incredibly, though, Jeff Duncan still has a few lengths to make up in the never-ending wackadoo steeplechase, what with his House colleague Louie Gohmert adamantly refusing to shut up. Gohmert’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of nothing at all was on gregarious display last Wednesday when he seized on the Boston Marathon bombings to demagogue one of his favorite issues:
“We know that al Qaeda has camps with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border… We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics when they’re radical Islamists.”
¡Muy escandaloso!
FIVE: And a Half-Hour Later He Wanted to Drive Again…
Despite his enviable ability to ferret out threats to the homeland, Gohmert seems to have completely overlooked one: little kids craving Chinese food for breakfast.
Police in Lapeer [Michigan] responded to an unusual phone call… from drivers on M-24 who reported a vehicle driving erratically.
“They told police when they called that it looked like a 6-year-old was driving the car,” said Sgt. Andy Engster of the Lapeer County Sheriff’s Department. “And they were exactly right.”
When police asked the boy why he took the car, he told them he was going to get Chinese food. He had hit a “no left turn” sign on Park and Pine streets near his home and, seeing the damage to the car, decided he needed to head to the dealer to get it repaired.
The incident occurred at 7:30 a.m. just south of the I-69 entrance ramp…
