Source: Dallas Morning News
by columnist Jacquielynn Floyd

This is embarrassing.

All this time I've been pounding the tom-toms about how Texans are unfairly stereotyped, how this area isn't the festering hive of bigotry that some would have you believe.

We are reasonable and enlightened people, I have said. The notion that we're a bunch of intolerant backwoods barbarians is an imbecilic stereotype, I have said.

Then somebody reportedly goes and wages an ugly, anonymous e-mail campaign against a Plano City Council candidate because he happens to be gay.

And somebody on the Collin County Commissioners Court suddenly and inexplicably wants to review the candidate's job performance as head of a successful court program there.

Background in Qnews: Gay candidate targeted

Well, thanks a lot for making a liar out of me! Thanks for making me look like a doofus!

Justin Nichols is, by all accounts, an energetic and hardworking young man who, at 23, already has a long record of service to the community,.

His job performance reviews have been uniformly positive. He's a Republican SMU grad who's running for City Council in a race that, to date, has been fair and issue-based on both sides.

In mid-March, a short and benign article appeared in the gay-and-lesbian newspaper Dallas Voice, which mentioned that Mr. Nichols is gay.

Then, out of the blue, a still-unidentified member of the Commissioners Court asked that a review of Mr. Nichols' job performance be posted as a closed session item for the April 15 meeting.

Mr. Nichols promptly asked that any discussion of his job performance be conducted in public – whereupon the item was swiftly and without explanation withdrawn.

Tell me, who has something to hide here?

The reason I bring it up is that somebody out there is making us all look creepy, making us all seem backward, is prompting a backlash of stereotypes about "conservative evangelicals" whose mental apparatus is controlled by "megachurches."

When will it sink into those last few resistant noodles that the fact that some people are gay – accountants, politicians, tire salesmen, the folks next door – is an entirely unremarkable circumstance?

When will they figure out that if they think they don't know any gay people, it's probably because those they do know think it's none of their business?

Seriously, I'd like to invite whoever is behind this ugly little episode to join the rest of us in the 21st century.

Full article: Campaign against gay Plano candidate is a sad step back for all of us | Dallas Morning News