DR. J'S SHORT SHOT
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

While all the nattering is going on about the really refreshing openness and consideration of different viewpoints on such matters as the War on Iraq and Congressional earmarks in the House Democratic Caucus, it might be interesting to consider some of the basic positions of the newly elected Republican Senate Minority Whip, Trent Lott. Let's, for example, hear what he has to say about race and racism, homosexuality and homophobia. They tell us volumes about what the Republican positions on these two critical questions concerning the social fabric of our county really are.

In a 1984 interview with the magazine, Southern Partisan, a journal of apologia for the Confederate States of America, he said (Applebome, P., "Dueling with the Heirs of Jeff Davis," News of the Week in Review, New York Times, Dec. 27, 1998, p. 1): "I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important to people across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party." One might want to ask Sen. Lott himself, and the party that chose him once again to be part of their Senate leadership, just which are the particular principles espoused by Davis to which he subscribes. The theory of white supremacy? The justification of slavery? The rights of the states in which slave-holding was legal at the time to continue the institution of slavery in perpetuity? Or perhaps it was the rights of slave-holders to bring the institution into any of the then unorganized territories.

On the matter of homosexuality, in 2002 or so (and for this one I do not have before me the reference), on the Senate floor he said words to the effect of: "The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin. So it is, and that's that."

Tells us a lot, and a Lott too, about contemporary Republicanism, doesn't it? That these positions are little known also tells us how much and how little are really known about what Republicans and their chosen leaders really stand for.

DR. J'S SHORT SHOT

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) a weekly Contributing Author for The Political Junkies (www.thepoliticaljunkies.net [1]) and a Columnist for BuzzFlash.

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