Deal's deal #3

The week before the August primary race, Nathan Deal ran a TV ad in which he claimed that his slightly more moderate Republican opponent had voted "to give our tax dollars to Youth Pride, a group that promotes homosexuality among teenagers as young as thirteen."

It's bad enough that Deal sank to the depths of playing the anti-gay card to get votes (which he would have had anyway) but he did it by smearing a wonderful organization that provides social services and support for gay youth. And, in my opinion, he was endangering those kids by charging that the organization "promotes" homosexuality in young teens, which could have stirred up some crazy person to decide to blow up the place.

Nothing is further from the truth. As they responded at the time, Youth Pride promotes teens not committing suicide. It promotes teens not being thrown out on the streets by their bigoted parents. It provides a sanctuary for gay and questioning teens to feel accepted for whoever they are and promotes an atmosphere of safety to explore their questions. They do not proselytize or try to influence any one direction.

I know. Even though she had a completely supportive family when she came out as a lesbian, my granddaughter found Youth Pride to be a welcome social setting for meeting new friends, for having a social group where she fit in and didn't meet the slurs and bias she found in school, and where she could try out her new role as a gay teen. I have been to their fundraising open house and met some of the staff -- a great group of concerned and dedicated adult sponsors.

I was so enraged at Deal's tactics that, in addition to writing a letter to the AJC (which they chose not to print, although they did print other letters of protest), I also wrote to the Georgia Log Cabin Republicans, asking that they protest this from a candidate of their party.

An immediate response came from the president of the group, saying he agreed with the outrage, identified himself as a member of Youth Pride's board and its treasurer, and he said that the Log Cabin Republicans had decided not to denounce the ad, fearing that it would help Deal more than hurt him that close to the election. He was probably right.

However, this president of the gay Republican group said this: "If he wins the nomination, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that this corrupt bigot does not set one foot in the governor's mansion." Wow !! Right on !! Understand this clearly. A group of Republicans -- gay Republicans, to be sure -- is going to work against the nominee of their own party because he smeared a worthy organization that supports gay teens.

Now, as Deal's campaign is getting under way, comes an AJC article saying that another member of the Youth Pride board (not the same man) has been using his IT skills to sabotage Deal on the internet. It's perfectly legal. Here's what he has done: when you do a google search, say of "Nathan Deal," the suggested links that come up first are always the ones that have gotten the most clicks recently. What he has done is simply flood the search engine with multiple hits on "Nathan Deal ethics" so that's what comes up first. If the searcher clicks on that choice, he then gets pages and pages of links to articles about Deal's ethical troubles. You can still get links to other articles; they just don't come up first.

Perfectly legal. At most, it falls in the realm of mild dirty tricks. But it certainly is nowhere near as dirty as Deal's trying to garner votes by a smear that endangered gay teens.

Ralph