Whose Values? Lefty PAC Fights for Families
The
Hook, January 13, 2005
Charlottesville, VA
By Courteney Stuart Stuart@Readthehook.Com
Techno-whiz, one-time Democratic city council candidate,
and new Virginia Tech alum Waldo Jaquith is back in town, and mere weeks after
his college graduation he’s already ruffling feathers. This time, it’s
through a new group he’s formed called Virginia Family Values.
Has the left-leaning activist had a change of heart? Will
he soon appear on the 700 Club? Can a super-poof hairdo be far behind?
Well, not quite.
The new group is a political action committee (PAC) that
wants to redefine the term “family values” and retire what it sees as four
of the Commonwealth’s most “egregious” legislative offenders: Bob
Marshall (R-Loudoun/Prince Marshall), Dave Albo (R-Springfield), Dick Black
(R-Loudoun), and Bob McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach), several of whom have used
the “family values” term as a foundation of their own campaigns.
Jaquith (whose mother is an occasional Hook essayist)
says the four are notable for their desire to prevent easy access to birth
control and to thwart freedom of sexual expression between consenting adults.
“Every time that these legislators have been given the
choice between family values and bigger government, they’ve chosen wrong,”
says Jaquith. “They’re way out of touch with Virginia values, and we
intend to show them the door.” His PAC’s website, vafamilyvalues.org,
leaves the gloves at that door by ranking the legislators by “assininity”
and dubbing them all “grade-A nutcases.”
Bob Marshall, top of the list, is given the title
“unofficial fruitcake-in-chief of the loonies,” in part for his role two
years ago in pressuring James Madison University to stop offering emergency
contraceptive to its students. Marshall did not return the Hook’s call by
presstime.
Dave Albo comes next, and the accusations seem borrowed
straight from talk radio. “Dave Albo is—and there’s no other way to put
this—pro-pedophelia,” the site proclaims. “How else to explain his bill
to reduce child rape from a felony to a misdemeanor? Or his bill to carve out
a statutory rape exception for prison guards who have sex with 13-year-olds in
juvenile hall?”
Told of the group and its website by a reporter, Delegate
Albo expressed shock that he’d be included.
“It’s so outrageously ridiculous,” says Albo, who
says he was aware of criticisms about his massive crime overhaul, HB 1053 but
says the bill was reviewed extensively by attorneys at the Crime Commission,
the Attorney General’s office, Legislative Services, and in the Courts of
Justice Committee.
“Not a single one could figure out what they [critics]
were talking about,” Albo insists.
Further, Albo’s bill would retire Virginia’s
so-called “fornication” statute which has long criminalized non-marital
sex. And Albo says he voted in support of the “morning after” pill.
“Either they’re confused,” says Albo, “or
they’re really just a front for a Democrat political action committee.”
After noticing a large photo of Greg Werkheiser, his future Democratic
opponent in the 42nd-district on the site, Albo says he believes it’s the
latter.
Of Delegate Dick Black, Jaquith’s PAC is no less harsh:
“Dick Black is a conflicted man. On the one hand, he’s a self-described
‘pornography expert.’ On the other, he’s opposed to every form of birth
control, saying that anything with human DNA that can move around is a human.
Does he love sex, or loathe it? Probably both,” says the site, going on to
mention Black’s 2003 mailing of pink plastic fetuses to members of the
Virginia Senate.
Black stands behind his positions and his actions, and
criticizes the group.
“Essentially they are a homosexual and abortion group
that are trying to use a deceptive title,” he says. “The problem with
liberalism is that it rests on a foundation of sand,” he adds. “Liberals
are constantly running away from who they are. They don’t want to say that
they are for unnatural sex acts and the killing of children; they want to say
they’re for family values. I have no problem with someone who says what they
stand for.”
Delegate Bob McDonnell, who in 2003 stated his belief
that anyone who had engaged in oral or anal sex should not serve as a judge,
rounds out the hit list for his response to a reporter asking whether he had
ever engaged in such acts. “Not that I can recall,” was his reply.
“Confidential to McDonnell,” states the site,
“either you’re a liar, or you’re really, really pathetic.”
McDonnell did not return the Hook’s call by presstime.
Local registered Republican and self-defined libertarian
Richard Sincere agrees with the ideas behind Virginia Family Values, but
questions some of their methods. Sincere calls Marshall’s and Black’s
“obsession with sex” an embarrassment to the Republican party. But Albo,
he says, doesn’t belong in this group.
“If you talk to anybody in Log Cabin Republicans,”
says Sincere, of a well-known gay G.O.P. group, “they’ve had differences
with Albo, but not to the extent that they would agree with this kind of
targeting.”
McDonnell, a potential attorney general contender who
Jaquith’s group attacks for his hardline stance on sodomy, is also less
egregious than Marshall and Black, says Sincere, since he dropped his
no-sodomy stance after the Lawrence
v. Texas case in 2004 [June 26, 2003 -Bob] made it unconstitutional to
ban such acts.
Regardless of Sincere’s opinions, Jaquith stands behind
his group’s message and its decision to target the four. “I hope to help
them out to pasture,” he says.
Waldo Jaquith plays hardball with political
intercourse.
File Photo By Jen Fariello
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