Check out how Liberty Institute — the Texas affiliate of Focus on the Family — is describing State Board of Education member George Clayton. Clayton, a Republican from the Dallas area, lost his re-election bid Tuesday in the GOP primary. The sneering contempt is almost palpable:
In the North Texas area, incumbent SBOE member George Clayton finally got around to being transparent about his sexual orientation, admitting his homosexuality but not until after he was elected in 2010 and in office as a Republican. Clayton was only able to garner 23% of the votes in his re-election bid. So 77% of the voters said “no” to an incumbent moderate Republican running for the State Board of Education.
“Admitting his homosexuality”? He makes it sound as if Clayton had acknowledged a crime. Of course, the fanatics at Liberty Institute believe being gay should be a crime — the group’s president, Kelly Shackelford, has been a supporter of sodomy laws that criminalize private and consensual sexual relationships between same-sex partners. (When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Texas sodomy law in 2003, Shackelford shrieked: “There is no constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy. Read the Constitution as many times as you’d like. It’s not there.” He acted as if the case, Lawrence v. Texas, had been simply about a sexual act rather than the dignity of human beings seeking the same right to privacy that Shackelford himself enjoys.)
Look again at the way Liberty Institute’s blogger describes how Clayton “finally got around to being transparent about his sexual orientation.” Note that Clayton has been with his partner for 34 years. (The median duration of American marriages is a bit more than half that.) The blogger also chooses to ignore that Clayton’s relationship with his partner was the subject of a whisper campaign by political opponents late last year. When Clayton publicly discussed his relationship at the time, Liberty Institute’s blogger speculated that voters would be particularly interested because the state board has authority over setting health curriculum standards, including standards on sex education. Ah, yes — the sinister connection between gay people, children and sex. What bigot can resist using that old trope?
But we had to laugh when the blogger noted that Clayton had won just 23 percent of the vote in the four-person GOP primary. He conveniently ignores that right-winger Gail “The Pilgrims Were Commies” Spurlock snuck into the runoff with not even 1 percent more of the vote. Using his logic, 76 percent of voters said “no” to Spurlock’s extremism. Of course, logic isn’t a strong suit for haters.
Such is the hateful, contemptuous face of the radical right in Texas, folks. It’s why the Texas Freedom Network fights for the rights of all Texans and our families. Today is the final day of TFN’s 2012 Membership Drive. We would be honored if you would join us in this fight.
The fetid cockroaches of the religious right always claim the inerrancy of the Bible as justification for their hateful agenda. Of course they’re extremely selective in the passages the choose to support their regressive and retarded platform. Show me a social conservative who isn’t a lying filthy dirtbag hypocrite and I’ll show you how I drink a magic elixir that makes me invisible.
But the trend is not their friend. Thirty years ago fully 50% of Americans believed the Bible is word-for-word true. Twenty years ago that number had dropped to 45%, and ten years ago it was down to 40%. I’ve not seen survey statistics on this topic of late but would assume currently it’s somewhere in the high 30s or lower. And that’s a good thing.
But it’s not a good thing that the GOP, already a party dominated by intellectually inferior religious fundamentalists, is becoming more extreme by the year. The party no longer wants moderates such as foreign policy expert Richard Luger or Olympia Snowe of Maine. They want more fools like James Inhofe, who says global warming isn’t valid science because God is in charge of the weather, just like it says in the Bible. Social coservatives are, quite simply, bad for America.
Thank you for exposing Kelly Shackelford’s bigoted hate for gays. During his time on the State Board, George Clayton voted as a conservative Republican, just too moderate for Tea Party extremists such as Shackeford who want to force their radical political, religious, and social beliefs down the throats of Texas school children using the power of state elected offices. Let us hope that Conservative Tincy Miller defeats radical Tea Partier Gail Spurlock in the runoff. Although no friend of accurate and mainstream social studies standards, at least Tincy was a supporter of good science standards, something for which I have always thanked her. If elected, Spurlock will try next year to force publishers to include false and misleading material against evolution in the biology textbooks, just as Cargill, Bradley, and Mercer will try.