McDonnell / Cuccinelli Connection.

10/29/09-by OutVoice virginia_phixr

I have always taken pride in not voting a straight party ticket. As I lean more toward independent that only makes sense. However the ugly and dishonest politics of this year’s Virginia election may change all that. Since the onslaught of election ads it seems the Virginia Republican candidates only say three things, “They Lie”, “they have run a negative campaign” and “They will raise taxes”. Yep the party of no!

These statements of course are in the same ad/speech as the Republican candidates spend even more time and money on negative attacks and lies they themselves say they deplore. Led by ring-leader and top dog of the pack, Bob McDonnell. As a matter of fact, after watching the debates, listening to his speeches and interviews here is what I know about the candidate based on his own statements.

1.) Bob McDonnell is a Catholic.
2.) Bob McDonnell served in the military.
3.) Bob McDonnell has a large and handsome family.
4.) Bob McDonnell has a plan. (for many things, sadly I can not find the details.
5.) Bob McDonnell has a plan to fix the Virginia road/transportation problem without raising taxes. But the only thing I can find shows that he leans toward taking money from education. Already education is suffering in Virginia from budget short falls.
6.) Bob McDonnell will not continue the Executive order protecting GLBT employees against discrimination at the state executive level.
7.) Bob McDonnell says he still supports the writings of his twenty year old thesis. Although he admits some things have changed. Just does not tell us what has changed, his attitudes about working women, gays, feminists, or women in general.

However if we look a bit closer at those Mr. McDonnell supports in this race we start to see another possible Bob McDonnell agenda. Let us start with Ken Cuccinelli, candidate for State Attorney General. Mr. Cuccinelli has already shown his agenda with the following statement which was confirmed by Adam of his campaign office on 10-29-2009, “ “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong,” said Cuccinelli, according to the Virginian-Pilot.

: Image via Wikipedia

“They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.” Adam added, “ Ken is not going to use quotas.“ What is wrong with this picture? Wait let us look a bit deeper.

In his most recent attack/counter attack ad Cuccinelli, addresses an ad from his opponent Steve Shannon. In that ad Shannon’s contention is that Cuccinelli voted against protecting victims of domestic violence and also voted against clergy having to report child molestation. In the recent ad Cuccinelli denies voting against protecting victims of domestic violence, but said nothing about his protection of clergy with regard to reporting child molestation. Cuccinelli’s campaign office also did not deny his vote on clergy and child molestation reporting.

As a recovered Catholic I know all too well the lengths the Catholic Church will go to further the dogma. We all learned that through the Church’s protection of pedophile priests. I have heard McDonnell state on more than one occasion his Catholic roots. We all know how the Catholic Church feels about the GLBT community. Now McDonnell’s favored Attorney General Candidate who is for protecting clergy by not requiring they report child molestation. Not surprising. Does Virginia really want to place a strong religionist in any high government seat? Especially when that religionist is an Attorney General who favors protecting clergy from reporting child molestation? Something really wrong with this picture!!!

In the final debate McDonnell stated his agenda/goals were on growing jobs and making Virginia stronger not the “Narrow social agenda” his candidates accuse is his real goal. But in this bit of news about his favored Attorney General we see a different set of possibilities. Is this injection of Catholicism in the Virginia State Government? And what about child molestation victims in Virginia? If Cuccinelli wins the Attorney General spot how will he protect victims of child molestation by clergy? Or will he protect the clergy? How does this make Virginia stronger Mr. McDonnell? Ask McDonnell, Cuccinelli and yourself these questions and I hope a few more.