Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Just Another Day on a Republican Staff

There's a minor brouhaha over somebody from the office of Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss sending some hate mail to a pro-gay rights blog.
As TPM previously reported, soon after a Senate vote to block debate on the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' someone wrote "All faggots must die" on the blog of gay rights advocate Joe Jervis. Other commenters traced the origin of the comment to a senate.gov IP address located in Atlanta, Georgia, near the offices of both of the state's senators. Chambliss' office then said it was investigating the matter.
Chambliss' office did determine that the hate message came from their office. But I don't think that's the point. From everything I've ever read about Republican politician, this kind of discourse about gay people is pretty much standard operating procedure. The only difference is that the GOP's successful filibustering of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" led some anonymous guy to let down his guard and go public with his homophobia.

Maybe the media should report that as well.

1 comment:

Charles said...

Wouldn't you say though that the entire framework within which this discussion on equal rights for gays plays right into the hands of US militarism? It's an example of a plea for a liberal reform hand-in-hand with right-wing militarism.

And this is one problem with modern reformism: it's willing to make compromises with often dangerous, conservative tendencies in order to achieve minor gains on the identity-political issue of the moment.

I reject the framework within which the discussion of equal rights for gays is being discussed. Of course equal rights for gays, but equal rights for everyone, including the right to live free of war.

The entire discussion on gays in the military is a media-generated distraction from the larger issue of the global economic crisis and the inevitable explosion of militarism and social destitution that comes out of it. The discussion on this broader issue is what's important, not what this or that ignorant, self-serving right-wing staffer posts on some message board somewhere.