MoJo posted an article yesterday about Bachmann's reticence to discuss the youth suicide epidemic in her own district. In case you aren't aware, the suicides are almost all the result of anti-gay bullying in schools.
When asked about it she replied that it "isn't a federal issue."
Bachmann has a long history of civil rights abuses against the LGBT community--For instance, her husband's mental health clinic advocates the notion that you can "pray the gay away," and she actively worked to bar legislation that would prevent anti-gay bullying in schools. For whatever insane reason, she believes that homosexuality is wrong and unhealthy and won't lift a finger to protect citizens in her district who are gay from being harassed. Lately she's gone silent on the issue, possibly because it's becoming increasingly apparent to the GOP that anti-gay rhetoric is toxic to young voters, or maybe because her particular brand of anti-gay rhetoric is a hell of a lot worse than most of the other republican contenders for the presidency. To be sure, they pretty much all think gay marriage is wrong, but not all of them pretend that when a homosexual teen commits suicide they were brainwashed by the homosexual community to do so in order to advance the "homosexual agenda."
Given her stance on the rights of LGBT citizens, is it really that surprising that Bachmann doesn't consider this a federal issue? I think her reasons for overlooking the epidemic are two fold: First, she doesn't want to get into the problem her district is facing because it will almost certainly make her look bad. She might be completely insane (and stupid) but now that she's running for the republican presidential nomination, she must have advisers who wisely suggest that she stay away from her usual conspiracy laden tirades against the LGBT community. Second, Bachmann presents herself as a Tea Party member, and as such, she purports leaving things like anti-gay legislation up to the state. As far as she's concerned, the government shouldn't impose it's "morality"upon the states (though she clearly has no problem doing that when the federal government's morals align with her own). Instead each state should be allowed to decide for itself how it will treat its residents--Thus, because there are enough people in that district in Minnesota who think homosexuality is a punishable offense she feels justified in her continuation of treating it as such.
She might be a psycho-bitch, but she's playing this hand about as well as she can. She's managing to spin an incredibly draconian social arrangement into an issue of "liberty" such that disagreeing with her makes you an opponent of freedom.
Ah, American politics, is there anything you can't do?
I also forgot to mention that the typical homophobe reaction to what's going on here is that homophobes have a right to free speech and by trying to legislate against bullying, we are somehow infringing upon their rights as US citizens to drive each other to suicide.
ReplyDelete