Concerned Women for America reports that Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot will meet with Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays, an organization whose online support group (as has been noted elsewhere) encourages parents to reject and harangue their adult gay children and, if necessary, to isolate or institutionalize their underage gay children.
Racicot offered this concession to an angry crowd of religious-right leaders: Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America; American Values President Gary Bauer; Family Research Council President Ken Connor; Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Life Issues Institute President John Willke; Rick Scarborough, national co-chairman of Vision America; Traditional Values Coalition President Lou Sheldon; Free Congress Foundation President Paul Weyrich; Inspiration Network Vice President Ron Shuping; Alabama Policy Institute President Gary Palmer; and Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman Michael Farris.
Read Knight’s account of the meeting: the war of words is breathtaking.
Among his revelations:
Racicot replied to the entire group, “You need to be straight up with it. You want a law that says you can dismiss someone solely on the basis of homosexuality.” Various members of the group said no, they did not want to add laws targeting homosexuals or anyone else, but felt that special rights should not be carved out based on sexual behavior.
Racicot isn’t stupid. With great precision, he unravels the religious right’s awkwardly phrased campaign against laws that forbid dismissal of public employees solely on the basis of sexual orientation.
After Richard Land noted that the GOP’s flirting with homosexual activism “divides its friends and unites its enemies,” Racicot said, “I’m not as suspicious as you. I don’t have the agenda you think I have.”
Rarely has Land’s political hypocrisy been more blatant.
Racicot made some unjust concessions to intolerant religious extremists at this meeting. Nevertheless, I’m pleasantly surprised by the extent to which he declined to be bullied.