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| Agema |
As if Republican National Committee Chairman Reince
Priebus didn’t have enough to worry about.
Just as the Republican Party braces for an unpredictable
presidential debate on Thursday that shapes up as the Donald Trump show, the
GOP now must also deal with its chief homophobe, Republican National Committee
member Dave Agema of Michigan, who is urging the party to take a gay-bashing stand
on sex education in schools.
that essentially concludes that public schools are teaching the “homosexual
lifestyle” in sex education classes and that American culture portrays being
gay as an “attractive option for school-aged children.”
A former state representative, the controversial Agema
believes that gays die at a young age due to a promiscuous lifestyle that leads
to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.
According to The Washington Blade, the Agema resolution
would call on schools nationwide to “also include the harmful physical aspects
of the lifestyle.” He cites a claim apparently published by the Journal of
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes that says being gay takes up to 21 years
off a person’s lifespan.
initial vote by a subcommittee at some point during the RNC’s meeting, held in
Cleveland to coincide with the presidential debate, that runs
Wednesday through Friday.
The MIRS news service in Lansing (subscription only)
reported that Michigan GOP Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel has condemned the Agema
resolution. Romney McDaniel said the party does not discriminate based on
sexual preference, but she also categorized the matter as a local control
issue.
“I don’t think it’s the RNC role to tell us what
should or should not be taught in my kids’ sex education
classes. I just don’t,” she told MIRS.
party officials, at the state and national level, to get Agema to resign from
the RNC due to racist and bigoted remarks posted online began with a
particularly virulent attack on gays in March 2013.
He posted on Facebook an article by an obscure “medical
doctor” that depicted gays as sexually promiscuous, pedophiles, and deviants
living a “filthy” lifestyle.
It was later revealed that Agema’s version of
homosexuality was based on the observations of a Ku Klux Klan member
— an admitted gay-hater and racist.
The author of the article, Edward Fields, a non-practicing chiropractor from
Marietta, Ga., is a Holocaust denier who has been active in white supremacist
and anti-Semitic groups since he was a teenager in the late 1940s. He believes
that Jews and homosexuals are attempting to take over the world.
The article that was promoted by Agema claimed that 37
percent of homosexuals engage in sadomasochism, 60 percent say they have had
sex with strangers in “bathhouses,” about 80 percent are infected with sexually
transmitted diseases, and the average gay person has between 20 and 106 sexual
partners per year.
deplorable smear was: “The trouble is, many don’t like facts.”
chance of passage by the RNC, at least if the Michigan GOP’s mentality prevails
upon the rest of the party. At the height of the uproar over Agema’s March ’13 post,
a survey of Michigan GOP precinct delegates found that most didn’t want him to
step down. In contrast, a majority of these party stalwarts said they would
support Agema for re-election to the RNC.
Is Rep. Gary Glenn going to get on board with this?