VA-10: Teawinger Congressional Wannabe OK With Spousal Rape

Meet Virginia state senator Richard H. “Dick” Black. How can anyone think he is less than objectively pro-spousal-rape? Molly Redden at Mother Jones has the rundown on “Dick”:

[I]n a congressional district in Northern Virginia, one of the state’s main instigators of culture warfare, state Sen. Richard H. “Dick” Black, is running in the Republican primary to replace longtime GOP moderate Rep. Frank Wolf. And he’s guaranteed to ignite wedge-issue passion. Exhibit A: As a state legislator, Black opposed making spousal rape a crime, citing the impossibility of convicting a husband accused of raping his wife “when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth.”

Black has referred to emergency contraception, which does not cause abortions, as “baby pesticide.” Black also fought to block a statue of Abraham Lincoln at a former Confederate site in Richmond. He wasn’t sure, he explained at the time, that statues of Lincoln belonged in Virginia. He has argued that abortion is a worse evil than slavery. And once, to demonstrate why libraries should block pornography on their computers, Black invited a TV reporter to film him using a library terminal to watch violent rape porn.

In 1998, Black was elected a delegate to the Virginia House. He sparked multiple battles over social issues until he was voted out of office in 2005. But Black wasn’t done. In 2011, after moving several times around Northern Virginia in search of a friendly district, Black was voted back into the Legislature, this time to the state Senate.

In the GOP nomination fight to replace Wolf, Black, who commands substantial support among the conservative grassroots, would have a strong chance to beat his moderate opponents if the party chooses to nominate candidates through a convention, rather than a primary. (Tea partiers and social conservatives have dominated Virginia Republicans’ nominating contests in recent years.) The party will decide between the two on January 23. Republicans have held the seat Black is seeking for 14 years, but the congressional district voted for Mitt Romney by only a slim margin in 2012.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.