The head of the fringe-right Houston Area Pastor Council has just published a new screed attacking politicians and others who support equal rights for gay people. But Dave Welch — who isn’t shy about promoting his ties to elected state officials, including the governor — reserves his most vile rhetoric for politicians and other people who are […]
LGBT issues
Using Fear of Gay Marriage as a Weapon?
Nearly every effort to extend equal and civil rights protections to gay and lesbian Americans is met with a familiar criticism from the religious right: “They’ll want to get married next!” That’s what we heard when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws. We’ve heard it about legislation ending employment discrimination against gay men and […]
How Far to the Right Is the Tea Party?
As we have suggested in numerous posts about the Tea Party movement, hardcore Tea Partiers in Texas appear increasingly linked to the religious right. A new survey from the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality also shows that hardcore Tea Partiers in Washington state — identified in the survey […]
The Right’s Anti-Gay Campaign Against Nominee
It didn’t take long for the far right to launch a coordinated attack on President Obama’s new Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan — and one of the right’s primary weapons is the suggestion that Kagan is a lesbian. Currently the U.S. solicitor general, Kagan is a highly respected legal scholar, served as the first female dean of Harvard […]
The Right’s ‘Culture War’ Drags on in Houston
Religious-righters in Houston are still foaming at the mouth over the election last fall of an openly gay candidate, then-city controller Annise Parker, as mayor. As reported last fall, religious extremists disingenuously claimed Parker had made her sexual orientation “a central part of her campaign” and warned that her election would be “destructive to the […]
