Former GOP Secretary Of State Of Ohio Blames UCSB Shootings On Marriage Equality

Facepalm

Ken Blackwell has, at various times in his career, been Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio State Treasurer, and Ohio’s Secretary of State.  He was the Republican nominee for Governor in 2006 when he lost to Ted Strickland. And he believes that marriage equality and equal rights for gays and lesbians is reponsible for the shootings at University of California, Santa Barbara last weekend:

Family Research Council senior fellow Ken Blackwell yesterday linked the Isla Vista mass killings to marriage equality laws, which he claimed are destroying the culture. Speaking with FRC president Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch,” Blackwell blamed the shooting on “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” and “the attack on natural marriage and the family.”

“When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing,” Blackwell said, arguing that people who are “blaming the Second Amendment” are “avoiding talking about what is at the root cause of the problem.”

Here’s the audio:

Blackwell is a social conservative of long standing, so it isn’t at all surprising that he ended up at the Family Research Council, and this is hardly different from anything else that one hears from people associated with that organization. Nonetheless, it is somewhat surprising that a state like Ohio would elect someone like this to statewide office.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Moosebreath says:

    Doug,

    “this is hardly different from anything else that one hears from people associated with that organization. Nonetheless, it is somewhat surprising that a state like Ohio would elect someone like this to statewide office.”

    Please unpack this. I am not sure why you believe this to be out of the ordinary red meat rhetoric from the GOP.

  2. al-Ameda says:

    Blackwell blamed the shooting on “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” and “the attack on natural marriage and the family.”

    “When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing,” Blackwell said, arguing that people who are “blaming the Second Amendment” are “avoiding talking about what is at the root cause of the problem.”

    Who knew that Elliot Rodger was actually upset about gay marriage, and not about his inability to relate normally to his fellow male and female students?

    The only surprise here was that he did not directly blame President Obama for this.

  3. Blackwell blamed the shooting on “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” and “the attack on natural marriage and the family.”

    Blackwell is just upset that society no longer allows the Elliot Rodger’s of the world to just rape an unmarried woman and then force her to marry them, as per Deuteronomy 22:28-29. This whole shooting could be avoided if we just brought back Christian law.

  4. gVOR08 says:

    Blackwell’s fifteen minutes of fame ran out years ago. Now he’s trying to get a new fifteen. Looks like it’s working, at least around here.
    Doug, some looney toon or another blames every bad thing that happens on gay marriage; this shooting, Hurricane Sandy, earthquakes, military casualties, everything. They’d blame global warming on gays if that didn’t imply they believed it’s real.

  5. Moosebreath says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    “Blackwell is just upset that society no longer allows the Elliot Rodger’s of the world to just rape an unmarried woman and then force her to marry them, as per Deuteronomy 22:28-29.”

    Heh. And here I thought it was that our society no longer follows the example of Jacob and allows men to have multiple wives, plus children by the wives’ servants. That’s what constituted “natural marriage” in Biblical times.

  6. argon says:

    Family Research Council senior fellow Ken Blackwell …

    Well, that fact alone is sufficient to understand the rest of the crazy that emanates from Ken.

  7. An Interested Party says:

    The only surprise here was that he did not directly blame President Obama for this.

    Wait for it…

  8. Tillman says:

    @Stormy Dragon: Well that’s really Jewish law, but Jesus was a Jew…

    I like how 22:23-25 sets out that if you rape a betrothed woman in the city, you and the raped get stoned to death because she didn’t cry out in the city for help, but if it was in the countryside, only you get killed. Funny stuff.

  9. DrDaveT says:

    For Tyrrell and others who accuse the regulars here of caricaturing conservative Republican views… THIS. This is not some dessicated coot of a rancher in Nevada, nor some talk-radio chum strewer angling for advertising revenue. This is a multiply-elected Republican official of long standing. More importantly, everywhere you dip your net into the Republican pool, this is what comes up, gasping and writhing in the sunlight.

    At some point, guilt by association becomes overwhelming.

  10. Franklin says:

    @al-Ameda: I demand to know who downvoted you!

  11. Jay says:

    Nonetheless, it is somewhat surprising that a state like Ohio would elect someone like this to statewide office.

    Have you ever *been* to Ohio? Ohio is like a cross between Indiana and Alabama. Not surprising in the least.

  12. David in KC says:

    @Franklin: Thanks a lot Obama?

  13. gVOR08 says:

    @Jay: True. Most states have one or two large, dominant cities while the rest of the state is pretty much Kentucky. Ohio is different in that it has three major cities. But Cincinnati, my home, and hometown of Ken Blackwell, is also pretty much Kentucky.

  14. Moosebreath says:

    @gVOR08:

    “Most states have one or two large, dominant cities while the rest of the state is pretty much Kentucky.”

    Or as James Carville said when he was running campaigns in Pennsylvania, “There’s Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in between.”

  15. Tillman says:

    Look, I think we’re all ignoring the big picture here. Ken Blackwell’s point is that if you give a logician enough psilocybin and Red Bull, he can draw you up a direct connection through the myriad of culture that leads from marriage equality to mass killings. Hell, they’re fairly close to each other alphabetically, there must be something more substantive out there!

  16. gVOR08 says:

    @Moosebreath: I think it’s Atrios who refers to Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as “Pennsatucky”.

  17. Moosebreath says:

    @gVOR08:

    He’s hardly the only one, though it’s typically spelled “Pennsyltucky”.

  18. SKI says:

    @Moosebreath:Ahh, the beloved “T”.

    I still like Carville’s apt description of Pennsylvanian politics: “Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in the middle”: