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.

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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.

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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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