Iowa GOP's Homophobia: Fire Kevin Jennings, Ban Trans Folk from Marrying
Filed by: Alex Blaze
April 28, 2011 9:30 AM
http://www.bilerico.com/2011/04/iowa_republicans_homophobia_fire_kevin_jennings_ba.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2011/04/iowa_republicans_homophobia_fire_kevin_jennings_ba.php)
To follow-up on Joe's post on the Iowa Republican Party's platform, there's a lot of anti-gay and anti-trans ideology in there. While I'd love to go through and post on all the crazy (the platform actually says it opposes "The Rights of the Child," a UN treaty that opposes child slavery and cruel punishment, as well as calling for an end to "Islamic Sharia law," "the appointment of 'Czars,'" and Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and support homeowners' right to shoot trespassers on sight), but the gay stuff is already enough.
[...]
Unlike Texan Republicans who want transgender people to marry based on birth gender instead of actual gender, Iowa Republicans want to ban them from marrying anyone:
We support an amendment to both the U. S. and Iowa constitutions that states that all marriages should be traditional one natural male and one natural female, omitting transgendered.
That is just to far. To outright ban us from marrying anyone at all is wrong. I understand that we complicate things for simple minds but we should have the same rights as everyone else. Just because people in Iowa have issues with us is no reason to deny us equal rights under the law.
It's not all of Iowa, which once upon a time was a fairly progressive place, but the Republicans have been drinking the kool-aid by the gallons and it's got pretty weird in the Republican party there.