Here's Dino Rossi, the Republican running for Congress in Washington's 8th, proudly holding up a sign from "Couples for Christ Foundations for Family and Life."

CCF-FLL is "an evangelistic and missionary community" that hates gay people as much as they love prepositions. On the "Who We Are" section of their webpage, they lay out one of their core worldviews. "The fight of this third millennium is all about the culture of death, which the anti-life, anti-family, homosexualist forces are imposing on society and the world," they write. In a post from 2017, they also laud the benefits of conversion therapy and call gay people "sexual deviants."

Rossi's campaign didn't respond to my request for comment on whether he endorses this worldview or whether he's just content to serve as their poster boy. I'll update this post if I hear back from him. But before we dive into Rossi's history of imposing his anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant, heterosexualist forces on Washington, I just want to ask the obvious question here. What's so bad about homosexualist forces imposing a culture of death "on society and the world?"

I don't want to live in a world without inscrutable memes about someone called "Miss Vanjie."

What would Halloween even look like without gay Babadook?


Oh, and why would anyone want to live in a country whose leaders wanted to prevent gay people from receiving health care services, banish gay people from the deathbeds of their loved ones, and fire workers for being gay? I've asked Rossi, but he won't say.

But that's okay. He's got a record. When he was running for State Senate in 1996, he bashed his opponent for sponsoring "a gay and lesbian art exhibit in the state capitol." He voted for Washington's version of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1998. He opposed marriage in all three of his failed statewide races. He's always said that he's "not running on social issues," and he's still saying it, but all that means is he doesn't want to answer questions about his views on LGBTQ issues. If he did, he'd reveal himself to be the right wing extremist he's trying so hard to convince everyone he's not.