Creep of the Week
It's always sad to watch a person self-destruct. Especially when that self-destruction is happening in that person's pants.
Minnesota Senator Amy Koch recently stepped down as Senate Majority Leader after it was discovered that she's been messing around with a man who is not her husband and who actually worked for her. This relationship was deemed a conflict of interest.
Koch, not incidentally, is an opponent of marriage equality. She and her fellow Republicans pushed hard to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the 2012 ballot.
Back in May, 2011, Minnesota Family Council President Tom Prichard, Koch's political ally. told the Star Tribune about the ballot initiative, "[O]ur goal is to not make it personal. I think we can have a respectful discussion and conversation on the importance of marriage in our state, where there's widespread support that the best environment to raise children is with a loving mother and father."
Is this where I mention that Koch and her husband have a little girl?
And just what does Prichard mean about not making it "personal"? I'm not sure what's more personal than a marriage. And campaigning to deny someone the right to make such an intimate, public commitment is, certainly, personal.
And so when Koch dropped her pants for a penis she was not married to, Minnesota's gays and lesbians can't help but take that personally, too.
Writer John Medeiros issued an open letter to Koch that has gone viral. In it he apologies on behalf of gay Minnesotans for ruining her marriage: "We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love have cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry."
Yes, it's a shame. Gays are the worst.
But when it all boils down, this is yet another anti-gay Republican caught having an extramarital affair. Yawn. Blah, blah, blah… I mean, sure, there's a twist because this time it's a female, but it's really nothing new. Aren't we tired of hearing this story?
We shouldn't be. Whether we're talking about Koch, Mark Foley, George Rekers, Ted Haggard, David Vitter, Larry Craig or any of the others, it matters because repeated hypocrisy should be alarming, not numbing. We cannot and should not accept that the very people fighting against us are using a set of so-called "values" that they, themselves, do not truly believe in. Picking up the mantle of "marriage defender" when you're screwing around on your wife or husband should be grounds for public humiliation and shame.
Because this isn't about the sanctity of marriage. This is about dehumanizing LGBT people so that we may be used as political scapegoats. This is about furthering a right-wing conservative agenda by any means necessary. By scaring folks with the threat of the "gay menace," Republicans get folks to vote against their own economic, personal, and societal interests. We forget that at our peril.
So let's keep calling them as we see them. And calling them out until this kind of shit doesn't fly anymore. Koch, you're a creep. And sadly you're surely only the first of many in 2012.
