Adding insult to, well, insult, the social action network change.org ranks defeated U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave among its Top Five LGBT Villains and Villainesses of 2008, an annual list of “folks who specialized in harshing the mellow of the LGBT community this year,” the Rocky Mountain News reports. “Musgrave is the ‘symbolic presence’ behind efforts to ban gay marriage,” Michael Jones, the Web site’s gay rights editor, told the Rocky.
The Republican Musgrave, who lost her bid for a fourth term representing Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, ranks third on the change.org list, behind the organizers of California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage and the mayor of Moscow, who threatens to violently crush gay rights demonstrations, but ahead of a Jamaican reggae singer who urges listeners to kill homosexuals. Pope Benedict XVI rounds out the list for his “ardent string of anti-gay rhetoric.”
Here’s Musgrave’s entry:
3. Marilyn Musgrave. In what may be the last year that Marilyn Musgrave is relevant, this Colorado Congresswoman continued to champion her anti-gay positions at all costs -– including the cost of her Congressional seat. Musgrave was the author in the House of Representatives of a proposed Constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, and famously told the Family Research Council that fighting gay marriage was the most important priority our country faced. Well, with legislative priorities like that, it’s no wonder that Musgrave was defeated this year by Democrat Betsy Markey. Colorado voters grew tired of her schtick, and now Congress has one less virulently anti-gay member.
Musgrave, who disappeared from public view for nearly a month after her 12-point loss at the polls, didn’t comment on her villainesse designation, the Rocky reports: “No one answered the phone at her Washington, D.C., office and it doesn’t accept messages, and the phone at her Loveland office has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
Michael Jones, the author of change.org’s list, is “not the same Mike Jones who allegedly had a highly publicized sexual relationship with evangelical leader Ted Haggard,” the Rocky points out.
