var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};
A Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress is under fire today after a video surfaced showing him opposing a bill that to make it illegal for a person to rape their spouse. It’s not just that Virginia state Senator Richard H. “Dick” Black was against the bill, but — just like Todd Akin — it’s his comments that have many up in arms.
“I do not know,” Black said in an ad made from a 2002 Virginia House debate, “how on earth you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth…”
Citing state police statistics, the ad at the end notes that between 2002 and 2010, “there have been more than 800 reported victims of spousal rape in Virginia.”
Black, who is 69, despite the video (below), won his 2011 election for the Virginia Senate, having served previously in the Virginia House of Delegates.
Now, just two years after taking office, Sen. Black wants to become a U.S. Congressman. And given Virginia’s recent history of electing anti-gay, anti-women Republican politicians like Governor Bob McDonnell (Gov. Ultrasound, as Rachel Maddow called him) and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Black may have a good chance of going to Washington.
In fact, here’s Black with Ken Cuccinelli:
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
Â
Noting that Black “commands substantial support among the conservative grassroots,” Mother Jones reports today that he “has referred to emergency contraception, which does not cause abortions, as ‘baby pesticide.‘ Black also fought to block a statue of Abraham Lincoln at a former Confederate site in Richmond. He wasn’t sure, he explained at the time, that statues of Lincoln belonged in Virginia. He has argued that abortion is a worse evil than slavery. And once, to demonstrate why libraries should block pornography on their computers, Black invited a TV reporter to film him using a library terminal to watch violent rape porn.”
A former military prosecutor, Black “spoke frequently to media outlets about sexual assault in the military,” Mother Jones adds, “and called military rape ‘as predictable as human nature.'”
“Think of yourself at 25,” Black told a newspaper in 1996. “Wouldn’t you love to have a group of 19-year-old girls under your control, day in, day out?”
Talk about disrespecting the honor of U.S. military forces.
Black also blamed the “counterculture revolution of the ’70s” for “the war into the classroom” which, he claims, “began this thing we’ve seen play out at Columbine” — referring to the infamous 1999 high school massacre that left 12 students and one teacher dead and another 24 injured. Black’s solution? Mother Jones writes that Black “suggest[ed] legislation requiring Virginia students to address their teachers as ‘Ma’am,’ ‘Sir,’ ‘Mr.,’ ‘Ms.,’ or ‘Mrs.'”
Of course, Black, a Loudon County Virginia Republican, is virulently anti-abortion:
For two years in a row, Black introduced legislation requiring women younger than 18 to provide a notarized note from a parent before having an abortion. To justify the bill, he said abortion was a greater evil than segregation or slavery. In 2005, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, he promoted a bill that would have required abortion providers to tell women that a fetus being aborted 20 weeks after conception may be able to feel pain, a medically unsupported claim. Black sent senators plastic figures of fetuses with a letter asking, “Would you kill this child?” as a Senate committee prepared to vote on the bill.
But being anti-gay is definitely among Senator Black’s greatest achievements.
Sen. Black, according to Mother Jones, “was at his most virulent when targeting Virginia’s same-sex couples. He championed legislation to ban same-sex couples from adopting children, claiming that gay men and women are more prone to violence, alcoholism, and suicide.”
In 2003, Black tried to pass legislation preventing same-sex couples to apply for low-interest home loans from the Virginia Housing and Development Authority. The current policy, he explained, “subsidize[s] sodomy and adultery.” Black even, in 2005, urged his constituents to picket a local high school that had staged a student’s one-act play about a gay high school football player. Portraying same-sex relationships in “a cute or favorable light,” he contended,put children at risk of contracting HIV. “If I’m the last person on the face of this Earth to vote against legalizing sodomy,” Black once said, “I’ll do it.”
We’ll take him at his word. So should Virginia voters.
//www.youtube.com/embed/lvRb4NtrRVQ
Image via Frank Black’s Facebook page
Hat tip: The Raw Story