It’s good that Chris Barron of GOProud is, for a change, standing up for a gay rights issue, but he’s sadly deluded if he thinks that “social conservatives” don’t care about hating gay people anymore. Here’s what Chris had to say about Pawlenty’s calls to defund DADT repeal:
I understand that Pawlenty is trying hard to get people to pay attention to his campaign. Its certainly a challenge for someone with such little stature in the conservative movement to compete with high profile conservative leaders like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, etc. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, comments like this simply show how totally out-of-touch he is with the issues that rank and file conservatives care about. If he wants to show he is a committed social conservative he would be much better served talking about the need to defund Planned Parenthood, end federal funding for abortion, reign in an out of control judiciary and support for a parents rights amendment to protect home-schoolers.
Okay. Let’s take this apart. Besides the fact that it’s grotesque that GOProud is sidling up to patriarchal, ineffective forces in the so-called “pro-life” movement by supporting policies which have been shown to increase the need for abortion while simultaneously making it less safe and taking the primary healthcare provider away from many, many women* [seriously, just use Google for thirty minutes on the subject, or, you know, just go here and read and learn things], it’s laughable that he’s not including anti-gay issues alongside those other wingnut causes. When wingnuts talk about an “out-of-control judiciary,” half of what they’re talking about is judges who rule favorably in gay rights cases.
As I said, it’s good to see Barron standing up for something that helps gay people, because most of GOProud’s agenda is just wingnut talking points with the word “gay” inserted every now and then.
*I’d also add that Planned Parenthood does a hell of a lot for the gay community, when it comes to STD testing, prevention and education. But normal wingnuts don’t have a damn clue what Planned Parenthood really does, so there’s no reason to expect any better from gay wingnuts.
