Conservatives Voicing Concern Over Sec'y Rice's PC Comment

by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
October 17, 2006

(AgapePress) - - An official with the nation's largest evangelical denomination contends the Republican Party is out of touch with "values voters" when it comes to the homosexual agenda.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with First Lady Laura Bush in attendance, presided over the swearing-in ceremony of Dr. Mark Dybul as the new coordinator of the U.S. global AIDS office. Dybul's homosexual partner, Jason Claire, witnessed the ceremony, during which Secretary Rice referred to Claire's mother as Dybul's "mother-in-law." While that comment brought reaction from at least one pro-family spokesman in the nation's capital, Pastor Wiley Drake -- second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention and a long-time Republican political activist in southern California -- says it makes no sense to appoint a homosexual as global AIDS coordinator.

"I think it's a tragedy to have a sodomite living with another man and being the AIDS coordinator," says Drake, "because we all know that if we do away with sodomy we'd almost eradicate AIDS."

While that might be true in Drake's neck of the woods -- where, in Los Angeles County, roughly three-fourths of HIV cases are the result of men having sex with other men -- data from other parts of the country indicate the infection is spreading rapidly among women and intravenous drug users. And in other parts of the world -- Africa and China, for example -- the virus is being spread mostly through heterosexual sex.

Regardless, Drake is convinced that the GOP is alienating evangelical Christians, the party's core support group, by making overtures intended to attract homosexual voters.

"Even as second vice president, I can't speak for the [Southern Baptist] Convention," the long-time Baptist concedes. "But I certainly ... believe most Baptists would be like me; they would be appalled at what Condoleezza Rice has done, and in general [with] what the Republican Party is doing with things like Log Cabin Republicans and other sodomites [in] trying to get their vote."

A Calculated Comment?
One Capitol Hill observer is suggesting that Secretary Rice's comment can be assumed to be intentional because, as he puts it, "the U.S. State Department is in the business of diplomacy and avoiding faux pas." And in the "world of protocol," says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, "verbal miscues are anathema."

Tony Perkins

"The question arises," states Perkins, "what guidelines to the State Department and the White House follow? Neither federal law (the Defense of Marriage Act) nor District of Columbia law recognizes a marriage between Dr. Dybul and his partner." That said, notes Perkins, Secretary Rice's comment is not only "morally provocative" but also "linguistically improper."

Perkins' group wants to know why Rice uttered the term in the presence of the First Lady -- and it has written to the Secretary of State asking for an explanation.