From the Archives: Virginia GOP Senate candidates share thoughts on 17th Amendment repeal

Virginia GOP Senate candidates share thoughts on 17th Amendment repeal
May 1, 2012 7:41 PM MST

Three of the four candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Virginia agree that efforts to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – which authorizes the direct election of senators – are impractical at best.

In post-debate interviews in Roanoke on Saturday, where all four candidates participated in a forum sponsored by the Republican Party of Virginia, the candidates expressed their views on the 17th Amendment in response to questions posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner.

‘Repeal Amendment’ alternative

Jamie Radtke said that she does not think the repeal efforts are viable, “so I’ve been very supportive, as you know, of the Repeal Amendment,” proposed by William Howell, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett.

The Repeal Amendment, Radtke explained, “says that if two-thirds of the state legislatures agree,” Americans can use that method to “repeal any act of Congress, any rule, any regulation, or any tax.”

That, she said, “gets to the heart of the 17th Amendment without taking any people’s right to vote away.”

Exponential corruption

E.W. Jackson said that he has “been asked that question on numerous occasions and my response is always the same: I’m not convinced it’s a good thing to do.”

Jackson explained that, “while people may feel” indirect elections “may make a senator more responsive to the needs of the state and the state legislature,” he thinks “the potential for corruption is exponential” because of “the deals that need to be cut to select who that person is going to be.”

As a result, Jackson said, “I’m in favor of leaving it as it is but I’ve made a commitment to those who have that concern that I will regularly go and visit the General Assembly and regularly meet with our delegates and our senators [to] talk to them about what their needs are and what I can do to either help them with federal policy or get federal policy off the backs of our state.”

‘Cheaper to campaign’

From the Archives: Virginia GOP Senate candidate E.W. Jackson argues for drug-law reform

Virginia GOP Senate candidate E.W. Jackson argues for drug-law reform
May 31, 2012 4:28 PM MST

U.S. Senate candidate E.W. Jackson told a group of Virginia Republican activists last weekend that he disagrees with current drug laws and that he is “committed to the idea that we should not be locking people up for the recreational use” of drugs like marijuana.

Jackson, a Harvard-educated lawyer and ordained minister, is one of four candidates in a GOP primary election on June 12. He was responding to a question posed by a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arlington County on May 26 about what the appropriate role of government should be in regulating things like medical marijuana and other drugs.

Did he inhale?
In the course of his answer, Jackson admitted his own past use of illicit drugs and did not apologize for it.

“I don’t use drugs, obviously,” he said, “but I have.”

Jackson added that, “as a minister,” he tells his congregation that “it’s better not to do drugs. It’s better not to even use alcohol -- not that I think using alcohol is some sort of mortal sin, but it has a way of getting control of people’s lives sometimes, so you’re better off staying away from it.”

Continuing, Jackson referred to a recent rant by magician and Celebrity Apprentice contestant, Penn Jillette, about the inequities of the war on drugs.

“Let me say, I really am bothered by the idea that we are putting people in jail for getting high,” he explained.

‘Spoke to my heart’
“It’s interesting,” he added, that there’s “somebody who I probably don’t have a lot in common with, Penn Jillette, [who] really spoke to my heart and I had to take a step back when he said, ‘the president has confessed to using cocaine, he’s confessed to using marijuana. The only reason he is president is that he didn’t get caught. If he had been caught, his life would have been completely different.’”

Pausing dramatically, Jackson went on:

“Now folks, I can say the same thing. That’s what arrested me. I can say the same thing. I don’t think we should be locking people up and saddling people with felonies because they have used recreational drugs.”

The Senate candidate did express some skepticism about whether legalizing all currently illegal drugs would “eliminate the crime associated with” the drug trade.

Should not lock people up
He did, however, express openness to the idea of decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs by saying that he is “committed to this idea that we should not be locking people up for the recreational use of those drugs -- at the very least, of those drugs that we agree don’t put people in a position to do things that are going to destroy their lives and more importantly the lives of others.”

Jackson’s opponents in next month’s U.S. Senate primary are former Governor George Allen, Delegate Bob Marshall, and Tea Party activist Jamie Radtke.

A video recording of Jackson’s remarks to the Republican Liberty Caucus is available on YouTube.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 31, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Senate candidate E.W. Jackson defends anti-gay stance as ‘fundamental’

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 29, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Senate candidate E.W. Jackson defends anti-gay stance as ‘fundamental’
April 29, 2012 7:26 PM MST

In a previous interview on Examiner.com, which he featured on his campaign Twitter feed, Virginia Senate candidate E.W. Jackson said that he thinks “we maximize individual freedom [and] we let people make their own choices, where those choices don’t impinge on the life, the liberty, or the property of others,” adding that under those conditions, “we’re going to always be a better country for it. We persuade people of what is right and decent and good and moral; we don’t try to force it on them.”

Jackson was one of the participants in a debate on April 28 in Roanoke sponsored by the Republican Party of Virginia. He and other GOP primary candidates George Allen, Bob Marshall, and Jamie Radtke answered questions about policy topics from a panel of political activists.

‘Fundamental rights’
After the debate, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner asked Jackson to restate his position on government non-interference in the moral lives of citizens.

“Where life is concerned, where property rights are concerned, in other words, when the fundamental rights of other citizens are concerned,” Jackson said, “I think government certainly has a role and our constitution indicates it’s supposed to secure those rights for other citizens.”

He added, however, that “if that’s not what’s at stake, then yes, I tend to believe that we are better off when we are freer to make our own decisions and to chart the course of our own lives without the government telling us what we should and should not do and, frankly, I think most Americans feel that way, given the overreach of this government.”

Not a libertarian

To follow up, Jackson was asked how that position is consistent with his stated policy stance on prohibiting same-sex marriage and supporting the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“For me,” he replied, “the issue of marriage is a fundamental issue. It’s a fundamental moral and spiritual issue and I don’t think that the state should be sanctioning marriage between other than a man and a woman.”

Jackson conceded that he would not call himself a libertarian and added that “I don’t know that libertarians would call me a libertarian,” but that what he had said previously is that “libertarians like me because they know I lean very strongly into keeping government out of the lives of people.”

With regard to gay marriage, he added, “you’ve got to remember, what is really happening there is that people who want homosexual marriage are inviting the government to put its imprimatur on what they want to do and to change 6,000 years of human history and 200 years of American policy. So in my view, they’re the ones who are trying to use the government to intrude upon those of us who believe that marriage as it is is just fine.”

‘Affecting our culture’
The next question was how Jackson would be affected if the gay couple next door were to get married.

“I’m talking about it affecting society, affecting our culture in the long term,” he answered.

“I would turn the question around and say, if you’re going to upend 6,000 years of human history, it is incumbent upon you to prove to me that somehow we’re going to be better off with that.”

Asked whether “gay people and abortion” are the only exceptions to his general view that the government should not interfere in citizens’ private lives, Jackson replied:

“Well, I don’t know that I would limit it, as you put it, ‘gay people and abortion.’ I think it would have to be something you’d have to look at on a case by case basis. Look, you have to remember something. We’re called to represent the constitution, to represent the people of the United States. We’re also called to represent our own consciences.”

Podcast available
A complete audio recording of this interview with E.W. Jackson is available as a Bearing Drift podcast.

What Were the Top 10 Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner Stories in 2013?

Over at Examiner.com, I have posted a listicle featuring the top ten stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

I used Google Analytics to provide the statistics and generate the top-ten list. Technically, the article I listed as number 10 was number 11.

The reason for that is that the article that came in ninth, according to Google Analytics, was originally published in November 2010. It's an interview I conducted with author and documentary filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy at the Virginia Film Festival that year, when she presented Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird.  (That film covers the same ground as Murphy's 2010 book, Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird.)

I suspect that the staying power of that three-year-old article, "Filmmaker: To Kill a Mockingbird was ‘ammunition in the civil rights movement'," is largely the result of web searches by high-school students doing research for a term paper about Harper Lee's famous novel or its well-regarded movie version.

Since just nine of the top ten stories for 2013 were actually published in 2013, I decided to skip number nine and include number 11 to reflect more accurately the events of this year.

Here's part of my summary of the 2013 top ten. I'll omit the "number one" article for now. If you want to see that story and be as surprised by it as I was, click here.

Virginia politics, the 1963 Kennedy assassination, humorist Tina Fey, marijuana legalization, liquor laws, and the Boston Marathon bombers dominated the most popular stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

Given that 2013 was a gubernatorial election year in Virginia, it comes as no surprise that articles about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (now governor-elect) and his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli drew a large number of views. Cuccinelli, in fact, was the subject of three of the top-ten stories, although Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis entered the top ten only in an interview about the election with political scientist Larry Sabato. Marijuana-smoking lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson (R) also made the list.

The JFK assassination was a trending topic on Twitter and Google through much of November, and an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald's co-worker ranked third. (An interview with another assassination witness just missed the cut, at twelfth among 2013 stories.)

Publishing this top-ten list continues a tradition I began in December 2011.  That first yearly list was divided into three parts published over three days: Part I, Part II, and Part III.  The second annual top-ten list, in 2012, was slimmed down into a single article published on the last day of the year.

Full Text: E.W. Jackson's Unjustifiable Characterization of Gays as 'Totalitarian'

E.W. Jackson, May 2013

In August, I noted in this space that the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star had a month earlier published an opinion piece I write about E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia this year. Jackson faces state Senator Ralph Northam of Norfolk, the Democratic party's nominee, on Tuesday in a general election that will also see voters choose among three nominees for governor (Republican Ken Cuccinelli, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, and Libertarian Robert Sarvis) and between two candidates for attorney general (Democrat Mark Herring and Republican Mark Obenshain).

All the candidates are traversing the state this weekend in the final stretch of the campaign season. Within 48 hours of the time I write this (barring a virtual tie in any of the top three contests), winners will be known and soaked with Gatorade or champagne and second- and third-place candidates will be licking their wounds and planning their comebacks.

Upon reflection, I realized that my summary of my op-ed piece on E.W. Jackson did not do it justice. Since it has been more than three months since the Free Lance-Star printed it, I feel it is within my authorial rights to republish it here, while its message is still relevant.

This is the text as I submitted it to the Free Lance-Star, which put it on its opinion page on Sunday, July 21, 2013.

- - - - -

E.W. Jackson's unjustifiable characterization of gays as 'totalitarian'

Richard Sincere

In remarks widely circulated only after he received the Republican Party of Virginia's nomination to be lieutenant governor, E.W. Jackson said that gay men and lesbians have “an authoritarian, totalitarian spirit that has decided they know what’s best for everyone.”

Jackson repeated the characterization, adding: “I used two words to describe what they’re trying to do: authoritarian and totalitarian, and I believe that. I believe that they are of a mindset that says we want to destroy, in any way we need to, anyone who dares oppose this agenda.”

Although there are radicals within any political movement, whether right or left, the totalitarian impulse is rare and exists only on the fringes.

Jackson's words are at odds with the attitudes and activities of the large number of gay and lesbian Americans whose core beliefs are keenly attuned to the values of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that Jackson claims animate his own political agenda.

Take, for example, the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR).

Reason magazine correspondent Michael Lynch began one report by saying, “Two and a half years in Washington and I've finally found the free marketeers in the Republican Party – they're gay.”

Lynch had attended an Arlington LCR meeting that featured a talk by British political scientist Nigel Ashford, who made a case against employment non-discrimination laws, and he noted that the vast majority of those present “appeared to agree with Ashford.”

He added that the president of the group said that LCR's mission is “to work with Republican candidates on shared issues, such as lower taxes, while letting them know you're gay and that there are good gays dedicated to the party.”

That hardly resembles an “authoritarian” or “totalitarian” agenda. Maybe that's why former Prince William County Republican chairman Bill Kling once said that Northern Virginia Log Cabin meetings are “fast becoming a 'must' campaign stop for many GOP candidates.”

Or look at the Pink Pistols, a pro-gay, pro-gun organization, with its 60 chapters across the country and abroad.

Pink Pistols filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the landmark 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court eventually decided that firearms ownership is an individual right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The Pink Pistols argued that "not only do members of the LGBT community have a heightened need to possess firearms for self-protection in their homes, the Second Amendment clearly guarantees this most basic right. This Court should not permit the democratic majority to deprive LGBT individuals of their essential and constitutional right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in their own homes.”

Defending the Second Amendment rights of individuals is neither “authoritarian” nor “totalitarian.”

Third, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), which I cofounded in 1991 with a group of like-minded libertarians, classical liberals, and conservatives, has a mission to advance the ideas of economic and personal freedom and individual responsibility.

Considering that, earlier this summer, the Boy Scouts of America ended its policy of excluding gay teens from membership, it is noteworthy that in 2000, GLIL took the BSA's side before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a friend-of-court brief, GLIL asserted that, as wrong-headed as the BSA's policy was, it had a right to maintain it as part of the Constitution's guarantees of free speech and freedom of association.

As conservative columnist George Will summarized our argument, “GLIL vigorously deplores the Scouts' creed, which is that homosexuality is incompatible with the Scout obligation to be 'morally straight' and 'clean.' But GLIL agrees that the Scouts are a creedal organization with an explicitly moral mission. And citing much history – for example, until the late 1970s the IRS denied tax-exempt status to organizations that 'promoted' homosexuality – the GLIL brief argues that gays have suffered 'when freedom of association has not been respected and governments have been allowed to trample on the rights of citizens to freely gather together.'”

Standing up for the freedom of association for those with whom one disagrees, while reserving the right to persuade them to change their position, does not demonstrate a totalitarian impulse.

Whether E.W. Jackson was the best choice as the GOP's lieutenant governor nominee is a broader topic best left to other days and other commentators.

One thing is clear, however: his blanket condemnation of gay citizens as “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” lacks factual foundation. He should acknowledge that there are many gay men and lesbians who share his fundamental desire for strong families, free markets, and smaller, less intrusive government.

* * *

Richard Sincere was a Charlottesville delegate to the Republican Party of Virginia's state convention on May 18. He blogs about politics and culture at http://www.RickSincere.com.

My Op-Ed About GOP Lt. Gov. Candidate E.W. Jackson

Google Alerts failed me.

For readers unfamiliar with Google Alerts, Wikipedia provides a succinct definition:

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service. The results are delivered as an email digest to a gmail account. The service is available to the general public as an open beta release.

I use Google Alerts to track a couple of dozen topics, including iterations on my name and an organization to which I belong, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL).

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that included a reference to GLIL and, of course, included my name in the byline. I submitted it to the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star but never received a reply from the editor.

It came as a surprise to me when, on Sunday, I discovered by chance that the Free Lance-Star had published the piece on Sunday, July 21. In the intervening three weeks, Google Alerts never let me know about it. (Neither, for that matter, did the Free Lance-Star itself.)

E.W. Jackson and Rick Sincere

The article was about the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, E.W. Jackson. Two days before the GOP state convention on May 18, I predicted on Coy Barefoot's radio show in Charlottesville that, of the seven candidates for lieutenant governor, two would lose on the first ballot and be dropped out of the competition: state Senator Steve Martin and E.W. Jackson.

I was half-right.

Jackson took the convention by storm and eventually got the nomination on the fourth ballot, after a good portion of delegates had left the Richmond Coliseum to go home. Nobody I know -- outside of Jackson's own group of supporters -- predicted, or could have predicted, his victory. Not even his opponents took him seriously as a rival.

That may be why some of the more eccentric statements by Jackson made prior to the convention never made it into general circulation until after he secured the nomination.

One of these instances was an interview with Peter LaBarbera on AmericansforTruth.com. Immediately after the nominating convention, people -- primarily liberal Democrats, but not exclusively so -- glommed onto his statements about gay people, such as:

Their minds are perverted, they’re frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality. When they talk about love they’re not talking about love, they’re talking about homosexual sex.

That's social-conservative boilerplate, and therefore not very interesting.

What did interest me, as a non-liberal, non-progressive gay activist, were his remarks that gay men and lesbians are universally and uniformly "authoritarian" and "totalitarian":

Chesapeake clergyman E.W. Jackson said that gay men and lesbians have "an authoritarian, totalitarian spirit that has decided they know what's best for everyone."

Jackson repeated the characterization when he said: "I used two words to describe what they're trying to do: 'authoritarian' and 'totalitarian,' and I believe that. I believe that they are of a mindset that says we want to destroy, in any way we need to, anyone who dares oppose this agenda. That's a very, very dangerous approach."

Had Jackson said that "some" or even "most" gay people have these characteristics, I might have cut him some slack. I, myself, have been assailed by leftists because I'm not a liberal Democrat. One radio host even accused me, on the air, of not being gay because I didn't adhere to a liberal agenda (in that particular case, with regard to the Boy Scouts of America's pending freedom-of-association case before the U.S. Supreme Court). I retorted that both of his listeners would have reason to disagree -- but that was a long time ago.

My purpose in writing the article that appeared in the Free Lance-Star was to point out that gay men and lesbians are not monolithic in their political views and that many of us even share the basic values that Jackson claims to hold. I noted:

While there are radicals within any political movement, whether right or left, the totalitarian impulse is rare and exists only on the fringes.

Indeed, Jackson's words are at odds with the attitudes and activities of a large number of gay and lesbian Americans whose core beliefs are keenly attuned to the values of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that Jackson claims animate his own political agenda.

In the article, I mentioned three organizations that mitigate against Jackson's blinkered view: Log Cabin Republicans, Pink Pistols, and Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty. Were it not for space considerations, I could also have pointed out the existence of GOProud and Outright Libertarians, or even the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL, an anti-abortion group).

It irritates me when politicians -- or anyone, for that matter -- make blanket statements about groups of individuals without having the evidence to back them up. To assert that all gay men and all lesbians are "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" is not only baseless, it's slanderous.

I concluded my Free Lance-Star article:

Whether E.W. Jackson was the right choice for the Republican Party's lieutenant governor nominee is a broader topic best left to other days and other commentators.

One thing is clear, however: His blanket condemnation of gay citizens as wanting to oppress other Americans through "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" methods lacks factual foundation. He should withdraw that accusation and acknowledge that there are many gay men and lesbians who share his fundamental desire for strong families, free markets, and smaller, less intrusive government.

The Republican party and the conservative movement are "big tents" that are, essentially, part of a broader "leave us alone" coalition. People with different backgrounds and different personal characteristics come together to elect public officials who share basic goals but who might disagree about certain issues. That's what coalition politics is all about. To exclude anyone from potential membership in that coalition is bad politics. As former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis likes to say, "politics is a game of addition, not subtraction."

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