On February 14th, Loudoun County will be one of over 80 communities across the nation holding a Re-imagining Valentines Day event. Especially after the damage and embarrassment caused to our county by the behavior of the Sterling supervisor, this healing event is very welcome.

National Standing on the Side of Love Day…
…Valentine’s Day Re-imagined

Sunday, February 14th, 2010 will be ‘National Standing on the Side of Love Day.’ Join us and celebrate a Valentine’s Day re-imagined. Love is about more than romance, greeting cards and chocolates. We want to celebrate love’s power to transform communities!

Sunday February 14th, 12:30-2:30 pm
Unitarian Universalists of Sterling, 22135 Davis Drive, Sterling VA

Contact: Rev. Anya Sammler-Michael
703-731-9018 (cell)
minister@uusterling.org

Standing on the Side of Love, Panel and Public Forum

Standing on the Side of Love in Loudoun County Virginia means healing old wounds of oppression and exclusion and building a welcoming community. This event is open to all, especially those who are wondering why some ministers, elected officials, and other community leaders have chosen to speak up for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning citizens and their rights.

Too much of our public discourse is driven not by love but by fear, which often scapegoats particular people and deems them somehow less than human. This forum will invite participants to engage in a civil discussion in the hopes that we will all learn a bit more about what it means to be partners in our shared humanity by moving as a community beyond tolerance toward welcome and acceptance.

This is an opportunity to ask questions of these leaders whose work shapes our Loudoun County:

Stevens Miller (Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Dulles District who recently submitted the successful proposal to amend the county government’s policy on equal employment opportunity, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity), Wendi Manuel-Scott (Professor of African American Studies at George Mason University who recently produced a documentary on the lives of GLBTQ African Americans on Campus), John Stevens (Loudoun County School Board Chair), Joy Cobb (PTA president, and lesbian parent,) and Lori Stevens (president of Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents, and Board member of PFlag.)

Facilitator: Rev. Lisa Kemper, The Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun

Sponsored By: The Standing on the Side of Love Campaign, The Unitarian Universalists of Sterling and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun.

What: Reimagining Valentine’s Day by Standing on the Side of Love, Panel and Public Forum: to heal old wounds of LGBTQ discrimination in Loudoun and to rally support for creating a more welcoming community.

Where: The Unitarian Universalists of Sterling, 22135 Davis Drive, Sterling VA.

When: Sunday February 14th, 2010 / 12:30-2:30.

Contact: Press, RSVP to Rev. Anya Sammler-Michael at 703-731-9018 or minister@uusterling.org

The Standing on the Side of Love campaign, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association, seeks to harness the power of love to stop oppression, exclusion, and violence.

In this Richmond Times-Dispatch guest column, David Lampo explains:

…But Republicans could lose it all again if we let our party go back to the culture wars and religious extremism that some in our party seem to relish. Not only must we resist the divisive urges of the more extreme elements of our party; we need to restore the image of our party to one of social tolerance and support for individual liberty, two of the important values it was built on. Those are the values that helped bring victory to Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown.

One of the ways to do this is to implement a policy of employment nondiscrimination for all government employees, including gays and lesbians. Virginia currently has no statute establishing a statewide policy against discrimination in employment for any public employees. [Emphasis mine.] Former Gov. Linwood Holton extended protection against discrimination to state employees in his Executive Order 1, and near the end of his term, former Gov. Mark Warner became the first governor to amend his Executive Order 1 to include protections for veterans and gays and lesbians.

During his campaign, McDonnell repeatedly stated his opposition to discrimination in state employment, including discrimination based on sexual orientation. An overwhelming majority of voters in Virginia[*] and the nation join McDonnell in his support for equal employment opportunity for all, including gays and lesbians. By supporting legislation that codifies the policy against nondiscrimination in state employment, the legislature would simply be following the lead of voters and the new governor in guaranteeing state employees freedom from discrimination based on race, national origin, sex, disability, age, religion, veteran’s status, and sexual orientation.

* Two statewide polls in 2005 and 2007 conducted by the bi-partisan team of Fabrizio McLaughlin & Associates and The Schapiro found that:

Virginia voters consistently show overwhelmingly strong support for protection against anti-gay workplace discrimination, especially when it comes to the rights of public employees. Strong majorities support gays’ and lesbians’ right to work for the government (90%), to be protected from workplace discrimination (87%), and to teach in public schools (79%). Support is strong across party and demographic lines.

The crosstabs show that 80% of Republicans support workplace nondiscrimination laws, and 88% of Republicans support the right of gay and lesbian people to work for the government.

The bill is being heard today at 2:00 pm in the Senate General Laws committee. Please call your Senator and ask that they support this bill. Senator Mark Herring’s number is (804) 698-7533.

What did he say?

Sounds like members of the County Board- and others in our community- have taken umbrage at one Supervisor’s comments during the recent work on the nondiscrimination policy regarding sexual orientation. Sterling representative Eugene Delgaudio riled up his colleagues- and other folks as well- especially when he sent out an email on the issue- choosing to use the word ‘it’ to denote a person who wears clothing usually worn by one of the opposite sex.

He read from a prepared statement at this past week’s meeting- ostensible as an apology; some would say he’s still on the offensive.

Multiple County Board Members chastised Delgaudio from the dais on this subject; not sure what effect it’ll have.

But the reference by an elected leader to one of his potential constituents as ‘it’ does have some disturbing connotations.

Didn’t some nut with a mustache over in Germany- several decades ago- start considering human some beings as less deserving to live than others- and start a whole wave of violence that took the rest of the world to put a stop to?

Now, I’m not making a literal comparison, but hatred is hatred, and an attack is an attack.

And Allies are still Allies, God bless us

God Bless you, Tim Jon.

Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling), a longtime opponent of gay rights, is coming under increased criticism for recent comments viewed as homophobic and embarrassing to the community.

At a Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday, five of his board counterparts used personal time to chastise the Sterling supervisor for anti-gay comments

Actually, mere “anti-gay comments” from this person don’t elicit much response from his colleagues beyond a dismissive glance anymore. What they found unacceptable was his reference, in writing, to other human beings as “it.”

McGimsey said: “I think that the actions and words of Mr. Delgaudio prove why we needed to institute the policy that we did the other day. There’s clearly some people who need those kinds of policies in place.”

She said she believed his language was dangerous.

Yes. Designating a group of people as less than human has never led to anything positive in human history, has it? These supervisors are taking Mr. Delgaudio’s transgression seriously for very good reason.

When I was asked for my opinion of Mr. Delgaudio’s behavior, I said that I thought there were two possibilities: Either his actions are calculated and deliberate, or he is mentally unstable and losing control of himself, and that it’s hard at this point to tell which it is. Evidently, the reporter asked him about this.

In an interview, Delgaudio said he was in full control of his actions. “I do everything I do on purpose,” he said.

While mentally unstable people may also believe that they are in full control of their actions, we have here a pretty clear statement that he thinks that what he did - naming a group of people in our community as less than human, and inviting others to have disregard for their lives - was done in a purposeful and calculated way.

Not only that, I’ve also been told that Mr. Delgaudio is bragging that he’s raised “thousands of dollars” from this activity, fundraising for his family business. What we are seeing here is the behavior of a pathologically amoral person, a person who would generate personal income from the incitement of hatred, and potentially violence, against a population that is already targeted by hate violence at a sickening rate.

As cowardly as Mr. Delgaudio may be, at least he is not using the shield of anonymous internet identities to hide his name and face. That is not the case for some of his defenders. The presence of such people in our community, emboldened by words calculated to normalize their fear, ignorance and rage, is eloquent proof of the need for specific protections for transgender people.

There are also bloggers and commenters who, in their effort to control damage to the Republican brand, are failing to understand their own responsibility to the community. Understandably, they just want Mr. Delgaudio to shut up, and are currently engaged in Clintonesque exercises in parsing what the meaning of “it” is, endless spin accusing the other supervisors of “grandstanding,” and generally trying to minimize Mr. Delgaudio’s unacceptable “it” statement by categorizing it with the rest of his repugnant history. Like Mr. Delgaudio’s insulting “apology,” this is prevarication. Amidst all the noise, the silence is deafening.

This is non-negotiable. If you do not understand why it is unacceptable under any circumstances to refer to other human beings as “it,” if you do not understand the meaning of such sentiments in human history, then you do not understand anything of moral behavior. In the absence of such understanding, your claims that you are “not for discrimination for any reason” are hollow and meaningless.

With all due respect, please drop the partisan hat for five minutes and make a statement simply as a decent member of the human family. Conscience demands it.

I hope you will take a minute to let these supervisors know what it means to you to have them speak up for those who were verbally attacked in such a horrible, dehumanizing way by Mr. Delgaudio, and do not have the privilege, as Mr. Miller said, of turning on a microphone in the boardroom to respond. You can find contact information at the end of this post.

More background on this January 20 meeting is here.
For full coverage of this transgression by a sitting elected official, look here.

Read complete coverage of Eugene’s latest Big Adventure here.

We already posted video of Mr. Delgaudio’s shameful remarks at the January 5 board meeting, during which he and his ally Supervisor Waters carried on for nearly 40 minutes about what should have been a completely non-controversial matter. The Loudoun Times-Mirror described his performance as “sustained and unrestrained demagoguery targeting human beings.” In making what the Independent called “borderline-incomprehensible arguments,” Mr. Delgaudio repeatedly used epithets like “men in dresses,” “freaks,” “fruity,” and “bizarre.”

Those of us who have been exposed to Mr. Delgaudio for some time found this language unremarkable, which is a sad commentary in and of itself. But then he did something else. He sent an email to residents of the Sterling District and the local media that contained this sentence:

The board voted six yes, Waters and Delgaudio “no”, with York abstaining, to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the hiring of employees which means if a man dressed as woman wants a job, you have to treat “it” the same as a normal person. [Emphasis mine, but “scare quotes” in original.]

It is standard operating procedure for Mr. Delgaudio to make offensive, dehumanizing statements about the people he doesn’t like. However, those who received this particular statement recognized that a new and unacceptable line had been crossed. When he was asked by reporters to explain his use of the word it, he said that it was “hyperbole,” and that he would “make no apologies.”

So: As of early last week, Mr. Delgaudio was confirming that yes, he did refer to a hypothetical person as “it,” and that this was “hyperbole.”

Although Mr. Delgaudio forwarded his January 6 email to the local media, he had not shown his colleagues on the board the courtesy of sharing it with them. They have seen it now. Over the weekend, I learned that Sally Kurtz (Catoctin) had a long conversation with him during which he agreed to issue a public apology.

Then, on the evening of January 17, Mr. Delgaudio issued a hasty email revision with the parenthetical “this will make my intent clear.” Not a retraction, not an apology, but a revision, claiming to have said something other than what he actually said.

In his comments during this morning’s board meeting, he repeated that claim, “correcting” his statement to read “..which means if a man dressed as woman wants a job, you have to treat “it” the hiring of this man the same as a normal person a man who wears normal clothing.”

This illustrates the “liar” and “most pitiable sort of coward” part. Stevens Miller (Dulles) nailed it perfectly in his board comment; “The ’scare quotes’ tell the story,” and the attempted revision is “an insult to every man, woman and child who can read the English language.”

An actual apology for what Mr. Delgaudio did, if there were one, might look something like this:

I sincerely apologize for the words I used in my email to my constituents and to the media. Referring to other human beings as “it,” suggesting that they are less than human, is something no one should ever do, least of all an elected official. I deeply regret that, in my frustration over a policy disagreement, I resorted to saying such a horrible thing.

I now realize that my choice of this language was the product of my own very wrong thinking. I confess that I know next to nothing about the people to whom I was referring, and I promise to seek education about what it means for a person to be transgender. Even if I still disagree with the choices some members of this community make, that disagreement will be formed on the basis of factual information.

That would require Mr. Delgaudio to understand that he was wrong, something he appears incapable of doing. All that he understands is that he crossed a line and it got him in trouble. Like a small child caught in a transgression, he is trying to lie his way out of taking responsibility and admitting his wrongdoing. The pathos of watching a grown man behave this way is difficult to describe.

Beyond that, I think we may err in assuming that Mr. Delgaudio’s behavior is calculated, and not the product of emotional instability. He does like to perform for the camera and paint himself as the victim - we expect to shortly receive a third email in which he expresses his outrage at the way he was treated (”stomped on”) at today’s meeting, and he was nearly in tears at the observation that he lied about the intent of his statement - but I’m no longer so confident that he is in control of himself and that this is all an act.

His failure to realize that referring to other members of the community as “it” would be shocking and unacceptable, his failure to realize that there is a qualitative difference between mere “hyperbolic” name-calling and stating outright that some members of the community are less than human - these indicate to me a person who is not firmly in touch with reality. Likewise this statement from the second email, just one of the truly odd pronouncements made by Mr. Delgaudio about this topic: “I am not against Dustin Hoffman dressing up as Tootsie in the movie by the same name. But if we allow Loudoun County to hire men who wear dresses, we may someday require men to wear dresses.”

Does he believe that this statement might be true? Does he believe that the recipients of his message might believe this statement to be true? Does he just want this quote to appear in print? I don’t know, but none of those explanations say “mental stability” to me, and I can’t come up with any others. Maybe you can.

Most of the other supervisors commented eloquently on their disgust with Mr. Delgaudio’s behavior. He had a genuine tantrum when he wasn’t given the floor to “respond,” and continue talking about the issue - most of his colleagues felt that he had already had ample opportunity to make his views known - and he wouldn’t stop interrupting and shouting over the chairman. I feared at one point that he would have to be removed from the board room. The video will be posted when it becomes available - must see to appreciate, not just for Mr. Delgaudio’s otherwise hard-to-believe outburst, but to see Supervisors Burton, Kurtz, McGimsey, Burk and Miller draw a badly needed line and stand up for decency. Enough is enough.

Here you can clearly see who was grandstanding and wasting board time, trying to make a matter of simple workplace fairness - codifying what the county already does, and making clear to potential hires that Loudoun has an inclusive policy - into a divisive, partisan issue. This is an exercise in creating a controversy where none exists. Plus, they invoke the insufferably silly “bathroom” argument.

Leniency has been granted to Delgaudio in the past for what has been described loosely as “clownish” behavior. We often hear, “Oh, that’s just Eugene.”

Not by us. Not this time. It’s time to say, “Enough.” We cringe in embarrassment for the image of Loudoun in 2010 that this projects to the outside world.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13 2010

Advocacy group Equality Loudoun this week denounced Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio’s reaction to the addition of an equal opportunity amendment to the county’s policy handbook, extending employment rights to gay, lesbian and transgender residents.

This sort of language is easy shorthand, but misleading. Nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and gender identity protects everyone from discrimination - because everyone has a sexual orientation and a gender identity. The county can’t fire you for being straight, either.

During discussions over the addition in a Jan. 5 board meeting, Delgaudio (R-Sterling) called the plan “freaky, bizarre and fruity.”

He also used the word “it” during the meeting and in his electronic newsletter to describe transgender individuals.

“Mr. Delgaudio is stating that if a person does not conform to conventional expectations for the gender they were assigned at birth, they are not fully human,” said David Weintraub, president of Equality Loudoun in an statement e-mailed to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Weintraub said the supervisor’s “dehumanizing name-calling” during the Jan. 5 board meeting “was a step beyond shameful.” And the language Delgaudio used in his electronic newsletter “makes him unfit for office,” Weintraub said.

In his newsletter Delgaudio wrote: “The board votes six yes, Waters and Delgaudio ‘no,’ with York abstaining, to add ’sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ to the hiring of employees which means if a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat ‘it’ the same as a normal person.” [Emphasis mine.]

“He directly and intentionally says what he only implied during the meeting – that he thinks transgender people are less than human, and that non-humans are not entitled to human rights,” Weintraub said.

Delgaudio said he stands by the statement he made in the Jan. 5 meeting when he referred to the amendment as “freaky, bizarre and fruity.”

The language, he said, was aimed at what he described as a militant group of individuals.

“It’s freaky because most don’t think about homosexuals,” Delgaudio said. “It’s bizarre because they want us to think about homosexuals.”

Delgaudio called Supervisor Stevens Miller (D-Dulles) fruity for pitching the amendment during the first meeting of the year.

The supervisor said the word “it” was used as a hyperbole during the meeting as a way to hammer home his point in the short amount of time board members have to speak on issues from the dais.

“There’s a license within those three minutes,” he said.

Here we see some backpedaling.

In fact, Mr. Delgaudio did not use the word “it” in his board meeting comments. He said a lot of offensive and outrageous things, but he did not call anyone “it.” That he did in his “Dear Sterling American” email, which he then forwarded to local media (although not to his board colleagues). There is no “three minute” excuse for the very intentional statement he made in writing that he considers transgender people to be not really human. There is no other meaning that calling a person “it” can have, and he knows this very well.

Mr. Delgaudio is surprised to find that he has crossed a line of conduct that is utterly unacceptable. He is now trying to shift the focus to the merely offensive name-calling he engaged in at the meeting, by pretending that there is no difference between the two. There is.

Delgaudio said he makes no apologies for his reaction.

“I take on special interest groups, whether it’s the Republican Party, the Chamber of Commerce or Equality Loudoun,” he said. “I will not back down. I serve the residents of Sterling.”