VALLEY PATRIOT EDITORIAL Tea Party
Leaders Defends Gays
Boston News Media
Buries Story
Last month Christine
Morabito, President of the Greater Boston
Tea Party called into WCAP’s Paying
Attention Radio Program (980AM) to talk
about an explosive and divisive issue
facing Tea Parties all over the country:
anti-gay (and some would say homophobic)
voices within the Tea Party itself.
At issue was what Morabito called “anti-gay”
voices that were slated to speak at the
Tea Party rally in Boston on April 15th.
Morabito asked all members of the Greater
Boston Tea Party to boycott that rally
and instead attend the Worcester Tea
Party rally that day.
The issue was so contentious among
individual members of the various Tea
Party groups, that it caused a split
among those who want the Tea Party to
focus on social issues (abortion, gay
marriage, etc.) and those who want to
stay true to the Tea Party mission: lower
taxes, more personal liberty and
shrinking the size of government.
What made this debate within the Tea
Party fascinating is that if you listen
to the news media portrayal of the Tea
Party you might think that they are all a
bunch of racist, gay-hating, religious
kooks.
Yet, here in Massachusetts we had the
head of the largest Tea Party
organization in the state on a live radio
program defending gays from hate and
asking for a boycott. That program aired
on April 14th.
We at the Valley Patriot are still
waiting for the news media to report that
story as we enter the second week of May.
If Christine Morabito had called into a
radio station and said that gays were
“diseased” and could be “cured”,
we are sure that it would have been a
front page headline in many daily papers.
Not so, however, when Ms. Morabito
defended gays against hate.
Here is some of what Morabito said, which
the Boston Globe and the rest of the
media refused to report:
“As far as the gay bashing goes, to
get up there and talk about how gays are
going to hell and gays can be healed;
those things are very hurtful and are
absolutely not issues that should be
talked about at a Tea Party Rally. At the
Tea Party, we have now spent four years
trying to prove that we are not hate
mongers, we are not bigots, we are not
anti-gay, we are not all these negative
things that the news media portrays us to
be. And what is upsetting to me is that
in one felled swoop, this rally happening
in Boston can wipe all that away.”
“So, we’ve had to make it very
clear at the Greater Boston Tea Party
that we are going to be as far away from
that rally as possible. I’m not
saying that the social issues don’t
matter. The social issues matter very
much to many individual members of the
party. But, those are not issues that we
want to be discussing as a Tea Party. Our
main issues are fiscal issues; smaller
government, individual liberty, free
markets, free speech, those issues that
unite people and everyone can agree with.”
“In the Tea Party we are full of
Independents, libertarians, republicans
and we even have recovering Democrats.
Fiscal issues can bring all of us
together. Why would we want to talk about
things that are going to be offensive to
some people and turn people away? We want
to grow our numbers for a goal. That goal
is get people off their couches and stop
throwing things at the TV and get out
there, let their voices be heard…
stand up to politicians who are wasting
our tax dollars and not representing us.”
Asked whether she really considered the
speakers at the Boston Rally to be “gay
bashers” her answer was shocking if
all you only knew about the Tea Party
from what you saw on the news.
“Yes, and it’s been very
disheartening for me to realize that
people I thought were in line with me
politically and socially, are speaking
like this. It’s very hurtful and it
has no place in the Tea Party rally. It
really bothers me. It’s the Language
that they use, some of it is really just
ugly.
Morabito said that one example that has
kicked up what she said were “the
minority of voices in the Tea Party that
are anti-gay” was the very loud
opposition to Republican candidate for
Congress Richard Tisei.
“We have Richard Tisei who is a
fiscal conservative and he is running
against Congressman Tierney, whom Tea
Party members have nothing but for
contempt for. But we have Tea Party
members now coming out against Richard
Tisei saying they are not going to vote
for him. And it’s because Richard is
gay. Well I don’t care if he’s
gay, he is a fiscal conservative. What
good does it do us if we re-elect John
Tierney again? I would rather have
someone who is with me 90% of the time
than a John Tierney. If you can’t
look past this one issue of him being gay
what does that say?”
“If you take the social issues off
the table you realize, we in the Tea
Party will be much more represented by a
Richard Tisei than a John Tierney.”
We at the Valley Patriot couldn’t
agree more with Ms. Morabito on her stand
against homophobes and people who are not
just “anti-gay marriage” but
are outright “anti-gay”. There
is a huge difference no matter how much
the news media wants you to confuse the
two.
What is most distressing is that the
people who decide what stories to
broadcast or publish in the news have a
clear agenda. That agenda is to only
portray the Tea Party as a bunch of
homophobes, racists, and religious kooks.
And while there are individuals who
certainly hate within any group of
people, Christine Morabito took a brave
stand publicly and said “That’s
not what we are all about as a Tea Party.”
And while she was being excoriated by the
gay haters within the various Tea Party
organizations for her public stand, not
one news outlet came to the defense of
gays who were being bashed, because they
didn’t want to give credit to the
head of a Tea Party organization.
This is just one more reason why we
encourage our readers to think for
themselves and question everything you
read and see on the “news”.
Because most often, it isn’t really
“news” at all that you are
consuming.
