Branstad and gays: well, er, uh, but, yes, no, maybe
Terry Branstad wants to make one thing perfectly clear.
“Well, I don’t think people should be discriminated against.”
What about gays?
“I don’t have a problem with people that want to live together and raise a child and things like that.”
So then the former governor who wants his old job back has no problem with gay marriage?
Not so fast... That would be the end of society as we know it. “Well, it’s got to do with the whole structure of the American society. And, uh, a lot of people say when other ancient societies have gone this direction, it was the beginning of the end of their society. Because, the building blocks of really having stable culture is really having one man, one woman marriage.”
That’s from an incredible interview a couple of weeks ago with Todd Dorman of The Cedar Rapids Gazette. Dorman didn’t ask him who these “a lot of people” are or what “other ancient societies” crumbled because of gay marriage, nor did he ask if The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Norway, Sweden and South Africa — not to mention Iowa — are already crumbling because of their gay-marriage laws. But he did show that the former governor simply can’t deal with the issue.
Branstad entered the primary with the hope of avoiding the issue — “people know where I stand on cultural issues,” he told a guy last summer — and campaigning on the economy. But he hasn’t been able to avoid it, and if he loses the June 10 gubernatorial primary to Bob Vander Plaats, that’s the issue that will beat him. Vander Plaats is clear where he stands — as governor, he would sign an executive order overruling the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision, even though he would have no power to do that — and his supporters are now saying they’ll stay in their heterosexual homes on Election Day if Branstad is the nominee. In other words, these folks would rather have Chet Culver than Terry Branstad as their governor.
Go figure.
[This just in: The folks who are left in the Register’s newsroom expect Bill Theobold, a reporter in Gannett’s Washington bureau, to be named to succeed John Carlson as the Iowa columnist. Theobald once worked at the Quad City Times.]
[This also just in. An Iowa Poll this week says more Iowans want legislative action on puppy mills (38 percent) than on gay marriage (36 percent). That’s bad news for the Republicans, good news for cats.]
Back to Branstad. In his rambling interview with Dorman, the former governor also threw his former secretary under the bus by discussing her family situation. “In fact, Grace Copley, who was my clerk for years, or my secretary when I was lieutenant governor and governor, she has a son who’s gay, and he and his friend have adopted children and are raising the children. And Grace is a very conservative religious woman. It was a very difficult thing for her to deal with when this became the situation. But they did. And she still is not someone who is supportive of gay marriage, but she’s certainly supportive of her children and grandchildren.”
Up to a point, of course.
If Copley’s grandchildren live in Iowa, they are among the 1,500 or so children being raised in households headed by some of the 5,800 same-sex couples in the state, according to a 2007 study by the UCLA School of Law. But Branstad doesn’t hold out much hope for those children.
“Children who grow up in a stable relationship where they have both a father and a mother are more likely to succeed, not to say single parents can’t raise children that end up being successful, but the, if you look at anything, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, just about any factor, drug abuse whatever, is less likely to occur if you have a stable, what we call normal home situation where you have a father and a mother to nurture the children.”
Too bad about those grandkids, Grace.
But there’s hope. As a sign in a shop window in New York says, “Jesus had two daddies.”
A guy who knows his way around Republican politics says Branstad should just shut up about the issue. He should say he favors a Constitutional amendment that the people can vote on — that will never happen, of course — and get on to the economy, this guy says. In fact, the economy is working in Branstad’s favor, if you consider bad economic news good political news.
Little-noted figures released by the state last week put net receipts in January down 20.3 percent from a year before, a huge drop that just adds to the election-year woes of Culver. While a piece of that was due to timing of receipts, the drop was real and significant. Tax receipts from corporations dropped 50.7 percent in the month. Everything but the beer-tax receipts and money from fines dropped in January, so the state is still a long way from recovering. Through the first seven months of the fiscal year that ends June 30, the state’s net receipts are down 7.5 percent — $257 million — from a year before. So Culver’s budget for next year looks shaky at best. Add to that the fact that the savings from Culver’s reorganization plan will be but a fraction of the hoped-for number. Then throw in the fact that 40,000 fewer Iowans have jobs right now than had jobs a year ago. All that means Branstad can play offense and Culver will be on the defensive come November — assuming, of course, that Branstad beats Vander Plaats, which Skinny thinks will happen.
On the other hand, maybe Branstad should keep quiet about the economy, too. He told Dorman he’d “roll back” Medicaid, “which has been expanded to cover more people, including children.” And he “questioned why the state has expanded its public school responsibilities to include early childhood education.”
Which prompted Dorman to write: “Cutting Medicaid for kids and preschool programs is not where I’d start trimming government, but what do I know?”
More than Branstad, clearly. CV
