OPINION:
Jason Carter wants to follow in his famous grandfather’s footsteps. Mr. Carter, a Democrat, is running for governor of Georgia, a position Jimmy Carter held for a term before moving on to the White House. Jason Carter is willing to say pretty much whatever it takes to win. When someone asks his opinions on homosexual demands, he dodges, weaves and deflects, eager not to offend religiously conservative Georgia. But his gay supporters are saying it for him.
Georgia remains committed to traditional marriage. The left-leaning Public Policy Polling discovered last year that 6 of 10 Georgia voters want to keep the thousands-of-years-old definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. If Jason Carter yearns to come out in support of the full rainbow agenda, he knows better than to do it before the election.
That’s the dishonest scheme that worked for Mark R. Herring in Virginia, the Democrat who was elected attorney general last year in a squeaker of an election. The first thing Mr. Herring did after taking the oath of office in January was to announce that he had no intention of doing his bounden duty to defend the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage against a fierce legal challenge. Had Mr. Herring told the truth about what he really thought, the outcome of his race — which he won by 907 votes out of 2.2 million cast — would surely have been different.
The pro-homosexual website Project Q Atlanta doesn’t like the sneaky approach, either. “Jason Carter collects gay cash, but stays mum on LGBT issues,” the site noted earlier this month about a fundraiser held for Mr. Carter. The event, organized and hosted by homosexual activists, raised nearly $90,000 for the Carter campaign. Reporters were barred from the fundraiser, lest the secret leak.
Mr. Carter’s campaign website makes no mention of homosexual issues or of same-sex marriage. Instead, it posts the ritual photograph of the candidate and his smiling wife and two kids. But earlier this month Carter spokesman Bryan Thomas confirmed that Mr. Carter does in fact support what liberals euphemistically call “marriage equality.”
The organizers of Mr. Carter’s July 31 fundraiser were in on the plan to keep his real views a secret, open as the secret may be. “In Georgia, we have to be smart enough to understand that [the Carter campaign] can’t use us a leading issue if they want to get elected statewide,” says Ken Britt, described by Project Q as the “gay politico” who organized the event. “I’m more pragmatic about this.”
One man’s pragmatism is another man’s dishonesty. Voters deserve to know, loud and clear, what they’ll get if they put another Carter in the governor’s mansion on Nov. 4. Gov. Nathan Deal, the Republican incumbent running for re-election, should pressure Mr. Carter to say unequivocally whether he would be prepared as governor to fully defend Georgia’s state constitutional amendment, enacted by the people, that defines traditional marriage.
If he won’t say, Jason Carter deserves to see his bid for high office end the way his father’s did. Jack Carter ran for the U.S. Senate in Nevada and lost. Or the way his grandfather’s attempt for a second term as president did. Truth can be badly abused, but it will out.
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