Editorial

The following is an open letter to Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action.

You’ve dedicated your life to promoting heterosexual marriage as the crowning pinnacle of civilization. Yet you have remained single.

Justice David Prosser is too emotionally troubled to remain on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His behavior on the job would have resulted in dismissal from any ordinary workplace, and the state’s highest court demands a higher – not lower – standard of conduct.

He must resign.

The process of liberation is never linear.  A step forward is often followed by a step sideways – or even backwards.

The faltering progress that LGBT Americans have won in the past four decades is about as good as it gets. While we’re still some distance short of full social inclusion, we have arrived at a time and place when the question is no longer “if” but “when.”

The root of the word “conservative” is servare, a Latin verb that means to make safe, save, preserve, guard, etc.

But conservatives in Madison and Washington have abandoned any pretense that they’re interested in conserving the Earth. Instead, they’re pushing through policies that would liberally squander the planet’s resources in the pursuit of short-term financial gain for their big corporate sponsors.

If there was any doubt that the corporate right and the anti-gay right are colluding, Wisconsin Family Action chief Julaine Appling erased it.

In a taped phone call with a concerned citizen, Appling acknowledged her group is part of a political coalition that includes Americans for Prosperity, one of the political front groups for billionaires Charles and David Koch. The caller had confronted Appling because a return address owned by her group was printed on fraudulent ballot applications that AFP sent to voters before the Aug. 9 recall elections. The ballots listed a return date after the election was over.

Of all the absurdities hatched by Gov. Scott Walker and his right-wing henchmen, none is more confounding than their elimination of funding for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin clinics.

The GOP has fomented animus toward PP by spreading the lie that it does nothing but perform abortions on the taxpayer dime. In fact, terminating dangerous or unwanted pregnancies represents only about 3 percent of PP’s services in Wisconsin. None of the clinics that provide this service receive government funding.

As an LGBT advocacy publication, we seldom find ourselves in agreement with the Catholic Church. But we applaud those faithful who are pressing for an expanded definition of “pro-life” that includes actual living, breathing humans.

Seventy priests, nuns and professors recently took U.S. House Speaker John Boehner to task for what they called an “anti-life budget” that shrugs off the Christian duty of the powerful to care for the powerless. It’s refreshing to see followers of Christ asking, “What would Jesus do?” and realizing it would not be to force people to starve and die in the streets in order to give tax breaks to the insanely wealthy.

The Milwaukee Ballet Company’s recent production of “3,” a program of dance works created by three world-class choreographers, was a thrilling reminder of one of the greatest benefits of living in Wisconsin: the arts.

The burden of our northern latitude winters is lightened by the quality and diversity of the performing arts groups that crisscross the state.  You’d have to search hard to find a corner of the Badger State where you could not access an outstanding performing arts venue.

What’s more important – your tax rate or your sexual orientation? Would you give up love and/or sex forever for a smaller government?

These questions should be no-brainers. No emotionally healthy person would trade something as humanly essential as physical love and affection for a discredited chance at personal economic gain.

When a Republican legislator in Alabama switches parties to protest the GOP’s attacks on teachers, you know there’s a progressive backlash a-coming.

As legislatures across the country adjourn, it’s clear that voters are not pleased with the right-wing genie they let out of the bottle last fall. Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s approval rating dipped to 29 percent after only four months in office. A recent Ohio poll showed that Tea Party Gov. John Kasich would lose by 25 points if he faced his November 2010 opponent today.

If there was any question about whether Democrats or Republicans have the advantage in efforts to recall state senators, it’s been answered.

Democrats have submitted six petitions for recall elections, all of them involving senators who are considered at least somewhat vulnerable. Republicans, meanwhile, have submitted petitions against only three of eight eligible Democratic senators.

Republicans used to trick Americans into supporting economic policies that have their worst interests at heart by raising the terrorism threat level or inflaming homo hatred. But that’s so Bush era.

Today’s economic elites have found a new scapegoat in their war for every last dollar that America produces: school teachers.