Foe of gay marriage headed south

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.

the hate drips from every word.

Oh yeah! THis rag that masquarades as a newpaper is so filled with hate and trash, it makes any tabloid look saintly. As you can see.

Can you imagine this editorial in ANY paper outside of MA?

"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?"

Nice to meet you, first of all :) These questions......yes to all, is what the gay agenda eventually wants. Seriously, marriage is a stepping stone for them. Do you live in MA? Even if not, check out article8.org, and massnews.com, there is a multitude of info there. Included is the agenda, in writing, on a link to the site. Eye opening!

These perverts have no right trying to hitch a ride on others civil rights.

There needs to be a very determined, ruthless challenge mounted against their looking glass claim that they're some sort of race by virtue of the behaviors they engage in. For people who wish to pretend that they are some sort of strange new gender or race to try and imply that they are in the same case as 'uppity negroes' is an outrageous lie.

Unfortunately, such an editorial could easily appear in several of our daily rags here in my benighted state of Conn. The Hartford Courant(Pravda) and The Bridgeport Post(The Daily Worker) come to mind. Thank God for my beloved Waterbury Republican, the one CT. newspaper with an editorial page that decent Americans can read without losing contol of their bodily functions...Say, I hate to look like a shnook, but what does ROTFLMAO mean???

Al Toney of Holden

Boyfriend of Dick Hertz from Holden?

longjack

If a Tsunami were to hit us here in Western Wa, it would more likely take out our little coastal towns like Pacific and Ocean Shores, leaving the "cesspool" that is Seattle.

*sigh*

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