A proposed non-discrimination ordinance in San Antonio barring discrimination against LGBT people has been a source of considerable controversy as of late. Right-wing individuals and groups have predictably smeared the proposal and tried to whip up fear and make it out to be "anti-religion." And now, the plot thickens, as Republican Councilwoman Elisa Chan has been outed by a former staffer as an outright homophobe.
James Stevens, who served as an aide to Chan, has resigned this week, but he's going out with a bang. Unbeknownst to Chan and the other staffers, he had recorded a private meeting from May 21 about the ordinance on his iPhone. What the recording reveals, other than the fact that Chan is an idiot and had some idiots working for her, is a rather appalling anti-gay conversation between Chan and her staffers. During the course of the conversation, one of her staffers brings up incest and bestiality and Chan herself calls homosexuality disgusting and says that gay people should not be allowed to adopt. Some pretty extreme homophobia on display.
I'm going to embed the 15-minute recording below, which you should listen to if you have the stomach. But here are some of Chan's "gems" extracted by the San Antonio Express-News:
By the way, this is politically incorrect. I don’t think homosexual people should do adoption. They should be banned by adoption. You’re going to confuse those kids. They should be banned.
If you wanted to choose that lifestyle, we don’t want to discriminate you, but you shouldn’t affect the young people. How terrible. … They’re going to be confused. You see two men go into a bedroom. You see two women kissing. Is that not confusing? It’s confusing.
It is actually, what you call, suggestive, for the kids to be corrupt, which is against nature. I’m telling you, anything that is against nature is not right.
You know, to be quite honest, I know this is not politically correct. I never bought in that you are born, that you are born gay. I can’t imagine it.
When I say that it’s … behavioral preference, they say that, "No, you’re born with it." But I never bought into that.
I think it’s just disgusting just to even think about.
Perhaps even more interesting is how far she's willing to go to cover up her obviously antiquated views from the public.
In strategizing on how to oppose the anti-discrimination ordinance, Chan decided to have her staff draft an op-ed to appear in a local paper.
“Can you guys come up with a draft?” she asks her aides. “Come up with draft with all the good, those arguments we talk as a speaking point, in terms of we’re addressing an issue that is not an issue. This is national politics again at the council level.
“This is another layer of bureaucracy, that we have not heard any discrimination,” she continues. “And then add in the family value in there. … Maybe I’ll use the industries, that we have a trend, that is, maybe I’ll use we have water rates and CPS rates to worry about.”
“Maybe what we can do, can we maybe throw some questionable confusions like, OK, this ‘transgender,’ because the definition is so broad…”
Listen to the horrifying recording yourself:
Chan's then-chief of policy Jeff Bazan is the one on the recording who warns that we're on a slippery slope toward incest and bestiality (how original, right?) and tells Chan to be a "culture warrior" on the issue. Well, he's now working for pro-gay Democrat Ron Nirenberg, who was just elected to the City Council, as his chief of staff. Can somebody say awkward? Bazan released the following statement yesterday:
I was basically explaining the viewpoint that some people have on the gay marriage issue. What I said was wrong and I deeply regret it. I can say that those comments, which were intended to be purely political, do not reflect my heart. Councilman Nirenberg, whom I currently serve and support, has made it clear that discrimination is not negotiable, and I am proud to work for him.
Right.
As for Chan, she acted as if she didn't know Stevens at first when confronted about the recording. Then she had this to say:
I think that's in a private setting and I don't know if that's — I need to hear that recording to know. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about so maybe you can play that back to me. We talk a lot of things in the staff meetings, so I wanted to know also under what context.
There is apparently a rumor that Chan is planning a run for Mayor in 2015, which she wouldn't confirm or deny. Right. We'll see how that goes for her.