This looks eerily familiar to what happened in 2006 during the VA Senate race between Webb and Allen.  Webb had written an article in the late 1970s for the Washingtonian on why women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in military combat roles.  In it he used derogatory terminology, including saying he had never met a woman he “would trust to provide … combat leadership.”  By the way, Webb was serving as a Congressional staffer on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Fast forward to today, and the Washington Post has uncovered a thesis written by McDonnell back in 1989 when he was a graduate student.  This thesis apparently argues that a traditional role for women in the family is better for society.  While I have not read it, I can only assume from my experience in any academic setting that it is likely not derogatory against women in the sense that he probably doesn’t make presumptions about women and their intimate desires for coed military dorms.

Now, let’s compare the opening paragraphs of the two articles written by the Washington Post right after these two written pieces became part of their respective campaigns.  First, the article on Webb’s piece:

RICHMOND, Sept. 13 — Virginia’s U.S. Senate race turned nasty Wednesday as Republican Sen. George Allen launched a character attack on his Democratic opponent’s past views toward women in combat, signaling the start of a two-month barrage of negative campaigning in what has become a close race.

Allen, who is fighting for a second term, organized a news conference with five female U.S. Naval Academy graduates who said an article written 27 years ago by Allen’s opponent, James Webb, prompted harassment by male midshipmen at the academy.

In the Washingtonian magazine article, “Women Can’t Fight,” the ex-Marine Webb wrote of the brutal conditions during the Vietnam War and argued against letting women into combat. Allen’s campaign zeroed in on passages in which Webb described one of the academy’s coed dorms as “a horny woman’s dream” and said that he had never met a woman he “would trust to provide . . . combat leadership.”

Now, a look at the Washington Post’s article on the McDonnell piece:

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families — a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

The article goes on to say how Deeds is standing up for women’s rights against big bad McDonnell.

McDonnell’s opponent, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (Bath), and other Democrats have sought to highlight McDonnell’s conservative record, saying he is obscuring a large part of his background to get elected. Deeds recently spoke to women’s groups about McDonnell’s record on abortion, saying that voters needed to know about his stances.

How noble!  Where was Deeds in 2006 to defend women from Webb’s apparent sexist views?

A couple of other points worth mentioning:

1. When Allen raised Webb’s article, the Washington Post described it as a character attack and the start of negative campaigning.  Fast forward to this past weekend, and the Washington Post frames their article as investigative journalism on McDonnell’s views.  It seems to me that the Washington Post may be starting the negative campaigning and character attacking this time around.
2. Look how the McDonnell article starts.  The journalist masks the date when the thesis was written.  You actually have to do math to figure out McDonnell’s thesis was written in 1989.  However, in the Webb article, the Washington Post gives you the date:  it was 27 years ago!  Also, why does the Washington Post tell you how old McDonnell was when he authored the piece?  Does this imply that, at age 34, McDonnell’s views are set now that he’s in his thirties?  OK…so how old was Webb when he wrote his Washingtonian article?  The Wash Post doesn’t tell us of course…but do a little research and you will find out that Webb was born in 1946…so he was around 32-33 years old too.  So I guess Webb was old enough to “know better” and is probably set in his ways too.
3. One more thing elaborating on the previous point.  The Washington Post frames the time frame of McDonnell’s thesis in terms of McDonnell running for public office, making a clear link between McDonnell’s expressed views and his ability to implement them as a public official.  There is no similar link made in the Webb article…again, it’s described as a “character attack.”

Finally, if the Democrats want to claim McDonnell is sexist and a threat to women’s rights, then maybe they should have been more upset about Webb’s article.  McDonnell was a graduate student in a graduate program; the university setting is a laboratory for ideas and thought experimentation.  I know that I have written many arguments in college that were for the sake of arguing, not always truly believing every thing I argued.  The context of McDonnell’s thesis must be factored in.  On the other hand, Webb was a Congressional staffer on a committee overseeing military veterans when he wrote his article, and the article was intended for public consumption, so he probably really believed what he was writing at the time.  If the Dems have to choose one candidate and one article to be most upset over, maybe they should have chosen Webb’s article back in 2006.

The first issue – school choice – is apparently overwhelmingly supported by DC’s minority residents, most of whom are the beneficiaries of the voucher program Congressional Dems are gutting.  Let’s not also forget about the support of the current and previous mayor and many DC officials.  Today there was a sizeable rally that took place in DC, mostly attended by the minority residents who benefited from the voucher program.  The GOP should have been out there in the midst of this rally, if not leading it.  This is a winning issue for the party to begin to reshape black support for the GOP and call out the painful costs of providing a blank check of support for the Democrats.  Black America supported Democrats overwhelmingly, and they are repaid by cuts to the only program that proved successful and allowed parents to rescue their children from failing schools.  The Dems are essentially imprisoning minority children in a broken school system that severely limits their ability to succeed.

The second issue is gay marriage.  Blacks, by at least a 70-30 percent margin, oppose gay marriage, and many are insulted when advocates attempt to equate the marriage issue to the historic struggle of equal rights for blacks in this country.  The Democrats are clearly the party that is going to allow marriage to be redefined, which will have severe ramifications on our ability to practice our religions freely and hinder our ability to teach our children what marriage actually is.  This, like school choice, directly affects black Christian families.  You could even raise abortion as a similar issue on which the GOP and black America are aligned, which has been responsible for a holocaust inflicted on black America because black children are disproportionately targeted by Planned Parenthood and many more black children are denied a chance at life than white children.

As the Democrats continue to impose their fiscal mismanagement on America, to include cap and trade and other tax hikes on the lower class, I believe the case will become clearer that the Democrats no longer have the best interests at heart for black America.  The GOP must begin to make its case NOW.

Yet you have to be 21 to consume alcohol.

This says a lot about our moral priorities and value system as a society – when we say it’s ok for a teenage minor to make a decision that has real consequences:  consequences for the teenager who may be sacrificing an innocent life without full knowledge of what she is doing, as well as consequences for parents over their ability to raise their children, maintain their children’s health (which parents are responsible for when the child is under 18) and teach their children right from wrong.

I just do not understand the arguments for removing parents from the picture when it comes to abortion and contraception.  So many mistakes could be prevented if parents became more involved in their children’s lives, but the government is working against this process.

This is yet another example of how the government is not the solution – it is, all too often, the problem.

I sense we are facing a turning point in the efforts by some to redefine marriage.  While on the surface it’s tempting to adopt the mentality of “live and let live,” this is a dangerous approach to take because our religious liberties are ultimately at stake.  It’s easy to think that gay marriage activists are simply seeking the right to marry and nothing more.  However, the facts point to their ultimate goal – which is to indoctrinate society and our children that the redefinition of marriage is normal, natural, and acceptable and that opposition to redefining marriage and related religious beliefs are bigoted, discriminatory, and not worthy of tolerance or acceptance.  As someone who would like to have children in the near future, my number one purpose on this earth will be to raise them according to God’s teachings; however, if gay marriage activists have their way, the government will become an indoctrinating force to brainwash our children otherwise, forcing dissenters into silence by shutting them down and forcing them out of business.  This is what ultimately scares me.

States are often the laboratories where policies are tested before they are adopted on a nation-wide scale.  In this case, we can look at Massachusetts as the test case for what will happen should gay marriage become nation-wide.  In the five or so years since gay marriage became law there, Catholic Charities has been forced out of the adoption/foster care service because the government decided they discriminated against gay couples in the adoption process.  Elementary schools are adopting curriculum that includes books about gay parents so that children are indoctrinated early; older grade levels are learning about homosexual relationships as part of their health classes.  Parents are having to file law suits to try to get their children out of these classes or away from these books on moral grounds.  Even in states where gay marriage is not legal, this trend is unfolding – in New Jersey, a Methodist church lost its tax-free status because it refused to allow gay civil union ceremonies on its property.  These are just a few of the examples of what will happen if the government decides to redefine marriage.  Despite what the activists tell you, redefining marriage WILL have an impact on our personal and religious lives, including how we raise our children.

What is happening to our first amendment right to freedom of religion?  What is happening to our right to live by what God has taught us without government interference, particularly when it comes to raising children?  In the case of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts, why is our government shutting down our religious institutions at the expense of poor children who were benefiting from the Catholic Church’s benevolence?  We can’t expect the Church to compromise its values and beliefs at the whim of secular government political-correctness, nor should we compromise our values, roll over, and let the government impose something we don’t want as a society, especially at the expense of our religious freedoms.  And once the government gains the power to discriminate against religious organizations because they don’t fall in line with government definition of marriage, they will likely use this power to suppress religious institutions on other issues, like abortion, and who knows what else awaits down the road.

We’re heading to a new age in America where churches and religiously-affiliated institutions, schools, hospitals, universities, seminaries, etc., will be forced to comply with government-imposed standards on marriage, abortion, and any other immoral standards the government wishes to impose on society.  If they don’t, they will risk losing their tax-exempt status or even their ability to operate in the most needy areas of our society, such as finding homes for orphans, providing health care to the poor, or even operating parochial schools if they don’t adopt the version of morality the government imposes.  Who knows, the government could even go a step further and try to punish the Catholic Church for not allowing women to be priests.  Not to mention that parents are already losing the right to control what their children learn in elementary school about these controversial topics.

The consequences are limitless, and the slope is very slippery.