McKeon & SCV fear of homos goes way, way back

Context has been the word of the month in Santa Clarita, so I thought I’d offer some more context on Buck McKeon’s comments about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy President Obama wants to overturn. Here’s the remarks he made in a letter to the Secretary of Defense:

‘No action to change the law should be taken by the administration or by this Congress until we have a full and complete understanding of the reasons why the current law threatens or undermines readiness in any significant way,whether a change in law will improve readiness in measurable ways, and what the implications for and effects on military readiness, cohesion, morale, good order and discipline are entailed with a change in law.

It’s an interesting tactic. In the 1990s, when gays in the military was last an issue, Republicans said it would actively harm “unit readiness, cohesion, morale, good order and discipline.”  They ginned up enough fear, uncertainty and doubt that the plan was abandoned, and DADT was born.

Now McKeon, as the chief Republican muckety-muck on the House Armed Services Committee, is saying the liberals have to prove that allowing gays to serve in the military would improve “unit readiness, cohesion, morale, good order and discipline.”  He’s no longer arguing that gays in combat units would be bad; he wants us to prove that it would be good, fabulous even.

But maybe McKeon is just looking out for the troops. After all, he’s been in Congress a long time, and no one doubts he’s an honest broker when it comes to dealing fairly and equitably with TEH GAY question. He’d give the gay soldiers -flaming or otherwise- a shot, right? He just wants to dot a few i’s and cross some t’s. Why, he even said so in the letter to SecDef! Ooohraaah!

errr wait…

McKeon has a long history of (mis)interaction with the gay and lesbian community, dating way back to 1992, when he was but a simple City Councilman, traipsing around the SCV in his Howard & Phil’s 10 gallon hat, trying to earn enough money to fund a campaign so that he could Go To Washington.

In stepped the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican Advocacy group that gave $350 to McKeon’s spring 1992 primary campaign. Great right?

Only problem is, McKeon didn’t know they were gay when he took their dirty queer money. The LA Times takes over:

Howard P. (Buck) McKeon has returned two campaign contributions totaling $350 to a gay Republican advocacy group because he says he does “not support the fundamental positions” the group espouses.

“I think that, politically in this district, taking money from gays is just not a smart thing to do,” said McKeon, a candidate in the newly drawn 25th district, which encompasses the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys and parts of the northern San Fernando Valley.

[McKeon] said at the time that, while he believes “all people should be able to live the lifestyle they want to live,” he opposed two of the Log Cabin Federation’s priorities: passage of an anti-discrimination bill and a change in Pentagon policy to permit openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military.

See, gay money, unlike straight money, has to be guarded against at all times because it has an agenda and could infect the straight bills & coins in your pocket with TEH GAY. Especially in this district.

Do note that McKeon’s main problem with the group was that they wanted to allow gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors, Airmen and Marines to serve our country openly in the military. That, to McKeon, was such a reprehensible position that he turned campaign money back to the group who gave it to him. Think about that. A politician actually refused money from a special interest.

But there I go again, discarding context for the dynamite sound bite. Let’s consider the context of McKeon’s district:

Recall, for example, the wide-spread turnout for Proposition 8 in 2008. It was just 14 months ago that religious conservatives in our community were waving their Prop 8 signs on every street corner. They won the fight, and today, Marriage has been preserved, families have been saved, no one is getting a divorce, and the gays have gone away.

And even before that, in 1998, Santa Clarita was ever-vigilant against the gay menace. Again, the LA Times:

Rainbow-color flags promoting new homes in Valencia were removed after the developer, the city of Santa Clarita and the county received anonymous calls complaining that the rainbow is a symbol of gay pride and is out of place in a family community.

…three calls were received last week by Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich’s office, and a caller also complained to Santa Clarita City Hall and U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon’s office.

“They complained that it was representative of the gay and lesbian community and they found it offensive,” said Joanie Runyon, a staff assistant for Antonovich. “I’d never heard that before. We got three back-to-back calls.”

Bill Horn, assistant media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance in Los Angeles, said the rainbow flag was adopted as a symbol for the gay community about 12 years ago. But he added that a rainbow is a rainbow, enjoyed by everyone.

“I had rainbow sheets when I was a kid,” Horn said. “It’s just a symbol to represent diversity and acceptance.”

Sad to say, I guess McKeon is just representing us. At least the biased, anti-gay majority of us. I mean we actually complained about a rainbow flag advertising home sales. And we never complain about home sales. Real estate is all we do in this town!

Knowing all this -again, the context- I guess it’d be too much to ask for McKeon to drop the pretense that he’s being fair and thoughtful about this matter and just tell us straight up that he’ll never approve of gays in uniform. Maybe he could have his own “proud homophobe” moment and have all the residents rally to his defense?