When Will Agema's 15 Minutes Be Up?

I wasn’t going to write about Dave Agema because I don’t think he deserves the amount of attention he’s received as a result of his offensive comments about gays.

Dave Agema

The former state lawmaker and current national GOP official posted a controversial article condemning the “filthy” lifestyle of gays on his personal Facebook page several days ago. (Click here to read, “Dave Agema, Michigan Republican, Uses Facebook to Condemn the ‘Filthy’ Lifestyle of ‘Homosexuals.’”) The amount of attention he’s received in and out of Facebook since then strikes me as more than a little out of proportion considering how irrelevant the guy is – thankfully – to most people’s lives.

I’ve written about Agema before. (See “Living in Sin? No benefits for You!” from September 16, 2011; “A Sad Day in Michigan” from December 12, 2012; and “Please, Guvnor, I Want Some More...” from May 20, 2011.) He’s a pandering, right-wing zealot who manages to get his name in the papers by saying and doing things that make many people cringe, like trying to prohibit government entities from providing health care to the unmarried partners of their employees. As I posted in Facebook yesterday, “I'm in the ‘I Don't Give a Crap What Dave Agema Says or Thinks about Anything and Find It A Dumb Distraction from Stuff Happening in Lansing and Washington That Really Matters’ camp."

Not everyone agrees with me, of course. Some people are irked that folks like Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder aren’t publicly disapproving of Agema’s behavior. Nathan Triplett, a Facebook friend who’s an attorney and elected Democratic official, blasted the governor yesterday for failing to condemn Agema’s bigoted postings. (He posted a link to a Detroit News article entitled, “Snyder declines comment on calls for Agema to resign following anti-gay Facebook post.”)

Nathan Triplett

Triplett also wants Snyder to endorse adding “sexual orientation” to the list of characteristics included in my state’s Elliott-Larson Civil Rights Act. (The others are race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, marital status, height, weight and to preserve the confidentiality of any arrest or detention that didn’t result in conviction.) I remember receiving letters from people in support of this proposal back in the 1980s when I worked in Governor Jim Blanchard’s mailroom (three governors ago). As I told Nathan, if Elliott-Larson wasn’t amended at any point in the last three decades when Democrats were in charge in Lansing, then I don’t expect it to move forward now that Republicans control this town. I also said I thought we should focus on stuff that really matters, to which he responded, “I think building support for amending the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation falls squarely in the ‘stuff that really matters’ bucket.”

I then posted, “Getting worked up about Rick Snyder refusing to wade into the issue seems much less productive to me than getting worked up about President Obama putting Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block. Elliott-Larson's not going to be amended anytime soon. Sometimes we need to pick our battles more carefully.”

Nathan replied, “Part of the reason that ELCRA hasn't been amended in the past 30 years is that we choose to assume it's impossible. We don't talk about it. We don't push for it. We just wait for the ‘right time.’ Growing support for LGBT equality, Republican desire to rebrand themselves, and flaps like Agema's make this a perfect time to put pressure on Republican legislators and the governor to chose a side. Do they support discrimination or don't they? You can see in the statements they have issued that they want to have it both ways. We should not be willing to let them.”

He’s got a point. Maybe I’m not sensitive enough to the challenges faced by LGBT individuals. And who am I to decide what issues are paramount? Of course I believe in equality for all and would love for our governor to endorse the amendment. I just couldn’t care less if Snyder rebukes a bigoted extremist whose 15 minutes of fame were up long ago.

Sources: Detroit News, Huffington Post.