It's been interesting to see the rest of the country discover what we here in northwest North Carolina have known for some time - that Rep. Virginia Foxx is both a bigot and an imbecile. Foxx's idiotic rebuttal of the need to include sexual orientation/identification in the federal hate crime definition has made national headlines, and put her squarely in the crosshairs of left-wing commentators. (Let's hope they keep here there.)
In arguing against legislation that would add crimes targeting gays, lesbians, trans-gender people and even heterosexual people who were merely non-gender conforming (like the children who recently committed suicide after being teased), Foxx said on the floor of the House chamber that it was erroneous to name the bill after Matthew Shepard because he wasn't really murdered for being gay.
First of all - not true. And I only base that on the fact that the men who did the actual crime testified that - holy sh*t! - they picked Shepard out because he was gay. They even tried to use "gay panic" as a defense for the murder! Maybe this is overly simplistic, but I would assume that the people who committed the crime in question would understand their own motives better than some ass-hat 10 years later on the other side of the country. Maybe that's just me. But even if Shepard's killers hadn't confessed, I would think that intelligent people could deduce that someone wanting merely to rob somebody else doesn't torture that person and tie him to a fence in the middle of nowhere. It just seems like overkill if all you want is the guy's wallet.
More important point - who gives a shit? I think there's a valid debate to be had about the "hate crime" designation (the extra burden it puts on prosecutors, for one), but Foxx wasn't engaging that debate. She was pulling the time-honored political hack trick of distracting from the real issue with something trivial. Even if Shepard's supporters had been guilty of pulling a Jessica Lynch (not true, but let's just imagine for a minute), making him the poster child for a type of crime he didn't really represent - so what? Does that magically erase the fact that one out of 12 trans people will be a victim of murder? Not for me.
But I think that what's the most jaw-dropping about this whole thing is Foxx's defense that her comments were based on a handful of sources she read on the Internet, all refuted by actual facts. I find it deeply disturbing that an elected official with a fairly educated staff would not only base her vote, but testify on the permanent record of the U.S. Congress, with that little to back her up.
My problem with Virgina Foxx isn't that I disagree with her politics. I disagree with Howard Coble, too, but I know him to be an intelligent person with a genuine interest in educating himself about things he doesn't know, but that will impact his constituents. Foxx, on the other hand, isn't interested in encountering any facts or experiences that might challenge her entrenched world-view. That's what makes her a bad representative, not the fact that she's conservative. It's Foxx's responsibility to seek opinions from people who have perspective that she doesn't, like the thousands of LGBT folks that live in her district. And she's just not willing to do that.
(And in a week that saw Sen. Arlen Specter ditch the GOP because of what he saw as their increasing hostility to moderates, the last thing Republicans need is yet another excuse to paint them as ignorant, out-of-touch bigots. I swear, if I didn't know better I'd think Foxx was a liberal plant to make the GOP look bad.)
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