It's no secret that the gay community isn't high on Michele Bachmann's list of priorities as a potential candidate for President, especially if you've been following the rash of suicides in Bachmann's own school district, which Bachmann has utterly failed to respond to in word or deed. But Bachmann's lack of support for our community hasn't been a major point of criticism of her in the recent string of GOP debates and press coverage -- until now.
While holding a campaign stop at a small town in Iowa, Bachmann was fielding questions from her audience when three GSA members from a local high school asked “What would you do to help protect GSAs in high schools and support the LGBT community?”
Bachmann's basic answers is, while baffling, pretty par for the course: to sidestep the question by explaining that LGBT people don't need any support! Specifically, she says that “As Americans we all have the same civil rights... That’s really what government’s roll is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn’t be any special rights or special set of criteria based on people preferences. We all have the same civil rights.”
When confronted with the fact that we in fact have very different civil rights, as is evidenced by the fact that straight people can marry and gay people cannot, Bachmann a) demonstrates that she is unaware of the fact that same-sex marriage actually is legal in Iowa, when she b) explains that gay people can't get married not because they're second class citizens, but just because it's illegal. You know, like jaywalking, or driving with bare feet in the state of Massachusetts. After all, straight people can't marry someone of the same sex either! We're all in the same boat on that one!
Michele Bachmann isn't unique in the GOP or in the world in her beliefs about gay people and their "special rights," but she's pretty much on the bottom rung in terms of being able to explain or defend them. It's telling that the students who are more or less the exact same age as the ones facing bullying and the suicide of their peers in Bachmann's own school district are the ones who get that two groups with different rights aren't "equal;" in 2011, shouldn't any Presidential contender understand that too?
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