Saturday, December 04, 2010

DeLay Was Brought Down by a Lesbian D.A.
From the Dallas Voice online.


In case you missed it, former House Republican Majority Leader Tom “the Hammer” DeLay was convicted the day before Thanksgiving on felony charges of money laundering for illegally funneling corporate dollars into Texas state legislative races in 2002.

DeLay, who represented a Houston-area House district from 1984 to 2005, faces up to life in prison but says he will appeal the verdict.

DeLay had a decidedly anti-gay voting record in Congress, receiving the worst possible score of zero from the Human Rights Campaign in each of his last two sessions. A year before his indictment and resignation, DeLay spoke on the House floor in support of a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage:

“This nation knows that if you destroy marriage as the definition of one man and one woman, creating children so that we can transfer our values to those children and they can be raised in an ideal home, this country will go down,” DeLay said.

“So believe me, everybody in this country’s going to know how you voted today,” he said, his anger mounting with every word. “They’re going to know how you stood on the fundamental protection of marriage and the definition of marriage. And we will take it from here and we will come back, and we will come back, and we will come back. We will never give up. We will protect marriage in this country.”


Given DeLay’s record on gay rights, perhaps there’s some poetic justice to the fact that the district attorney who obtained the conviction, Rosemary Lehmberg, is an out and proud lesbian. Lehmberg, a Democrat, was elected to replace Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who initiated DeLay’s prosecution, after Earle retired in 2008. Before that, Lehmberg served as Earle’s first assistant for 10 years in the office that’s home to the state’s Public Integrity Unity, which is charged with investigating corruption in government.

Of course, DeLay’s prosecution had no more to do with Lehmberg’s sexual orientation than it did with her party affiliation, and none of the stories we’ve seen about his conviction even mention it.

Which is why we thought we would.

“I think that I serve as an individual who demonstrates that sexual orientation is not particularly relevant, except to your personal life, and therefore a lot of the homophobia and bias is unwarranted — the fear that people have,” Lehmberg told us following her election in 2008.

7 comments:

bigsis said...

If you take an overview of Texas politics, clearly we're a very red state. Yet if you scratch the surface it makes you wonder. Besides Rosemary, the mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, is an out lesbian and she just appointed a transgendered person, Phyllis Frye, as a judge in Houston.

Oh and Judge Frye is an Aggie, just like Rick Perry. How 'bout them Aggies??

Fran said...

Another reason to love lesbians!

nonnie9999 said...

i love irony!

Karen Zipdrive said...

I love poetic justice.

Distributorcap said...

i love anyone who puts delay in jail - where he will learn plenty about the boys.

Karen Zipdrive said...

Now see, Theo, here we were, establishing a polite rapport and you gotta get personal with tampons, anti depressants and other shit you have no clue about me.
The mote in my eye is being a proud lesbian who gets in the face of anyone who has the temerity to get personal or needlessly rude with me.
I'm not going to call you a pencil dick or a pedophile or anything unsavory, but if you don't apologize and cease, all your posts are gone, for good.
Capiche?

Karen Zipdrive said...

Cool with me.
My readers will soon be getting home from work and you might want to brace yourself a tad because some are far scrappier than I.
Just please no personal attacks against them please, or toward you, okay, everyone?
They are a lot more than commenters to me and Palin is a Mama Hamster compared to this Mama Kodiak. ;)