virginia really foxx it up this time

Virginia Foxx, whose angelic face is to your left, is the Representative of the 5th district of North Carolina - Winston-Salem, Mt. Airy - thereabouts. Virginia Foxx, my friends, is batshit crazy.

Now, I know everybody else is all over this. Virginia Foxx said that the murder of Matthew Shepard was a byproduct of a simple robbery, not a hate crime, and that attaching his name to a federal hate crimes bill makes it a 'hoax' because of that fact. On the floor of the United States General Assembly.

On. the floor. Of the General Assembly, people.

While Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy, sat and watched from the same room.

I'm not going to take pot shots at Ms. Foxx - oh, hell, do I really give a shit? Watching that gaping, pitiful deformity of a face on my television, spewing such hateful, dishonest, unfiltered, distasteful shit was one of the most difficult things I've had to endure in recent memory. I don't know anyone - conservative, liberal, rocks-for-brains - who would deny that Matthew Shepard's murder was fueled out of hate. The only other people who would deny that are the Westboro Baptist Church, and come to think of it, they'd probably agree that it was motivated by hate, but justified hate because God hates fags. So, Virginia Foxx might as well be a member.

Especially since she has yet to apologize...for lying her decrepit ass off on the floor of the General Assembly. In front of the victim's mother. On live television, for all victims of hate crimes to see.

With all the good news for gays lately, I guess we needed to be humbled. We need Virginia Foxx and Carrie Prejean to remind us that we don't have it made in the shade just yet. Idiots are abound, everyone beware.

I have loved, loved, loved getting to know more about politics and the political process through my work. It's made me consider public service down the line, even. One thing I don't love is people like Virginia Foxx, who blatantly disrespect those who she was voted to represent by releasing such toxic shit into the world. What I don't love about politics is that it reduces some people to forget that we're talking about people here, not bills, not legislation, not "hoaxes," for the love of God.

Matthew Shepard, for the fucking record, was lured from a gay bar by two straight men pretending to be gay. He was robbed, he was beaten until his skull was fractured from his ear to his spine, his body attacked with a sharp object, and left ALIVE, tied to a fence in the middle of nowhere for 18 hours until someone found him. And his killers called him a fag while they did it. And one of his killers admitted that they knew he was gay under oath. Think about it. This isn't a news story...this really, really happened.

And it happens too often in this country, because people like Virginia Foxx give license for it to happen by spewing out anti-gay rhetoric in their little "I'm justa good ole gurl from the Souwuth! How am Ahhhh supposed to know any bettuh!?!" drawl.

I believe that this kind of gay-bashing is the worst kind. It's worse than someone calling someone a "fag" or a "dykey dyke," in my book. Why? I'll tell you why.

It's civil. At least with someone who calls you a fag, you know where you stand. Granted, it's not a great place to be standing. When someone dances around the subject, engages in rhetoric that insinuates but never directly states that they hate gay people, it heightens everything. They'll smile at you, shake your hand, ask you "how are you doing?" but genuinely are disgusted at the thought of you if you were to delve below that civil surface. It's not bigotry if you're nice about it? Black people were okay with using different drinking fountains if you asked nicely? No. If it looks like a foxx, acts like a foxx, smells like a foxx, it's a fucking foxx. A dirty, scumbag foxx.

Civility will kill us. We'll play politics, we'll play civil and avoid the real conversations, the nitty gritty arguments that explode and expose people for what they really are - bigots, because it's easier to pretend like we can all get along as long as you don't know how much I really hate you. It's easier...until those people start demanding their rights, like with the hate crimes bill.

You talk yourself into seeing these people as less than you, less deserving of something than you - whether that's marriage or getting into heaven, I don't know. You play nice and don't say a single mean thing. You get elected to national office. You do your best to legislate your brand of hatred. The times are changing, it seems, for people like Virginia Foxx. Now, when your bigotry is exposed, there's an uproar.

And you deserve it.