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Update: An editor for San Diego CityBeat contacted me this morning, and let me know that Justin McLachlan of CityBeat broke the story before the Union-Tribune. The editor indicated that the San Diego Union-Tribune article was an apparent re-reporting of CityBeat‘s March 9th piece on Lorie Zapf.
Reading CityBeat‘s Zig-zag Zapf; San Diego City Council candidate’s views on gay politicians and frivolous litigation can be hard to follow, it appears to me that this is the likely case.
Also, the CityBeat article seems a bit more fleshed out, and the “zig-zags” being much easier to follow. Not only does CityBeat‘s article on what I identified as Lorie Zapf’s “gay problems” seem to be the earlier and more definitive piece of the two publications, but the CityBeat article also has a good write up on Zapf’s apparent “baggage” regarding lawsuit abuse as well.
All I can say at this point is that I wish I’d have discovered the CityBeat article first. I did a search of the CityBeat website last night with the keyword “Zapf” didn’t show up in a keyword search on their website (after seeing the Union-Tribune referenced CityBeat), but Zapf’s name didn’t show up on the keyword search. I never noticed that their piece on Zapf was highlighted on their website’s front page…D’oh!
CityBeat is justifiably proud of their publication’s work breaking their story on San Diego City Council candidate Lorie Zapf.
~~Autumn~~
I absolutely want to keep homosexuals out of public office and not be allowed to influence our schools, textbooks, altering marriage, children and on and on.…I do believe homosexuality is a sin. I have three homosexual first cousins. I love them all and would ‘be seen’ in a photo with them. I believe they all live in sin and frankly all are very unhappy people and had horrible childhoods as well.
…For whatever reason God allowed people to choose homosexuality. So, there must be a reason for it, although I don’t get it, like so may (sic) other things that don’t make sense.
~Lorie Zapf, from an email exchange with James Hartline in 2006
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune‘s article Candidate Sorry For Past E-Mail About Gays, San Diego City Council candidate Lorie Zapf wrote those words in 2006 in an email exchange with James Hartline. According to the article, James Hartline released the information to various San Diego media sources because …Zapf was not living up to his anti-gay standards.
Apparently, Lorie Zapf has changed her mind about teh gays.
In an interview Wednesday, Zapf said she didn’t remember writing the e-mail until it was presented to her a few days ago by San Diego CityBeat magazine. She said her comments were focused on gay activists, not gays in general.“I chose my words poorly because clearly I don’t believe that gays should be kept from office because I have supported and endorsed candidates who are gay, strongly and publicly,” Zapf said. “Have you ever had an e-mail that you sent that, you know, pops up years later, and it was a hastily written e-mail? … My words were hurtful.”
James Hartline has his own motivations for releasing the emails.
Hartline, who describes himself as a former homosexual and now a devout Christian, often rails against gay issues and candidates. He said he shared the e-mails with media outlets to expose Zapf as “a total and complete fraud” as a Christian because she told church groups while campaigning that she opposes same-sex marriage yet tells others she supports gay rights.
Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community members are no doubt going to be unhappy with her previous statements, and her clarifying statement. And, although Zapf appears not to be as rabidly antigay in keeping all gays from public office, it’s less clear if Zapf still believes she and/or the pubulic should keep homosexual activists “gay activists”…
“…out of public office and not be allowed to influence our schools, textbooks, altering marriage, children and on and on.”
Wow! Talk about pleasing no constituency — She’s possibly angered both LGBT community members for having made some rabidly gay antigay comments to James Hartline four years ago, and Christian right community members for not being rabidly antigay enough in the here and now.
The final paragraphs in the Union-Tribune make an interesting point:
Zapf said voters should note that Hartline’s anger stems from her support of gays.“The irony is that James Hartline, of all people, who is so rabidly anti-gay, is trying to hurt me because I’m not,” she said. “He doesn’t think I’m anti-gay enough. I’m not at all.”
I know Mayor Jerry Sanders changed his mind on marriage equality. Could Zapf have really changed her mind on at least basic civil rights for teh homosexuals too?
I honestly don’t know. I probably wouldn’t vote for her anyway because she describes herself as a “center-right Republican” — Center-right generally isn’t my kind of politics. And that said, I live outside her district by a bit too…My council member is Todd Gloria.
13 Comments
It’s hopelessPoliticians in this country cannot stop mixing rhetoric from different realms as if there is no dividing line. She can believe what she wants about sin and God–but that should have nothing to do with elected office. And yet it does.
She may be right about her cousins.After all, anyone with a family full of people like her would be very unhappy and have a horrible childhood.
Huh“I chose my words poorly because clearly I don’t believe that gays should be kept from office”
Hm… “I absolutely want to keep homosexuals out of public office” – indeed, if you didn’t want to give the impression that you want LGBT people kept out of office, then saying you “absolutely want to to” was about as poor a word choice as you could possibly make. But personally, I think you said what you really thought.
Closeted HomophobesThis is how I refer to people who, once flamboyantly homophobic, have decided they need to conceal their bigotry in order to pass social and political muster, especially when seeking election in places known for progressive, egalitarian, equal civil rights for all citizenry.
Once in office… well, the mask slips. At first a little, then a lot.
Then you end up with places like Virginia, where the politicians don’t even bother to hide it anymore.
Zapf said this, and presumably believed it — and has not disavowed it, not really — “I absolutely want to keep homosexuals out of public office and not be allowed to influence our schools, textbooks, altering marriage, children and on and on.”
Sounds like she wants to re-criminalize homosexuality. I don’t know how that can be read otherwise.
Yeah, it’s “odd” – read aggravating -How they never consider their own impacts on the lives of the unhappy friends and family they keep mentioning.
If she wants people to believe she has changed,she needs to offer proof of that change. Can she? Other than deigning to be photographed with the 3 gay cousins whose life she helped make miserable, I mean. She mentioned endorsing openly-gay candidates. What evidence has she presented to back that up?
That old political sawSay anything to get yourself elected. I think Zapf’s original email display her true feelings. That last sentence of the original message has some issues.
First she invokes the mind of God and then questions that mind. God didn’t allow anything, in my world God doesn’t exist. But even still, being gay is NOT a choice.
Lost a commentOh well, but what I tried to say there was four years ago she hadn’t witnessed the San Diego contingent of the Prop 8 protests be the largest one, Jerry Sanders fighting tooth and nail for marriage equality, nor was she trying to take over a liberal district from Donna Frye.
What is affecting her is what affects all conservatives. Statements that were acceptable in the past are no longer acceptable now because conservatives are beings of the past, regressive. And all try and hide from those statements because they outline thoughts that no one thought twice about when they were written but sound like the diseased writings of decades gone past to anyone in the here and now. Score one for the march of progress.
Todd Gloria also used to be my rep as well. I remember being generally pleased with him.
But they are!Given her views, is it surprising that they are unhappy any time she’s around? I would be.
People do changeAnd sometimes they change dramatically.
I refuse to hold anyone to previous homophobic comments or beliefs, because I have seen too many people in my own life come around, sometimes incredibly dramatically.
That said, the more public and the more influential your homophobia was, the more you have to do to make amends. “Oops. Sorry.” is fine from a maiden aunt who avoided you at Christmas parties. More is required from elected officials who actually voted to discriminate.
But things like this are a definite start.
Another hypocriticalsnake in the grass.
And she is running in my district.Unless she has a solid foundation (not flip-flopping on gays, kowtowing to that faux-Christian jerk Hartline), she would never stand a chance succeeding Donna Frye.
If there’s still time to file, or there are any GOP challengers, she’s screwed.San Diego is pretty Republican, but it’s SoCal Republican. And not even Orange County SoCal.
This creates a huge opening for a GOP challenger, who will have no problem painting her as either a phony who’ll say anything to get elected or a nutjob fundamentalist.
Good riddance, if someone steps up.