Posted on 01/09/2005 12:26:23 PM PST by pabianice
‘Cesspool’ apparently loses its attraction
WORCESTER, MA -- As she prepares to flee our Bay State “cesspool” for the moral purity of southern climes, Laurie A. Letourneau has clearly underestimated her impact on Central Massachusetts.
“I don’t mean to be facetious,” said the head of the Life Action League of Massachusetts, when I called to ask about her moving plans. “But who really cares?”
Laurie, Laurie. Lots of people care that you’re leaving the homo-loving, queer-kissing, Satanic sandpit that is Massachusetts. Just one question, though — can you take Ron Crews with you?
“She’s leaving?” asked an ebullient Al Toney of Holden, who, like most self-respecting gay men, is adept at delivering the socially appropriate response to any occasion. “We need to throw a party right away.”
Unlike the Baldwin brothers, who threaten to flee the country every time a Bush is elected president, Ms. Letourneau is making good on her vow to leave Massachusetts now that her worst nightmare has come to pass: Men and women of the same sex can legally sanctify their union. As a member of the strange crowd that claims to have nothing against gay people but that devotes a disproportionate amount of time and energy to ensuring that gays remain second-class citizens, Ms. Letourneau said she decided on Nov. 18, 2003 — the day the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage — that she had had it with her home state.
“I’ve celebrated my last Christmas here,” she told me last week. “This place is a cesspool. It’s pathetic. We have an ineffective Church and a bunch of wimps in the Legislature.”
The moral decay oozing along the Eastern Seaboard has long been a concern of this ultraconservative Catholic and self-appointed savior of Central Massachusetts. A decade ago, while dubbing herself “the conscience” of the Shrewsbury School Committee, she resigned her contentious post on that board after concluding that the school system was “too morally bankrupt” for her delicate sensibilities. (The year before, she pulled her then-teenage son from the public schools, saying she was troubled by an atmosphere that included smoke-filled bathrooms and bad language in the hallways). After that, she became chairwoman of Central Massachusetts Citizens for Life and spent much time harassing — I mean picketing — the offices of Planned Parenthood.
While the anti-abortion movement managed to consume her energies for years, her religious zealotry blossomed into full flower when the gay marriage issue arose here. She swung into action by starting a petition to ban such unions, then in 2001 formed the Life Action League of Massachusetts to address what she called “family-related issues,” but which seemed to consist in its entirety of fretting about the gay people.
“I don’t care if someone is homosexual,” she told me last week, while in her soon-to-be home state of Virginia to attend the wedding of her only son. “But I don’t want the marriage issue in my face. There are many homosexuals who mind their own business.” (And apparently not enough heterosexuals who do likewise.)
Just like during the civil rights movement, when you had your “uppity Negroes” who had the temerity to struggle for equal rights, Ms. Letourneau apparently has nothing against people she has dubbed “deviant” as long as they know their place. In her November newsletter, for example, she railed against the male administrator of a local Catholic college who had the gall to take advantage of the SJC ruling and marry his longtime partner this summer in a private ceremony on his deck.
“As far as I know, this man is still working there, and as usual the silence from the Church is deafening,” Ms. Letourneau fumed. “Why is this college … still allowed to call itself Catholic? Truly an abomination!”
When protesting the gay marriage amendment at the Statehouse in March, she compared gay lifestyles to those of drug addicts and alcoholics and said they should be discouraged and not endorsed by the state. Reacting to news last week of the inevitable first gay divorces in Worcester County, she told Worcester Magazine that they simply vindicate her views that gay people weren’t really interested in getting married — a feeling apparently shared by more than half of our heterosexual population, including Ms. Letourneau’s parents, who divorced when she was a child.
While she retains a rather perverse political charisma, it’s typically overshadowed by her perpetual anger, condemnation of anyone who doesn’t share her views, and insistence on being the sort of narrow-minded Catholic who gives Christians a bad name. In an online newsletter, she called U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, “evil” for his support of a woman’s right to choose. When Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun died in 1999, she expressed hope that God would “judge his actions harshly.” In 2000, she demanded that state Rep. Robert P. Spellane, D-Worcester, be ejected from the parish council at Christ the King Church because he’s pro-choice and said she was “disgusted” with the pastor who resisted her pressure.
And in April, when City Clerk David Rushford said he planned to issue same-sex marriage licenses to out-of-state couples, she called his actions “despicable” and said he belongs in jail.
“I’m very happy that Ms. Letourneau has decided to jump ship,” Mr. Rushford said calmly last week, from his office at City Hall. “But I don’t know if Virginia is quite enough of a backwater state that she’ll be comfortable spewing her venom. And maybe she’s mixed up between VA for Virginia and VA for the Vatican.”
Ms. Letourneau said she and her husband chose Virginia because her son lives there, because a gay marriage amendment is unlikely to pass in that state, and because “I want to live in an area where 68 percent of people voted for my hero, George Bush.” She said she hopes to move next month and will miss the people and her parish, but not — and I paraphrase here — the endless legions of degenerates and moral defectives who are tragically allowed to sniff the same rarified air that she does.
“I don’t care if people hate me,” she said, which is likely a good thing. Because if Virginia is for lovers, it had better have lots of room for haters from now on.
Godspeed, Ms. Letourneau. The media will miss you, but don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Contact Dianne Williamson via e-mail at dwilliamson@telegram.com.
Now all that is needed is large tsumanis to hit the coasts of MA and western WA, who shares the same views as MA liberal leftists demoncRATS, religiously and politically. Wonder how many "Oh God!" will be yelled by these self-righteous, sinful santimonious fools as they drown by the wrath of God?
There must be rejoicing among the legions of degenerates and moral defectives in that God-forsaken state. Lots of white wine, brie and gerbils tonight...
"Just like during the civil rights movement, when you had your “uppity Negroes” who had the temerity to struggle for equal rights"
yeah, right. Just like that. Sitting at the back of the bus, drinking from the homosexual water fountain -- yeah, life is terrible for them.
Why can't anyone separate equal rights from "special" rights???? so frustrating.
None. They'll just blame it all on "global warming" and blame the "imperialist Americans."
There's just no getting through to those people. They're lost souls.
I hope that the 2,372,057 people in those states who voted for "W" move inland before that happens.
C'mon, will ya! At least gimmee a chance to sell my place on the Cape first.
He forgot Christian-bashing, girlfriend-drowning, abortion-loving, sodomizing.
Just mASSholes being mAssholes. Notice that Mass is the ONLY state to have net negative population growth. I just wish the fugitive liberals would move straight EAST and not North.
Obviously the implications of Letourneau's move Southward is lost on blue Massachusett liberals, but then liberals are known more for their feelings than their logic.
Letourneau is one person who is fed up with the liberal Northeastern lifestyle, and is voting with her feet. If there are others who have already left, or are planning to leave, then the South, and the country as a whole, becomes that much more red.
The author didn't miss a trick stereotype either. Every sentence is a wingnut soundbyte. Stringing a bunch of rhetoric bytes together to form a propaganda piece isn't original either.
The left wing has NO creativity at all anymore. Since they are so helpless and reliant on the gubmint to take care of their needs and CNN to think for them, the right hemispheres of their brains wither and die from lack of use.
You mean their "feeling" singular. The only emotion I've observed from the left in years is hate.
Clearly, this hate screed proves that Liberals today make far better haters than the conservatives they oppose.
the hate drips from every word.
I'd say they may have been afraid of this woman.
As an ex-Yankee and naturalized Southerner, I shall presume to speak for my neighbors and say "We of the South welcome her."
Barf alert.
There's so much BS in the article its hard to choose a place to start.
If you want on/off the list let me know.
Above quote from article, speaks volumes. Yes, all of us who support the Word of Christ are self-appointed -- NOT. God chose us to fight for what we know to be His TRUTH. The vehement untruths in this article showcase the very real battle that Christians face on a daily basis in the world. Christ was an ultraconservative in speaking to us about sin, hatred, right vs. wrong, and eternal salvation for those who still seek Him. It is a badge of courage for those who are attacked in defending the principles delineated in the Bible.
"I paraphrase here"? Why not just use the actual quote? Not incendiary enough for you to justify the invective?
I am an "uppity Negro" myself, being a black conservative. I am entitled to equal rights, and insist on those. In fact, because of race-based preferences that Massachusetts-types adore, I have more rights than I should have; I don't insist on them.
I also know where my rights end -- I don't have the legal right to marry anyone I choose (if it is not an adult woman) or as many persons as I want (only one).
Everyone who responds to these activists who want to insist that "rights" are violated by governmental limits on marriage needs to ask them: "You think now that people of the same gender should be able to marry. What about polygamy? What about minor children who want to marry adults, and vice versa? What about people in the immediate family? Do you think their 'rights' are being violated? Where would you draw the line, or do you think that lines should not be drawn at all?"
This is the first I have heard of Laurie Letourneau. It's nice to be able to read that surname without wincing.
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