I got an email yesterday from Chris Moore, President of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Greater Sacramento. Â In it, he provided an update on a tightly fought state assembly race in which the lead attorney for the Yes on Prop 8 is running. The National Organization for Marriage is in big for his campaign, and we all ought to know about it. And help support his opponent.
Here’s Chris’ piece for the California Majority Report yesterday:
National Organization for Marriage is Using Children as Political Pawns… Again.
The folks behind the divisive and hurtful Yes on Proposition 8 T.V. ads just couldn’t help themselves — The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is once again using children as political pawns, but this time in an attempt to elect one of their own, Andrew Pugno, to the California State Assembly by smearing his pro-equality challenger Dr. Richard Pan. The two are facing off in a hotly contested race for Assembly District 5 in the Sacramento region.
Pugno is the golden boy of the nation-wide anti marriage equality effort. His career sets him apart from your standard anti marriage equality activists and includes such highlights as: Chief of Staff to the notoriously homophobic late Senator Pete Knight, Co-Author of Proposition 8, and lead attorney for the Yes on 8 Campaign. It is no surprise that NOM is spending big to have their go-to California political operative elected to the Assembly.
NOM has spent over $112,000 to air a new television ad in which they warn that Pugno’s opponent, Richard Pan, will support the teaching of gay marriage to 2nd graders. See the ad below: [Ed note: click over to the California Majority Report page to view it.]
It is fairly ironic that NOM is divisively using children as political pawns in an effort to smear Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician that has focused his career on building community partnerships to increase children’s health coverage. Dr. Pan co-founded the Healthy Kids Healthy Future program, which secured health, dental and vision coverage for over 65,000 children in the Sacramento region.
Assembly District 5 was drawn as a Republican district in 2000 but has been trending more and more Democratic. The polling for the race shows that Dr. Pan will win as long as his campaign can get the message out about Pugno’s extremist past. In addition to Pugno’s anti-gay past, he has also worked to eliminate all abortions, even in the case of incest and rape.
To learn more about this race and Andrew Pugno’s extreme past, visit http://www.stopandrewpugno.com/.
To help Dr. Richard Pan, please visit http://www.panforassembly.com/
Chris Moore is the President of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Greater Sacramento and formerly served as Political Director for Equality California.
My main beef is that it’s not at all appalling — in fact, for my kids, it’s sanity-producing — for schools to teach about gender diversity and family diversity and anti-bullying in 2nd grade. I thank my lucky stars and the hard work of people of integrity in my school district that it’ll be part of my kids’ elementary education. Anyone who supported that would get my vote.
The Pugno ad includes a clip from the notorious Yes on 8 ad — the one featuring a girl reading King & King — with the voice-over speaking in urgent tones about “teaching gay marriage to 2nd graders.”  You know, because we’re just not done with mixing homophobia into the potent imperative so many of us feel to “protect the children.”  That bigoted fear-mongering is going to keep on happening until my kids — alongside the other 70,000+ kids raised by LGBT people in this state, alongside millions nationwide (4-14 million, pick your study) — spring to mind when that “protect the children” shite gets hauled out and topped with yet another fright wig.  Them, and the young people  — we’re beginning to know their names now, hell, Secretary of State Clinton is paying attention — who can’t keep living through the pain of the hate behind it, and who are dying for the opposite of hateful ignorance: loving education.
Said William Carlos Williams, in “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”:
- It is difficult
- to get the news from poems
- yet men die miserably every day
- for lack
- of what is found there
1) This makes me so angry. Where’d all these lunatics in Cali come from? Can we sequester them in Orange Co.? Thank you for helping spread the word.
2) While I’m commenting, might as well say I think your blog is awesome.
Welcome, sarzthewonderdog!
1) Me, too. Crazy, irrelevant, misguided, very, very damaging. Sadly we grow too many of ’em at home. This is one wacky state. If Orange Co. would be happy to have everyone concentrated, and folks would all be happy there, I sez let it break off into its own state, like Monaco or Vatican City! Better yet Monaco, which seems to have less of a global influence.
2) Thank you very much. I think it’s awesome that anyone reads it a’tall. All you all make it a conversation, and a very interesting one at that.
Addendum for Bay Area folks: Our Family Coalition is doing their school forums again this fall, one for the East Bay and one for San Francisco. At them,
I go annually, have done so since before our first kid was in school, and continue to learn a great deal and leave with real hope, concrete ideas, and useful resources. This year they say:
East Bay: November 3, 5:30-8:30pm, Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley. Further info and registration form here.
San Francisco: November 16, 5:30-8:30pm, McKinley Elementary in San Francisco. Further info and registration form here.
Last note: one year at the East Bay forum we were picketed by a wackjob group that passed out flyers — to kids as well as adults — containing derogatory (and of course inflammatory, defamatory) language. Testimony to how important they are, and how dearly needed.
There are just so many fronts to this battle it makes me crazy. Thanks for highlighting this one.
btw, my most favoritist William Carlos Williams quote! Hooray and thank goodness for poetry!