OPINION:
Liberals are making “bullying” one of their latest celebrated causes. The USA Network’s “I Won’t Stand For” promos use actors, athletes and politicians to send “a powerful message” that it won’t stand for bullying. Would that it were so.
Homosexual activists in Virginia have been loud and proud in letting Gov. Terry McAuliffe know he must not appoint Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones as state Democratic Party chairman.
Mr. Jones has pledged support for special privileges for homosexuals, but he has yet to “evolve,” like Barack Obama did, on same-sex marriage.
The mayor is no closeted supporter of traditional values. As mayor, he instructed his police chief to appoint the city’s first police liaison to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.
He even issued a proclamation of official recognition of Transgender Day of Remembrance. The loud and proud folks of LGBT seem to have forgotten that.
The mayor is also the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of South Richmond, and he has not embraced same-sex unions. Therein lies the problem for his nomination to succeed state Delegate Charniele L. Herring of Alexandria as the state Democratic Party chairman.
The nomination is to be acted on Saturday by the state party central committee.
It’s fashionable to bully some people, but others, not so much. Rep. Michele Bachmann observed last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference that militant homosexual activists have “bullied the American people, and they’ve so intimidated politicians … The politicians fear them, so they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere.”
Indeed, the Rev. Mr. Jones met Monday with representatives of three Virginia homosexual rights groups. Afterward, he issued a statement that signaled he may yet bend to their demands. “My position continues to evolve,” he said. A spokesman for Equality Virginia in turn called the meeting “very productive.”
Mr. McAuliffe and other top elected Democrats across Virginia are, for now, standing by the Jones nomination despite the fact that all good Democrats know they must support what the activists euphemistically call “marriage equality,” or else.
It will be interesting to see whether Mr. Jones will protect his Baptist cred in continuing to oppose same-sex marriage, or whether the party chairmanship will be the temptation too far.
The Republican Party has taken a lot of chaffing for having a tent smaller than its critics think it should, with its “litmus test” on abortion.
Robert P. Casey, then the governor of Pennsylvania, found out how small the Democratic tent had become, and how intolerant Democrats are toward those who don’t pass the abortion litmus in his party. He was barred from speaking to the Democratic National Convention in New York in July 1992.
Now, the bullies are demanding an even more restrictive litmus test.
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