Republicans won big in this year’s elections, but it’s not because the candidates suddenly become more moderate. If anything, there was a bumper crop of candidates from the furthest fringes of the right. Unlike past electoral road kill like Christine “I Am Not A Witch” O’Donnell and Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, this year’s winners managed to keep their mouths shut during the campaign. Based on their views, however, rampant homophobia will certainly get a boost in the next Congress. Here’s a look at some of the worst of the worst about to take their seats in the nation’s capitol.
Tom Emmer
If you were thinking Michelle Bachmann’s replacement would have to be an improvement, you’d be wrong. Emmer is every bit as much a homophone as Bachmann was. As a state legislator, he introduced a bill that would ban marriage equality and — just to be on the safe side — civil unions.
Hice opposed anti-bullying legislation because he didn’t want the government intruding on parents (especially parents raising homophobic brats). And he gave money to pastor Bradlee Dean, who lauded Muslims for being “even more moral than the American Christians” because they execute gays. If anyone can meet Bachmann’s lofty standards, it’s Emmer.
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Jody Hice
Hice is a pastor and radio talk show host, and he exhibits all the qualities that combination implies. As a new Congressman from Georgia, Hice is a walking compendium of the worst lies about homosexuality: it’s a choice, it leads to shorter lifespans, it causes depression. Police who arrested anti-gay demonstrators in New York engaged in “Gestapo-like” tactics, in Hice’s view.
Hice views marriage equality as driving down marriage’s market value: “Some ask the question, ‘How does same-sex ‘marriage’ threaten your marriage?’ The answer is similar to asking, ‘How does a trashy neighborhood affect you?'” On top of all this, Hice is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, which is pretty dim to begin with. He took Michael Swift’s 1987 satire of gay revolution at face value and wrote how it revealed “the radical agenda that is currently threatening our nation.”
Glenn Grothman
Grothman won a Congressional seat in Wisconsin, where he distinguished himself in the state senate as an unrepentant bigot. Grothman introduced legislation that would have classified all gay parents as child abusers. He wanted to ban any discussion of sexual orientation in schools because it was part of a nefarious plot to corrupt youth. “Why sit down with 7th graders and say to some you will be heterosexual, some homosexual? Part of that agenda which is left unsaid is that some of those who throw it out as an option would like it if more kids became homosexuals, ” he said. Grothman longed for his high school days when “homosexuality was not on anybody’s radar.” Indeed, radar probably hadn’t even been invented then.
Alex Mooney
Despite being a carpetbagger from Maryland, Mooney won election to a Congressional seat in West Virginia. During his stint in the Maryland legislature, Mooney was a leading opponent of marriage equality, singlehandedly blocking it in the senate for years. “Even if homosexual ‘marriage’ comes in, it’s not going to stop; the radicals pushing this stuff are not going to stop,” Mooney said in 2008.“They’re going to go for ‘hate speech.’ If you actually speak against the homosexual lifestyle, maybe from the pulpit if you’re a pastor then you’re in trouble.”
Ken Buck
Buck lost a Senate race in Colorado in 2010, but this time around he found a congenial Congressional district happy to send him to D.C. Part of the reason Buck lost last time is that he willingly aired his extreme views. Most famously, Buck declared that homosexuality is a choice because “you can choose who your partner is,” although genetics does play some role, just “like alcoholism and some other things.” With such enlightened views, Buck will fit right in with his colleagues.
Joni Ernst
Ernst is the new Senator from Iowa, and she learned the lessons of past elections well by making bland statements that mask extremist beliefs. For example, Ernst says that marriage equality should be left up to the states. However, as a state legislator, she was pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa, one of the first states to legalize it.
More worrisome is Ernst’s allegiance to the extreme Christian Right. At a forum hosted for candidates by religious right leader Bob Vander Plaats, who was responsible for the campaign to oust three judges who legalized marriage equality in Iowa, Ernst parroted the belief that the Constitution should be considered a Biblically based document. Judges need to realize that the Constitution “did come from God” and that senators should “make sure that any decisions that they have made in the past are decisions that fit within that criteria,” she said. No one Pat Buchanan gushed that Ernst has “the same kind of attractiveness that Sarah Palin had at the start and that Michele Bachmann gained in the Iowa caucuses, being a very attractive, outspoken person, a woman in the GOP full of passion and full of hard-core philosophy.”
1EqualityUSA
fappers in the voting booth!
Trippy
Well of course none of this is surprising. The Repubs have doubled-down on bigotry with the hope of “waking” the “majority” of Americans who they truly believe hate gays and marriage equality. And yet… even in Mississippi protests against marriage equality have been small and sparsely attended. So much for mobilizing the hate-brigades.
In ten years, these politicians (and others like them: NC’s Thom Tillis) will be mocked as the George Wallace’s of their generation.
Trippy
And for the record, Ken Buck has gay-face, and Tom Emmer looks like one of those perverts who pays hookers for quick BJ’s in the front seat of his car.
Paul Nadolski
I rejoiced after Emmer was NOT elected Governor of Minnesota (narrowly). Sorry to say that the idiots living in Minnesota’s 6th District still haven’t managed to realize that their elected official in Congress is an embarrassment to the rest of the otherwise Great State of Minnesota.
Trippy
@Paul Nadolski: This is curious. For those of us not in Minn, two questions: 1) does he now occupy Bachmann’s old seat; and 2) have you guys passed a law or something that requires all the bigots and phobes to reside in that one district? If so, please share… some of us in other states might like to try pass the same law. 😉
Xzamilio
It’s funny how Joni Ernst will say that “the Constitution did come from God” when the 1st Amendment alone completely pisses on the first 5 of the 10 commandments. I can worship whatever god I want, make idols of them, have a train ran on me in the Sabbath all while screaming, “Fuck you, Mom and Dad… fuck you in the goddamn ass!!” and nothing happens… but they’d probably want something to. Christian Taliban at its finest
Xzamilio
*on the Sabbath
Stache99
Jeb Bush said that for the Republicans to ever win the general they’d have to lose in the primary. In other words, when these nubjobs eventually let their freak flags fly high the public will once again be shocked and will have another Democrat in the white house.
onthemark
“Emmer is every bit as much a homophone as Bachmann was.”
I guess you guys don’t watch “Jeopardy!”, where Homophones (not Homophobes) is a frequent category. Although it would certainly be amusing if they had Homophobes as a category. You’ve written an up-to-date list.
Well I gotta go, my homophone is ringing. Probably some Radical Homosexual asking me to help burn down a church or something.
Jamie
This is what happens when logical, reasonable people stay home on election day. Don’t let this happen again in 2016. Get off your butt and go vote! And make others go vote with you!
TrekBear
This is what we get and deserve for not voting in the midterm elections!
Stache99
@TrekBear: Yeah, but how many comments did I hear just from this site “they’re all the same so I didn’t bother”.
Harley
I feel that the traditional Barry Goldwater type republicans who pushed thru all the gerrymandered districting in order to guarantee republican dominance in the house are just now realizing they opened Pandora’s box. Now with the Koch brothers and other multi-billionaires financing the most extreme candidates, Moderate republicans have no chance against the tea party onslaught. It really astounds me that there is ANYONE in the middle class that would vote republican. Their hook? Guns and religion. When you have 40% of the population believing that the Earth is 6000 years old there is a serious problem with our educational system. The other 40% have a pathological obsession to obtaining the most and most powerful assault rifles and love to go shopping and eating out with loaded firearms strapped over their shoulders. We are sliding into a “Mad Max” type world in the future. Sad.
jlfbman
As I noted in a previous posting about the murderous Pastor, once again these persons surely must be determined to be psychotic/sick/demented!! If a Democrat with a platform declared hetrosexual marriage to be against ‘ God’s wishes ‘, what would be the reaction??
jwtraveler
If nothing else, this bunch highlights the failure of the American education system. And remember, millions of people voted for these psychomorons.
jmmartin
@Trippy: It’s always tempting to attack these bigots with ad hominem observations, e.g. remarking on Christie’s weight (and Huckabee’s before he dieted), Jindal’s Alfred E. Neuman lookalikeness, and Lindsey Graham’s resemblance to an old maid. I, for one, am trying to cut back on such attacks. Gawd knows, they have enough flaws not to go after their goofy appearance.
Saint Law
American conservatives remain the gold standard for insanity, at least in The West.
But here in Blighty we have UKIP who, with their blaming gays for recent flooding and cat-calls for a third generation black British comic to “go back to Africa”, are certainly trying.
transiteer
The scary thing really is that enough people voted these half-wits in! How stupid and hateful are they??? Shows what a lack of education and too much religion can result in . . . kind of like it is in Islamic countries.
transiteer
Re: Hice. Any Loser can call himself a ‘pastor’ – it’s a meaningless title that implies something but it isn’t. Radio Talk show host is another – only right-wing Losers who couldn’t hold a real job get to host a radio show but only if they say things that Hitler and Himmler would approve of. And stupid people.
Billysees
I’m still trying to figure out how and why Klingenschmitt won such a huge margin in a Colorado state congressional district.
And in a state that allows the recreational use of cannabis too. When I was smoking pot with friends many years ago, it made us all loving and peaceful. What happened Colorado?
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/gordon-klingenschmitt
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
The only good news is these hate filled smcubag nutjobs are aging out of consideration for public service as time progresses. Polls show the majority of Americans now favor equality. And as the age of respondents decreases the percentage of acceptance grows signficantly. Some polls show acceptance upwards of 81% of those in their 20’s including Republicans……………….
As the hate filled bigots burn out their vile mortal coils we can take joy in knowing fate of these “good Christians” who upon approaching the gates of Heaven and seek entry from St. Peter. He advises he needs to get the ok from God. Over the heavnenly intercom a booming voice states: “Are you freaking kidding me????” :p
Kangol
All white, all Republican, and all full of hate against LGBTQ people. But note that no one will say all white people are full of hate the same way they will other groups. These powerful white Republicans want to seriously harm the lives of gay people, black people, women, latinos, immigrants, people who aren’t Christians (and many who are), the poor, etc. Why does anyone who has any sense of humanity at all vote them into office?