OPINION:
With all due respect to Samuel Johnson, it’s not patriotism that’s the “last refuge of a scoundrel,” political or otherwise. Rather, it’s “I was taken out of context.”
A political scoundrel’s last refuge is claiming misrepresentation when that politician’s own injudicious words come back to bite him or her, or when he or she commits accidental candor about what he or she really thinks, particularly when it conflicts with majority sentiment on the subject and is likely to take its toll at the polls.
As such, it was “clean up on Aisle 31” over the weekend after Virginia state Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, a Democrat, said in a TV interview that she planned to reintroduce legislation that would expand the definition of child abuse to include inflicting “physical or mental injury” on children because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
With the obsequiously pro-LGBTQ Washington Post leading the damage-control efforts, Ms. Guzman — whose District 31 includes parts of Prince William and Fauquier counties — backpedaled after her Oct. 13 interview with Washington’s WJLA-TV Channel 7 news. The lawmaker insisted that she — and more specifically, her bill — had been taken out of context.
In the lead of its Oct. 15 article on the fallout, the Post noted that Ms. Guzman had proposed the same or a similar measure two years ago. It said the earlier bill never received serious legislative committee consideration then because “it was redundant,” insofar as child abuse is already prohibited for any reason.
But the WJLA report said that Ms. Guzman wanted Virginia parents to face criminal charges if they don’t “affirm their child’s sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Virginia Republicans were quick to seize on the word “affirm” to suggest that parents who decline to seek so-called gender-affirming care (i.e., puberty blockers, sex hormones and disfiguring surgery) for gender-confused — aka “dysphoric” — children would be guilty of child abuse.
Ms. Guzman called that characterization of the legislation inaccurate, and the Post said that such a provision wasn’t in the bill.
But in light of how left-wing Democrats and liberal judges across the country have seized on the Supreme Court’s ill-advised 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County to advance the LGBTQ agenda, despite Justice Neil Gorsuch’s admonition not to read more into his majority opinion than met the eye, Virginia Republicans weren’t buying it.
(Despite explicit language in the 6-3 ruling that it did not address any issues other than the one — employment — immediately at hand in Bostock, the Left has cited it in legal battles to advance other aspects of the radical LGBTQ agenda.)
WJLA, accused by some on the Left of misrepresenting what Ms. Guzman said by selective editing of the interview, released the entire 20-minute, uncut video of the Q&A.
In the key excerpt of the interview, WJLA reporter Nick Minock asked: “What could the penalties be if [a Child Protective Services] investigation concludes that a parent is not affirming of their LGBTQ child? What could the consequences be?”
Ms. Guzman’s answer: “Well, we first have to complete an investigation and before we make the determination that there is going to be a CPS charge, depending on the type of abuse — and this is for all abuse, not just LGBTQ — it could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm your education, because many people have those — they do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
The Guzman gaffe called to mind a strikingly similar faux pas a little more than a year earlier that’s widely thought to have sunk the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe.
In a Sept. 28, 2021, debate with Mr. McAuliffe’s Republican rival, now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin said of public schools’ curriculums, “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”
Mr. McAuliffe responded with this jaw-dropping confession: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should be teaching.” Within hours, the footage was in Mr. Youngkin’s TV ads, and Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign never recovered from the self-inflicted blow.
That same smug, arrogant “know better” attitude is reflected by Ms. Guzman, who it just so happens last year unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination to be Mr. McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor running mate.
Luckily for her (but less so for parents in District 31), Ms. Guzman is not up for reelection until this time next year.
She now says she has no intention of reintroducing the legislation (regardless of whether or not it would do what the WJLA report suggested) in the General Assembly in January.
But that hollow promise reflects a keen grasp of political reality because when Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign crashed and burned last November, Virginia Republicans picked up not only the governorship but also seven House seats and retook control of the lower chamber. There’s no chance anything as extreme as Ms. Guzman’s legislation would now ever pass, and if somehow it did, Mr. Youngkin would rightly veto it.
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