Michael Smerconish is an especially frustrating right-winger. While he seems to try to be reasonable and adult about the insane positions and policies the Party takes, he none the less stays faithful even as he chides about pretty obvious idiocy from the Bachmann camp:
See, my friend and former intern Ben is gay. And he never made any such choice.
Your thinking is nothing new and it runs in your family.
In 2004, at the National Education Leadership Conference, you said of the gay lifestyle: "It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It's anything but gay."
Then there's your husband, Marcus, who obtained his Ph.D. by virtue of a correspondence course. He runs a mental-health clinic but, according to Politico, is not registered with any of the three state boards that certify mental health practitioners. (Minnesota is one of the only states in which you can practice mental health without a license.) Last year, when asked during a radio interview about parenting homosexual children, he said:
We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn't mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That's what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps. . .
Marcus Bachmann has denied that his clinic engages in attempts to "pray away the gay," but ABC's Nightline recently aired an interview with a man who said that, at age 17, he sought help from Bachmann & Associates and: "path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay."
Naturally, Ben, a proud Notre Dame alum, doesn't appreciate the reference to the devil, nor being compared to barbarians. His life is anything but "sad," and there are a number of things he thinks you should know.
First, he's always known he was gay. "I've always known something was different," he told me. "Coming out is more a process of accepting yourself than anything else."
Second, there is nothing in his background that caused this. He is part of a conservative family and attended a Catholic high school and college -- an upbringing that he says did nothing to "promote being gay."
And he wonders who exactly you think would "choose" to be gay, given the myriad personal, emotional, and legal issues that a homosexual lifestyle introduces.
"If you could simply choose who you were sexually attracted to," Ben wondered, "wouldn't you choose the path of least resistance? Being gay creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose."
Yet despite these obstacles, Ben still believes that once the predisposition toward sexuality is understood as being just that, the basis for the discrimination he faces as a gay man will dissipate.
"Thankfully we live in a country that, for the most part, does not permit discrimination against those things a person cannot control. We don't tolerate bias based on race, or gender, or disabilities, because people don't choose these fates," Ben said.
Yeah, well, good luck with that, Mike. That last paragraph states a philosophy totally counter to any & every position of the Republican Party.
After proving the lie of small government, small debt, etc., maybe at last you'll see the lie of personal freedom your party endorses.
Bastard.
BTW, I hate this song, but the sentiment works. McDonald pretty much ruined the Doobie Brothers, IMHO, although I'm told he's a nice fellow.
