A.G. Gancarski
In 2014, Jacksonville had the sixth-worst divorce rate in the country.
One might think, in that context, that an effort to “defend Jax families” might include marriage counseling or other assistance to couples conquering the rocky shoals of matrimony.
One would be wrong.
According to the good folks at DefendJaxFamilies.com, an adjunct of Florida Family Action, the threat to Jacksonville “families” is external, and these doughty Christian warriors have pledged to “oppose fight Jacksonville LGBT” in “taking a stand for our families in Jacksonville, Florida.”
Whatever the hell that blob of word salad means.
“Defend Jax Families is a continuation of the 2012 Protect First Liberties effort, which helped defeat the 2012 LGBT favoritism ordinance,” claims this outfit, which asserts that “Jacksonville is the next city in the crosshairs of the national LGBT attack machine … the unholy LGBT alliance.”
An article by someone named Jerry Steckloff — reprinted on the Defend Jax Families website — warns Jacksonville politicians that if they don’t cater to the whims of the anti-LGBT contingent, their “political careers will be over.”
“As in Jacksonville, some Houston businesses turned against the community, unjustly calling it bigoted, and collaborated in the national LGBT power grab. They were duped by HRC’s preposterous ‘LGBT laws are good for business’ myth. And they fell for the ‘LGBT civil rights’ hoax — in reality a ploy to make government outlaw opposition to LGBT lifestyles,” Steckloff writes. Ultimately “the public won a crushing victory over an unholy gang of treacherous lawmakers, the ACLU and the nationwide LGBT attack machine which never even proved its bogus claim of discrimination,” he added.
The site also promulgates a series of fallacious farragoes that are nothing new to those following this debate, such as “the morality and the social fabric of the Community will decline” and, of course, “men alleging a female gender will be free to enter women and children’s, dressing, locker, shower and restrooms in public facilities — an unstoppable crime opportunity, which will be exploited by sexual predators.”
As in Houston, the key to this effort is to whip up the poorly educated into a froth of confusion. And to marginalize advocates of legislation, such as Councilman Aaron Bowman, who is vice president of business recruitment for JAX USA.
Bowman has claimed that lack of protections for LGBT citizens is an impediment to recruiting businesses. But what would he know about it? DefendJaxFamilies.com, conveniently, houses a response to Bowman, which boils down to attacking his position on the “gender expression” front.
“If Mr. Bowman refuses to reveal in advance the ‘gender expressions’ business owners must tolerate, they become sitting ducks for perpetual, ruinous legal actions under his law,” claims a Philip Wemhoff on the site.
The site says it is put out by a broad coalition, yet no one actually identifies themselves. It’s the equivalent of masked pro wrestlers from Saturday morning TV.
However, they need your support … whoever the members are of this “broad alliance of Jacksonville citizens of all races, creeds and political beliefs, who oppose the proposed LGBT special preference law.”
All political beliefs? All races? All “creeds”?
Hard to tell whether that’s true because not one person’s name is attached to this hot mess of a website.
