Buried under the all the flap about Mary was this.
From David Neiwert freelance journalist based in Seattle comes this to reopen our eyes.
Betcha didn't know that the Republican leadership of the House, for the third consecutive time, successfully killed yet another federal hate-crimes law last week, didja?
I guess I must be horribly out of touch with the Republican version of reality, because I'm still not really certain what the hell impropriety John Kerry was supposed to have committed by pointing out in last week's debate that Mary Cheney is gay. It was, by nearly any plain reading of his remarks, a fairly innocuous comment.
But the ensuing fake controversy is the GOP's 2004 campaign in nutshell: Don't let's talk about Bush's dismal record. Let's talk well-spun trivia -- or flat-out smears -- instead.
And when it comes to sensitive treatment of gays and families of gays, no one can match the record of Republicans -- for wallowing so deep in the gutter of bigotry that they definitively make life quantifiably worse for gays, lesbians, and their families.
Take, for instance, the matter of hate crimes.
Betcha didn't know that the Republican leadership of the House, for the third consecutive time, successfully killed yet another federal hate-crimes law last week, didja?
This was a bill that had been approved overwhelmingly by the Senate in June by a 65-33 vote. The House itself passed a resolution 213-186 instructing the House leaders -- namely, Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert -- to pass the bill through the House Conference Committee.
They ignored it, and last week stripped it out of the Defense Appropriations Bill to which it had been attached, effectively killing it.
This is now the third time DeLay and Co. have pulled this stunt and gotten away with it. They used precisely the same tactic to kill the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 1999, and to kill its successor, the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, in 2000.
As the Human Rights Campaign explained in its press release:
The measure enjoys strong bipartisan support and is endorsed by more than 175 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations, including: the National Sheriffs' Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, U.S. Conference of Mayors, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and many others.
That didn't matter. What mattered to Republicans was the freedom to bash gays.
Oh, we know they hide behind phony and nonsensical arguments like "all crimes are hate crimes" and "these laws create thought crimes." But let's get real about what's really happening here: These laws are not being passed because the Republican leadership -- including George W. Bush -- is determined not to allow any improvement in the laws for gays and lesbians.
The reality is that Republicans have established credibility with their base -- especially fundamentalist Christians -- by making emotional appeals to their "values"; this is, as many observers have noted, an essential element of their ability to persuade working-class people to vote for an agenda clearly at odds with their own self-interest. And, after abortion, attacking the "homosexual agenda" is easily the most prominent and flagrant of these "values."
Republicans also like to talk about the need to live up to the consequences of their actions. And one of the real consequences of the House's refusal to pass this legislation is that more hate crimes will occur.
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