Equality Texas created a list of the worst legislators in the Texas House on LGBT issues, with several of Tarrant County elected officials figuring prominently.
Jonathan Stickland, a Bedford Republican, was in a 10-way tie for eighth place.
Bill Zedler, an Arlington Republican, was deemed the third worst legislator. Equality Texas took into consideration his attempt to “hold children’s education hostage to punish LGBT families” and his attempt to “ban campus LGBT resource centers from state universities,” and lamented Zedler’s “perpetuating gross misinformation and stereotypes about HIV transition.”
“It would be easy to describe Zedler as ‘outside the mainstream,’ but his die-hard belief that HIV/AIDS is caused by providing basic resources to the LGBT community prove that he is, in fact, firmly in a stream all his own, and that stream is in 1986.”
Pretty harsh, right?
Well, Zedler wasn’t considered as horrible as Matt Krause, a Republican from Fort Worth.
Krause topped the “Worst” list.
Equality Texas slammed Krause, a Fort Worth attorney, for pursing an “extreme agenda of inserting state government into every decision made by school districts and universities to ensure that LGBT people cannot live their lives in peace.”
How bad was he?
“The people of House District 93 would have been better represented by an empty chair, at least that would have been less embarrassing,” the report concluded.
On the other end of the spectrum, Equality Texas lauded Lon Burnam, a Democrat from Fort Worth, as being among the best of the legislators.
Only self serving liberals would think these deducted, hard working people, were not doing a good job.
…or anyone with a love for decency and fairness, and equal treatment under the law. Or maybe anyone who might be gay. They might think that too.
It may come as a shock to some, but there are actually some (not really enough for the recent WSJ–see their editorial on June 8) budgetary restraints being considered in Austin which are not particularly “aimed” at targeting any one group. If your pet program gets “cut”, please don’t bore us with your unfounded complaints about fairness. Colleges are full of “resource centers”, student health centers and psychological support centers –if you want yet another variety–fund it and support it yourself! (It’s a free country).
I guess what it all boils down to, from what I hear from the right, is that any program that is not for people like us (older and white and male, upper-middle class mostly), then forget about it or “fund it yourself.” You folks are painting yourself into the corner of being irrelevant. There is always a balance in politics between “what are we going to do” vs. “what are we not going to do.” The right has gone so far over the edge into defining themselves as what they hate, that the public is slowly and steadily disregarding them. You can’t always define yourself as what you are not. That doesn’t work in business marketing and social interaction and certainly not politics.
Wow, i can’t stop laughing about the commenter above -(BA). Assuming that anyone takes this phoney poll seriously–(a bunch of Democrat Bubbas who never have sponsored any meaningful legislation and don’t show up to vote are all given “A”s–Republicans remarks are taken out of context and they are given F minuses– as if anybody in their districts gives a hoot) Then– Bricklayers Arms suggests anybody who doesn’t agree with the fiscal insanity of financing an obscure support group is a “hater”. How dare we generic white middle class people dare to live, breathe, vote and object to wasted tax dollars! We have “all painted ourselves in a corner”! Horrors! All this coming from the A-list legislator supporters who: 1) can’t get anything through the legislature 2) reflexly call everybody profane names ( teabaggers-eg). So sorry to offend your sensibilities by suggesting that you pitich in and support your own causes rather than denigrating everybody else.
Did not denigrate everyone who doesn’t support “your own causes” as you put it. And don’t think of anyone as a hater. Used the term irrelevant instead. And how I use that term is defining those who consider themselves “normal” are very often the last ones to know they no longer are. And as time goes by, the “new normal” pats them on the head and smiles at them as they fade into obscurity. Do the math and look down the road.