Jerome Corsi -- Ohio's Gubernatorial Candidate Courts Gay Support

OHIO'S GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE COURTS GAY SUPPORT

by Jerome R. Corsi
October 29, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

By quietly courting Ohio’s LBGT community of “Lesbians, Bisexuals, Gays, and Transgenders,” Ted Strickland is playing sexual politics in his attempt to be Ohio’s next governor.

Strickland’s campaign website devotes a section boldly entitled “LBGT for Strickland.” The Strickland LBGT webpage even permits you to download a flyer to hand out to your friends. The flyer openly proclaims the objectives of the Strickland campaign:

Ted Strickland understands that Ohio gains strength from its diversity, and he appreciates that Ohio’s LBGT community is a contributor to the economic and cultural prosperity of the state.

In touting Ted Strickland’s achievement in his twelve years in the House of Representatives, the LBGT webpage makes no mention that Strickland’s district, Ohio’s southern 6th District, remains the second poorest congressional district in the nation.

Instead, the LGBT page proclaims the following:

As a Member of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Ted worked to pass legislation to provide services to those living with HIV/AIDS and co-sponsored legislation to extend programs under the Ryan White Care Act, which provides federal funds for treatment and supportive services in local communities.
Ted voted against discrimination by federal agencies based on sexual orientation in 1998.
Ted voted to broaden the definition of hate crimes to include crimes based on sexual orientation in 2004.

The LBGT page on the Strickland campaign website fails to note that Ted Strickland is the House of Representatives 3rd most absent member, that he is rated 402 out of 435 in terms of congressional effectiveness, that Strickland has missed so far 203 votes in the 109th Congress.

Strickland’s campaign LBGT webpage notes the following supposed Strickland plus:

Calling Ohio Home: Ted will make Ohio an attractive place to call home by fostering vibrant cities through incentives for historic preservation and urban investment; extending broadband access throughout Ohio; investing in the arts; and anchoring jobs of the future in cutting edge industries … all right here in Ohio.

Who’s stereotyping now? Lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgender persons are certainly not the only people who like historic preservation of urban areas, broadband access, the arts, or cutting edge industries. Does Strickland’s campaign mean to suggest that Ohio won’t have historic preservation of urban areas, broadband access, the arts, or cutting edge industries unless a governor is elected who supports LGBT lifestyle politics?

The Strickland LGBT flier also notes that Strickland has the open endorsement of the following LGBT-supporting groups: Equality Ohio, Ohio Stonewall Democrats, and the Human Rights Campaign.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is a national organization founded in 1980, now boasting 600,000 members, all committed to “working for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equal rights.”

The HRC congressional scorecard examining votes on 5 pieces of legislation considered HRC-important, rated Strickland only 60 percent politically correct, because he missed the vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment (H.J.Res. 88), and evidently voted the wrong way on the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1059) to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so as to allow LBGTs to serve openly in the military and on the Uniting American Families Act (H.R. 3006) that proposed to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents the same immigration benefits legal spouses of U.S. residents enjoy.

The HRC scorecard gave perfect 100 percent ratings to only three Ohio congressmen in the 109th Congress – predictably, all far left Democrats – Dennis Kucinich, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Sherrod Brown (the Democratic Party candidate contesting Republican Senator Mike DeWine).

Every LBGT group we can find in Ohio endorses Strickland. Lynn Greer, Co-Chair of the Legacy Fund, a small, but permanent LBGT fund established within The Columbus Foundation to support the LBGT community in Columbus, Ohio, has circulated widely throughout Ohio a email endorsing Ted Strickland. In a copy of the email examined by the author, Ms. Greer places Ted Strickland’s name in bold, red letters, signaling that Mr. Strickland is one of Ms. Greer’s “MUST WIN IN 2006” candidates, a candidate Ms. Greer knows and supports “at the highest level.”

We can find no speeches or television commercials by Mr. Strickland which acknowledge the extent to which his website welcomes and encourages LGBT endorsements, financial contributions, and support. When we examine Mr. Strickland’s website for his LBGT platform, all we find are generalities endorsing broad concepts such as “diversity.”

The LBGT agenda is truly a political agenda aimed at redefining fundamental moral issues throughout U.S. society. The aim is not just to establish same-sex marriage. The aim is to desensitize the U.S. population to accept as normal a wide range of sexual behavior and the resultant lifestyles that once were considered aberrant sexual behavior. The goal is to wrap the LBGT movement with the flag of the civil rights movement, not just to eliminate discrimination, but more importantly to demand equal rights. The ultimate political goal of the LBGT movement is to get lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgenders the right to live, work, be educated, and advance themselves socially and economically on a basis where anyone who objects will be cast as a bigot and very possibly be charged with “hate crimes” that dramatically limit free speech rights under the First Amendment.

Mr. Strickland clearly wants to avoid the hard questions we would pose about his LGBT agenda.

LGBT groups endorsing Mr. Strickland, such as the Human Rights Campaign, place their advocacy within civil rights language, declaring the legitimacy of LGBT “equal rights.” So, does Mr. Strickland endorse LGBT affirmative action, such that he intends to establish quotas or actively promote LGBT hiring into Ohio state government to redress previous discrimination and hiring imbalances?

Does Mr. Strickland intend to pursue a legislative agenda with the Ohio state legislature to enact LGBT –favorable legislation, such as the legislation the Human Rights Campaign uses to formulate their legislative scorecard?
If so, does Mr. Strickland support making whatever amendments are necessary to the Ohio constitution to permit a standard of marriage beyond “same sex” marriage to include LGBT marriages?
Where does Mr. Strickland draw the line as to which extreme sexual practices are to be considered acceptable within his definition of LGBT “equal rights” advocacy? Does Mr. Strickland consider sexual practices such as bestiality, polygamy, or marriage with underage partners to be equally legitimate grounds for protection against discrimination? Under the LGBT standard, where and why is the line to be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable sexual practices?
Does Mr. Strickland’s support of LGBT “equal rights” extend to restricting within Ohio all free speech which is considered adverse to or critical of LGBT lifestyles or sexual practices?
Mr. Strickland is an ex-minister. Will ministers in Ohio be prosecuted in civil or criminal courts if they continue to give sermons within their churches arguing that LGBT lifestyles or sexual practices violate the minister’s definition of the law of God?

Rather than remaining silent on these questions, we encourage Mr. Strickland to speak out openly. Certainly we don’t want to suggest that the reason Mr. Strickland has not campaigned openly on LBGT equal rights is because he is ashamed. So, why not reveal openly to the Ohio voting public that Mr. Strickland’s encourages and embraces LGBT support?

Ohio’s morally conservative and traditionally Christian voters need to know. How does Mr. Strickland intend to translate his open support of LGBT into Ohio state government public policy should he be elected Ohio’s next governor on November 7, 2006?

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Dr. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Political Science in 1972. He has written many books and articles, including co-authoring the #1 New York Times best seller, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians,"

His latest book published with co-author Jim Gilchrist, the founder of The Minuteman Project, entitled: "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders" (World Ahead Publishing).

In 1981, he received a Top Secret clearance from the Agency for International Development, where he assisted in providing anti-terrorism training to embassy personnel.

Dr. Corsi's columns currently appear on HumanEvents.com. He lives with his family in New Jersey, where he is a full-time writer.

E-Mail: jcorsi@worldnetdaily.com

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Ted Strickland understands that Ohio gains strength from its diversity, and he appreciates that Ohio’s LBGT community is a contributor to the economic and cultural prosperity of the state.