Bigoted state rep named ‘Freshman Lawmaker of the Year’

When he took office last January, state Rep. Gary Glenn of the Midland area was best known as a longtime bigot with strong ties to the tea party duo of Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat.

The triumvirate of Glenn, Courser and Gamrat declared that they had arrived in Lansing to cleanse the Republican Party of its insufficiently conservative members. They said they were Christian warriors fighting for righteousness and morality on a “spiritual battlefield.”

That mentality, with Courser leading the way, fit in nicely with Glenn’s Bible-thumping manner. For example, in 2009 Glenn claimed that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act would “criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians.”

In short, Courser/Gamrat/Glenn were viewed as a nutty, right-wing trio by the House GOP leadership. When the Courser/Gamrat extramarital affair became public, Glenn quickly cut all ties with the couple. It certainly wouldn’t look good for the president of the American Family Association’s Michigan chapter to continue embracing two blatant hypocrites.

Glenn praised for award

Now, nearly a year later, Glenn has turned things around and gained respectability thanks to a Lansing news agency that inexplicably named him “Freshman Lawmaker of the Year.”

The award by the MIRS news service was treated as a major news story by MLive, which covers Glenn’s Bay/Midland County district. Fellow Republicans chimed in, offering their congratulations. And Glenn responded with an Oscar-worthy performance, offering a long list of people he wanted to thank for gaining such a prestigious honor.

A reality check: Glenn has never disavowed his ugly homophobia of the past and has made it clear since taking office that he harbors the same disdain for gays and LGBT rights, just in a quieter manner.

The Michigan Republicans, after failing to drive out the GOP’s embarrassing bigot, Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema (who counts Glenn among his supporters), has two new problems. The Michigan GOP congressional delegation has mostly remained mum about Donald Trump’s hateful statements over recent months. I’m not aware of any Republican House members from Michigan declaring that they will not support Trump as their party’s presidential nominee.

Now, Glenn’s award presents another Republican conundrum: Does the party support Glenn’s honor as the state Capitol’s rookie of the year?

Not as bad as Courser, Gamrat

According to MLive, the MIRS staff chose the hyper-partisan Glenn though he is viewed as "a bit of a polarizing figure." MIRS applauded Glenn because, unlike former Reps. Courser and Gamrat, he did not go "down the path of being completely meaningless to the process in the Legislature." That’s hardly glowing praise.

In the end, they chose Glenn "not necessarily for what he did, but what he avoided and what he prevented from happening." That was a reference to Glenn serving as the primary roadblock to energy legislation that has bipartisan support, including the backing of the governor.

That narrow effort seems like a fairly subjective, ideological means of judging a legislator.

From a parochial standpoint, MIRS certainly must recognize that Glenn has a Trump-like disdain for the media. Glenn received considerable blowback earlier this year when he issued an alert on Twitter, warning that the Midland Daily News essentially was embarking on a push for the “homosexual agenda” based on the promotion of Tony Lascari, who is gay, to news editor at the Daily News. In a rare move, Glenn later apologized.

An endorsement from the grave

Though Glenn’s lack of success in elective politics dates back to 1992, he won in November 2014 after employing a bizarre campaign tactic, suggesting a from-the-grave endorsement by the late Charlton Heston, the actor and gun-rights advocate who died seven years ago.

Glenn put into heavy rotation a campaign radio ad featuring Heston comments praising Glenn for backing right to work legislation in Idaho. The recordings reportedly were made nearly three decades ago, in 1987.

Glenn's Greatest Hits

More importantly, Glenn was elected despite his past statements about gays and the LGBT community. Here is a sampling:

    *  In 2012, he railed against the American Academy of Pediatrics for backing adoptions by same-sex couples:

“The scientific fact is that children's health is endangered if they are adopted into households in which the adults -- as a direct consequence of their homosexual behavior -- experience dramatically higher risks of domestic violence, mental illness, life-threatening disease, substance abuse, and premature death by up to 20 years.

"The probability of violence occurring in a gay couple is mathematically double the probability of that in a heterosexual couple," write activists with the National Gay & Lesbian Domestic Violence Network.”

  * In 2011, Glenn disputed assertions that gays are not inferior employees, and he turned the issue on its head:

“What ridiculous folly to suggest that only those individuals who engage in homosexual behavior, given all of its severe medical consequences, constitute the best and the brightest.”

   * 2010 -- Try to guess what Glenn’s beef was with this state House candidate, based upon a robo-call he placed in her district:

“Liberal Democratic lawyer and openly homosexual state House candidate Toni Sessoms doesn't share our values. Michiganliberal.com boasts that Sessoms is 'independently wealthy, and if elected would become the first openly lesbian state representative.' Sessoms is endorsed by the homosexual newspaper in Detroit, by Detroit's homosexual equality Michigan PAC and by the Michigan Democratic Party homosexual and transgender caucus. Sessom's campaign manager is the openly homosexual Central Michigan University faculty member who lost (this) state House race two years ago. Her deputy campaign manager was co-president of CMU's homosexual student group -- an openly homosexual candidate with a campaign run by homosexual activists.”

   * In 2013 Glenn posted this on his American Family Association-Michigan Facebook page in defense of Dave Agema:

“(Is Glenn a bigot?) Of course not, and neither is Dave Agema. Such terms are deployed any time someone dares publicize medical and social science findings that homosexual activists and their media allies wish to suppress for fear of damaging their politically-motivated agenda to persuade us and our children that homosexual behavior is normal, natural, and healthy. It's none of the three.”

   *  In 2014 Glenn placed robo-calls in Bay County denouncing an anti-discrimination ordinance that would protect the LGBT community:

“(The ordinance) threatens religious freedom and women’s privacy rights by giving special protections to individuals involved in homosexual behavior or cross-dressing.”

Though the ordinance would only apply to county government, not the private sector, Glenn said it “would require a Christian bookstore to hire a man who comes to work wearing a dress.”