There’s one Republican candidate in Virginia that I am having trouble getting behind, and David Lampo points out why:
When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”
A. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad B.Vladimir Putin C. Ken Cuccinelli
Although most folks might guess it was Mr. Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying president of Iran, it was in fact Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for attorney general of Virginia. (Apologies to President Ahmadinejad, who probably wishes he had said it first). Unfortunately, this jarring statement is nothing unusual for Mr. Cuccinelli, who’s made a career of anti-gay comments and votes as a state senator from Fairfax County.
A self-described libertarian, Cuccinelli has smartly tried to ride the growing anti-Obama, anti-government wave that has rapidly developed among Republicans and independents since the president’s inauguration. After barely winning re-election in 2007, Mr. Cuccinelli threw his hat in the ring for A.G., and against a divided field at the Republican Party’s state convention earlier this year, he won a majority of the Republican delegates, including many libertarians.
As Lampo points out, though, Cuccinelli has a record that is anything but libertarian:
No real libertarian has a record (like Mr. Cuccinelli does) of
· Opposition to repealing the state sodomy law, even though it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
· Opposition to allowing private companies to offer health and life insurance benefits to domestic partners of their employees
· Opposition to prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for state and local government employees
· Opposition to allowing local governments to choose what benefits they give their local employees
· Opposition to any kind of legal protections for gay and lesbian couples, even the limited rights embodied in domestic partnerships or civil unions
· Support for banning gay/straight alliances in public high schools
· Support for state funding of abstinence programs
That stands in sharp contrast to both the rhetoric and the record of Cuccinelli’s ticket mate, and the man he seeks to succeed, Bob McDonnell and Cuccinelli seems to remain unapologetic:
The Washington Post has further comments about this issue in today’s paper:
Homosexual acts, said Mr. Cuccinelli, currently a state senator, are “intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law-based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. . . . They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”
Putting aside what Mr. Cuccinelli has to say about homosexuals when he’s not trying so hard to be polite, let’s call his comments what they are: bigotry. Bigotry is as pernicious today, applied to homosexuals, as it was a century ago or less, when immigrants and minorities were its main victims. And it is just as familiar. Appeals to “natural law” and “intrinsic” rights and wrongs were the usual cliches deployed to justify the old-time religion of hatred then directed at African Americans, Jews, Italians, Irish and other immigrants.
All of which is true, but I keep going back to what David Lampo said:
The fact is that theocrats disguised as libertarians will never win the hearts and minds of younger voters, who are much more socially tolerant than their elders. Winning them back, along with other disaffected groups like independents, suburbanites, and highly educated voters will never happen when extremists like Mr. Cuccinelli carry the Republican Party banner. The future of our Party demands that Mr. Cuccinelli be defeated.
He won’t be, of course. All the polls indicate he’ll be elected by a wide margin and, four years from now, he’s likely to be on a short list of candidates for Lt. Governor at the very least. That’s what really bothers me.
I support Bob McDonnell. I think Bill Bolling has done a great job as Lieutenant Governor and deserves another term. At this point, though, I can’t in good conscience tell people to vote for Ken Cuccinelli and I can’t do it myself.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Ignore that radical social conservatism behind the curtain!
October 30th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Doug – Isn’t Cuccinelli the only candidate on the ballot in VA endorsed by Ron Paul?
October 30th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Yes, but that just points out Paul’s troublesome alliance with paleo-conservatives who are anything but libertarian.
And keep in mind, I’m not endorsing Steve Shannon. I’m just saying that I won’t be voting for Cuccinelli. I can’t, because I take freedom too seriously.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Thanks Doug for running my piece. It’s a sad day when actual libertarians are forced to vote against self-proclaimed libertarians like Cuccinelli, but the integrity of the libertarian brand is really at stake here. Since when does a real libertarian proclaim as one of his top priorities, as Cuccinelli did just this week, the protection of the so-called marriage? Give me a break.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Sometimes you have to take the bitter with the sweet.
Cuccinelli is much brighter than Shannon, who does not even know much about what the state attorney general’s office does.
In a recent debate, Shannon could not even name the divisions of the state attorney general’s office.
Cuccinelli voted against the large 2004 tax increase.
Cuccinelli also has been warning for years about the need to reform Virginia’s poorly-written mental health statutes, a warning whose rightness was borne out by the terrible Virginia Tech shooting tragedy.
And he provided a timely fix to the Melendez decision that kept scores of dangerous drunk drivers in jail.
Ken Cuccinelli wisely and successfully called for a special session of the legislature to fix the Commonwealth’s court rules to avoid having convictions needlessly thrown out, regardless of defendants’ guilt, based on the procedural requirements of that decision. Because of a conflict between Virginia court rules and that decision, judges had begun throwing out the convictions of guilty drunk drivers.
Governor Kaine rightly agreed with Cuccinelli, and called the special session, but Steve Shannon wrongly blasted Cuccinelli for making this wise suggestion.
Cuccinelli prophetically anticipated the constitutional problems later found by the courts in the transportation tax bill, unlike Shannon and most other legislators.
Both of them voted for the bill originally, but Cuccinelli voted against it after it was revised to include provisions (regional transportation authority authorization provisons) that were later struck down in a 7-to-0 ruling by the state supreme court in Marshall v. Northern Virginia Regional Transportation Authority, as a violation of the principle of no taxation without representation.
My views on social issues are closer to Shannon’s than Cuccinelli’s. But I can’t vote for Shannon, because he has failed to come up with legal solutions the way an aspiring attorney general should.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hans,
That’s why I’m likely to vote for nobody for Attorney General
October 30th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Cuccinelli and Shannon are BOTH very quick to crow about how many Virginians will land in jail under their reign.
Neither of these candidates gives a damn about our liberty.
But don’t leave your ballot blank, write in my name! That’s what I did. It takes a little longer, but it is fun and sends a clear message that voters didn’t just forget to vote.
So go ahead and write in my name, your name, or anyone else, but don’t you dare vote for either of those two anti-civil libertarian guys.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Of course, don’t mention that Lampo is himself a homosexual activist.
October 31st, 2009 at 7:44 am
What does that have to do with anything ?
November 1st, 2009 at 8:38 am
James: And your point is? Indeed, I am a “homosexual” activist. I’m also a Republican activist, a libertarian activist, an anti-Obama activist, etc. Why don’t you engage what I said instead of in ad hominem arguments?