What's been missing from the Scott Brown dust-up over his nekkid man-tackle photos in Cosmo is the fact that somehow he thought that that's okay, but lesbian partners deciding to start a family isn't.
Specifically:
He touched off a political firestorm in 2001 when he disparaged Democratic state Senator Cheryl Jacques and her domestic partner, Jennifer Chrisler, for deciding to have children. In an interview with the Globe, Brown said it was "not normal" for two women to have a baby. He also dismissed Jacques's role in the relationship as her "alleged family responsibilities." He later backed off his statements, saying he chose the wrong words.
link: http://www.boston.com/...
Remembering the episode a few years back from the Bush administration where then Education Secretary Margaret Spellings removed funding from a CPB children's program simply because it featured the lesbian parents of a child on the show, it puts the question of these images in a new light.
This is what I find troubling about this juxtaposition: is Brown saying it's OK to have salacious photos out there for (I guess he assumes) the consumption of a heterosexual audience? Is it also okay with him to have video of gay families incorporated into children's programming? Or not? Or has he never been asked this question before?
Is this the new conservative standard:
Nekkid heterosexual man=good
Lesbian parents of child featured on CPB program=bad
Is the first image to be celebrated but the latter one censored?
To be fair, I don't know how Brown felt about the CPB dust-up. But I do know how he feels about gay marriage and gay families:
Brown believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. In 2007, Brown voted in favor of a failed effort to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot that sought to ban additional gay marriages.
link: http://www.masslive.com/...
In light of Brown's Cosmo photospread, if his objection to gay marriage is based in some type of religious right "protecting families and civilization" screed, that starts to seem more than slightly hypocritical and pandering. If it's something else - what else?
LGBT citizens of Massachusetts deserve to have a Senator that represents their needs as much as anyone else's. So far, it seems that Scott Brown won't be that guy.
