Candidate for Lt. Governor Jackson demonstrates just how far Virginia has left to shed its past

If bigotry was a popular policy position among the majority of Americans, the Republican Party would have a difficult time losing elections for public office. The Virginia GOP is no exception.

In it’s absurd attempt to broaden the Republican Party’s appeal (i.e., to individuals other than white males), the Virginia Republican Party nominated E.W. Jackson as their candidate for lieutenant governor.

Jackson is a black minister, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. This guy sounds like a perfect poster child of expanding Republican Party inclusion, right?

Unfortunately for Jackson’s Republican Party handlers, Jackson has compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and stated that pedophilia and homosexuality are equivalents. And the list could go on. Thus, Jackson makes Republican candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli, look like Al Franken in comparison.

During a 2010 interview with the host of Christian radio, Jackson said, "[Gay people] believe that sexuality is how everybody ought to be defined. And that means sexual freedom, sexual license to do whatever you want to do. And I know their people say, well, 'It's unfair to associate homosexuality with pedophilia or some of these other perversions.' But I believe that there is a direct connection, because what they really want is absolute sexual freedom." Jackson’s argument is not too dissimilar from the arguments made by white segregationists in the South during the Civil Rights movement. That is, white segregationists picked one characteristic of ‘another group of people’ and vilified that characteristic as deserving of ridicule and unequal treatment.

Jackson also has a video on YouTube that calls Planned Parenthood more damaging to African Americans than the Ku Klux Klan.

The level of hatred that a considerable number of Virginian Republicans share towards individuals who support or are homosexual or support pro-choice policies is a sad reminder of just how far Virginia has to go to shed the skin of its past for a future of greater inclusivity. And the situation is all the more sad considering the words quoted above come from a black man in the state of “Massive Resistance.”