Beware the 'gay boogieman game'

[G_j]

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/sep/11/wsopin02-timothy-b-tyson-guest-columnist-who-wants-ar-1374211/?referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fl.php%3Fu%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fjournalnow.com%2Far%2F1374211%2F&h=tAQAC7QYb&shorturl=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2Fnf4wBR

Tim Tyson says beware the 'gay boogieman game."
By: TIMOTHY B. TYSON | Guest columnist
Published: September 11, 2011

<snip>

Like "Monkey Bill" advocates of old, sponsors of the current anti-gay amendment are stomping the hot button to kick-start their own political prospects. Big, right-wing money pumps promise that the amendment will boost conservative turnout in 2012 and distract us while they pick our pockets and pillage our public schools. In this context, same-sex marriage, already banned by state and federal law, is a smokescreen for partisan politics and unaccountable wealth.

Tami Fitzgerald, drum major for the gay boogieman game in North Carolina, embodies its transparent dishonesty. For example, she claims that unless we pass this anti-gay amendment, "it will be impossible for a pastor to preach against homosexuality" without going to jail. Fitzgerald also poses as a "nonpartisan, grassroots" activist, but served until recently as finance director of the N.C. Republican Party.

Raising $500,000 to shove the amendment onto the 2012 ballot seemed no obstacle to Fitzgerald, a registered lobbyist for the Coalition of North Carolina Employers. "We're not worried where the money is going to come from," she says. Now that much I believe.

Fitzgerald is also staff attorney for the N.C. affiliate of the Colorado-based Family Research Council, a fountain of far-right money that floods other states with anti-gay legislation. FRC claims George W. Bush owes his re-election to its anti-gay amendment, which drew "almost one million more voters in Ohio in '04 than had voted in 2000." Designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate-group," FRC instructs its agents that anti-gay politics is "the way that conservatives can win in minority communities."

..more..