A 32-30 vote to remain “neutral” where Republican State Central Committee members couldn’t even put their names to their votes? Unacceptable.

by Shaun Kenney

Now I will grant this. Never has a unit committee or state committee endorsement swung an election, at least not in recent memory.

This is how inconsequential votes from the Republican Party apparatus have become.

Yet a 32-30 voice vote where the members of the Republican Party of Virginia’s State Central Committee refused to put their names to a vote of neutrality on a trio of really bad Virginia state amendments? Amendments from the same political party that botched the gerrymandering amendment?

That’s wrong.

Look — I have no problem advising a unit committee to hold back on these amendments knowing that they are so terrible as to command unanimous opposition. That’s a perfectly acceptable answer and a politically smart one as well.

Yet neutrality on these questions? As if we have no opinion whatsoever on these things? Or worse, we have no opinion on these things because the Democrats might call us bad names?

What are you guys thinking??

Of course the Democrats are going to call you names. Of course they are going to tell us we are racists and bigots for insisting that someone who served a 20-year sentence for pedophilia shouldn’t be able to stand for election to school board. Of course they are going to say words don’t mean things. Of course they are going to upend parental notification and parental consent in the name of freedom and equality.

Who cares anymore? Who actually cares about the name calling? How’s about the people these amendments are going to hurt? In the name of God, why are we so afraid to fight for and defend common sense against its enemies?

Very low-T behavior, folks. I’m tired of it.

So here we go. On the ballot in November are the following amendments:

1. HJ 1: Enshrines an absolute right to abortion, overriding both parental notification and parental consent while targeting pregnancy resource centers whose primary role is to support women.
2. HJ 9: Not only repeals the Virginia Marriage Amendment, it writes gender ideology into the state constitution and despite claims, forces clergy to recognize the new definitions.
3. HJ 2: Automatically restores voting rights, the right to serve in public office, the right to serve on juries, and firearms rights for all felons upon release from jail or prison.

The summaries tell one story in crayon. Yet the actual texts of the amendment themselves do nothing of the sort — and in fact, are far worse and deeper reaching than the summaries let on.

In fact, these amendments are so bad that it should be obvious to stand against them. It should be so obvious, no vote from State Central should be required.

Yet here we are with over half of the governing board of the Republican Party refusing to defend our own principles? I’m sorry — that’s outrageous, folks.

HJ1: Removing parents from the decision-making process

Shocking no one, the actual language of the amendment is far different than the summary:

That every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.

An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be, directly or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.

Where can the Commonwealth of Virginia intervene, you might ask? Well — certainly not on the basis of age:

For the purposes of this section, a state interest is compelling only if it is for the limited purpose of maintaining or improving the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of care and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision making.

This amendment isn’t about just reproductive freedom per se but can be construed to “make decisions relating to . . . fertility care” — which means that should a guidance counsellor or Planned Parenthood physician (sic) steer your child at any age towards a certain conclusion, parents would neither be required to consent to the act much less even be notified it was happening, from a chemical abortion to transgender reassignment surgeries — no matter what the age of that child.

This amendment guts Virginia’s parental consent and parental notification laws in any and all matters regarding what a bureaucrat deems and persuades to be the best interest of someone’s child. You’ll find out — but only too late.

Dangerously enough, the bill is so loosely constructed as to put pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations (including places of worship) in the crosshairs, as the default setting will be towards the Orwellian euphemism reproductive freedom rather than say, the Hippocratic Oath.

HJ9: redefining reality

This one is a bit more tricky, because in order to do what it wants to do, the language of the amendment has to elevate marriage to the level of a basic right:

That marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.

Full stop — no it is not for this and for one reason alone: you do not have the right to another person. EVER.

Let’s all repeat after me: No one has the right to a marriage, because no one has the right to a person.

In like turn, words mean things. Marriage by definition is the union of one man and one woman, with children who have an equal and separate right to their biological mother and biological father. Children have rights to persons because they are children, and there are certainly rights within a marriage, but no one has the right to a marriage.

Now the advocates of this amendment claim that clergy will not be subject to an amendment that is — by its own admission — in defense of what we are asked to believe is an essential and vital personal right.

Yet curiously, or perhaps more accurately in direct violation of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the text of the amendment mentions nothing of the sort:

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two adult persons seeking a lawful marriage on the basis of the sex, gender, or race of such persons. This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall recognize any lawful marriage between two adult persons and treat such marriages equally under the law, regardless of the sex, gender, or race of such persons.

Just in case you are lied to in future, there is no exemption for clergy in the amendment.

Which means clergy will now have to make a decision — will you marry a couple in violation of both conscience and strongly held religious belief? Or will you forfeit your ability to recognize a marriage by law?

In France, this is the routine where couples will first be married by the magistrate before being married by the clergy, that is to say, if that part is important to the couple in the first place where the sacred is entirely optional, but the secular entirely mandatory.

Now whether or not this will hold up to First Amendment scrutiny is another matter altogether. One doubts that it will, but violations of conscience protections and religious freedom alone should make the decision clear that this is a poorly constructed amendment that goes too far.

HJ2: Moving the blame from governor to constitution

This amendment has to be the most cowardly of them all.

Right now — the governor of Virginia can with the stroke of her (auto)pen restore the rights of each and every felon in the Commonwealth.

The governor can do this right now.

Instead, we are going to remove the odium of blame by shifting the duty from the Executive Mansion to autopilot, once again by shifting the discussion of the right to vote from qualifications to entitlement:

Every person who meets these qualifications shall have the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, and such right shall not be abridged by law, except that: (1) No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be entitled to vote during any period of incarceration for such felony conviction, but every such person, upon release from incarceration for that felony conviction and without further action required of him, shall be invested with all political rights, including the right to vote; and

(2) No person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting shall be entitled to vote during such period of incapacity until his capacity has been reestablished as prescribed by law.

Not just the right to vote, ladies and gentlemen — but all political rights. Including jury duty, the right to hold public office, become a notary public, and the right to possess firearms.

This means that a pedophile sent to prison for 20 years can run for school board immediately upon release.

Did you go to prison for beating your spouse? No problem — in Virginia if this amendment passes, you can spend a few years (maybe months?) in prison, get out on Virginia’s early felon release program (EEOC) and give it another go as over half of EEOC beneficiaries eventually do.

There’s damn good reason why we want the Governor of Virginia to review the restoration of rights for felons and not do it by autopen. Conversely, there are damn good reasons why a Democratic governor might not want their fingerprints on the weapon — just ask Fairfax County’s Steve Descano and his lax enforcement of the laws.

Time to say it: RPV just failed a sanity check (badly)

I have a lot of friends on State Central Committee. Many of them are stalwart volunteers and activists who are trusted to help guide the party — or what’s left of it — through tumultuous times.

I can’t help but think that in this instance, SCC failed.

There is nothing redeemable in these amendments to which anyone should feel the emotion of neutrality. They are odious. Even if someone doesn’t believe we can turn these amendments back, human decency should compel each and every single conservative to at least fight them for the sole reason that they are bad amendments.

One district chairman who voted against the amendment argues that the Democrats will claim we are racist for voting against two of the amendments. Seriously? Is that all it takes to turn back the sons and daughters of the Reagan Revolution? Namecalling?

For those of us tired of losing all the time, we need to get back to the things we are for rather than being worried about being against something. Who cares what names the Democrats are going to call us? Who cares whether or not we keep losing elections — we are already losing elections.

For myself, I don’t think it is a particularly high bar or difficult argument to say that if my six-year-old daughter decides she is really a boy and an orchestra of bureaucrats and plastic surgeons see the dollar signs behind that move, that as a parent I should have the right to both know and step in.

Or if my 17-year-old daughter is convinced to have an abortion, that as a parent I should have the right to both know and step in.

Or that marriage really does have a definition and that we don’t have an imaginary right to other people.

Or that restoring right rights of felons via autopen is a super bad idea.

What bothers me is that we actually do feel compelled to say the obvious. The fact that over half of the members of our governing body could not say the obvious shocks me entirely. Are we that trapped by the ideological left? Are we so in fear of their criticism that we refuse to advance our own values? Do we lack the confidence of our own values so as to render them defenseless? Or are things so obvious to most of us no longer worth defending in the eyes of the very smart people?

Is this the party of Reagan? Of Obenshain? Of Jefferson and Madison and Monroe? Are we so unworthy of the inheritance of these great men?

I doubt seriously that the imprimatur of RPV matters a great deal to a soul. But we failed a sanity check this weekend, guys — not just by a little bit, but by a lot. A vote to be neutral in the face of stupid isn’t a smart play.

These amendments need to be not merely opposed but fought and relentlessly so. Drive the questions back at the proponents. Demand better answers. The words of the amendment are clear — and millions of dollars will be spent by bad people turning them into Orwellian euphemisms such as freedom or equality when they mean the very opposite of both.

This wasn’t a hard test and we failed it. Here’s hoping for more grit and a deeper look at what we are for rather than operating in fear of what names people who don’t like us might call us.

After all, who wants to invest their time, talent, and treasure into a party apparatus to scared to believe in itself?

Shaun Kenney is senior editor of The Republican Standard. This column is republished here with permission of The Republican Standard.