Arkansas Blog

Scroll down the blog today and you'll find documentation of the Republican Party's strategy in the home stretch of the Arkansas elections: demonize gay people.

Wasting no time, John Brummett today categorizes Asa Hutchinson's recent attack against Mike Beebe as desperate and explains why it's lame:

Here's what Hutchinson's news release said: The state's defense in the litigation was handled in-house by the counsel's office of the state Human Services Department. Beebe, as attorney general, didn't touch it. He should have wrested the case, since it raised a constitutional issue. By not doing so, he effectively left little children defenseless from gay foster parents. For shame.

Asa's attack was rendered pretty much a dud when Beebe's office pointed out that it is long-standing practice for the massive Human Services Department to handle its litigation inside the agency. That's so the attorney general's office will have time for anything else.

The gay foster case had been an in-house matter for three years before Beebe got elected attorney general. To have wrested it at that point would have been highly irregular, foolhardy and sheer demagoguery, never minding ineffectual considering that the state's case was a loser on its face regardless of counsel.

And, by the way, we haven't yet reached the issue of whether the state may constitutionally exclude gay foster parents. The issue so far has been that the state presumed to do by regulation what the Legislature had been unable to do by statute. Let's not forget, either, that Beebe opposes gays as foster parents and is less altogether liberal than, oh, my man Mike Huckabee.

Brummett moves on to the general cynicism and hypocrisy of national Republicans when it comes to gay issues, and produces one of the most efficient and effective summaries you'll find on the topic:

So, here's the deal: If you believe homosexuality to be an abomination and that our culture must not condone or even abide it, then you are without representation in modern American politics.

Democrats tend to disagree openly with you and find you bigoted. Republicans tend to disagree secretly with you, take advantage of you and make fun of you behind your back.