ORLANDO, Fla.—One might suspect that any area of Florida that can claim Walt Disney World as its home would be conservative, and if so, one would be right. Nonetheless, in 2008, Florida's 8th Congressional District elected what would turn out to be one of Congress's most liberal members, Alan Grayson.
Surely, most people know who Grayson is, either from his multiple appearances on liberal talk shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show or from his ground-breaking speech before Congress in September 2009, where he accurately summarized the principles of the Republicans' healthcare "plan" as "Don't get sick; and if you do get sick, die quickly."
What many may not know, however, is that Grayson graduated from Harvard College in the top 2 percent of his class, summa cum laude, with a bachelor's degree in economics; then, after working as an economist for two years, returned to Harvard—this time to its law school, where he earned his juris doctorate degree (magna cum laude), and also a master's of public policy degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. After graduation, he clerked for two D.C. circuit judges who would later become Supreme Court justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and ... Antonin Scalia.
Grayson can only be described as a liberal, and a feisty one at that. For instance, in 2010 Grayson introduced in Congress the War Is Making You Poor Act (H.R. 5353), which would have cut off separate funding for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, thus requiring them to be funded out of the Pentagon's general budget, and used the savings to eliminate federal taxes on every American's first $35,000 of income. The bill had 18 co-sponsors, including Republicans Ron Paul and Walter Jones as well as Democrats John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey and Dennis Kucinich.
But having been voted out of his congressional seat in 2010 hasn't stopped the feisty former New Yorker from commenting on a wide variety of social issues ... including porn.
Today, in what might be his bravest political act yet, Grayson sent an email to his supporters (also posted on his web page) titled, "Rick, If You're Against Porn, Don't Watch It." Here's the text of the email:
"In a TV interview on Sunday, Rick Santorum said that if he is elected President, he will file criminal charges against the distribution of pornography. Santorum specifically referred to 'exposure on the Internet,' so presumably he would censor the Internet.
"The Internet Police. What a concept.
"Santorum complained that President Bush enforced 'the law' (probably alluding to the 'Child Online Protection Act,' passed in 1998), but President Obama has not. Well, there's a reason for that. The US Supreme Court held that the law is unconstitutional, and the Court issued its final ruling in that case on the day after President Obama was sworn into office.
"But let us give credit where credit is due. A Republican candidate for President finally has come up with a jobs program: policing the Internet for porn. All 50 billion pages of it.
"I have a dramatically simpler idea.
"Rick, if you're against pornography, then don't watch it.
"You see how that works? Let me give you some more examples.
"If you're against contraception, don't use it.
"If you're against abortion, don't have one.
"If you're against Moslems, don't become one.
"If you're against gay marriage, don't have one.
"If you're against unions, don't join one.
"If you're against universal health care, just keep your distance from doctors and hospitals.
"If you're against homosexuality, then feel free to limit your sexual interest to the 3 billion human beings of the opposite gender.
"What I'm basically trying to say to Rick Santorum, and everyone like Rick Santorum, is this: mind your own business."
Mind your own business—what a concept when it comes to people's First Amendment rights to watch sexually explicit content! And of course, as soon as the various pro-censorship groups like Morality in Media see this article—they apparently read AVN's legal news faithfully—rest assured that the Grayson-bashing will begin quickly and be non-stop up through the 2012 election. Doesn't matter that Grayson added scriptural support for his position by quoting 1 Thessalonians 4:11, where Paul of Tarsus quotes Jesus as saying, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you."
Speaking of the 2012 election, Grayson has been redistricted into Florida's newly created 9th District, a Democratic stronghold on Florida's west coast with a largely Hispanic population, whose largest city is Clearwater—and he's already announced that he's running for Congress in that district.
His URL? http://www.congressmanwithguts.com/—and we couldn't have said it better ourselves!
