Ives should start campaign with apology to Sixth District voters

No surprise former state rep Jeanne Ives has joined fellow conservative Evelyn Sanguinetti to unseat Democrat Sean Casten as Illinois 6th District Congressperson. Getting 48.5% of the GOP vote against former Governor Bruce Rauner last year virtually assured Ives would seek to expand her role as chief proponent of the GOP's extreme conservative wing.

But Ives has a despicable homophobic history to overcome if she wishes to make inroads among highly educated and tolerant Sixth District voters who gave 53.6% of their votes to Casten, whose campaign was devoid of fear and loathing. Casten campaigned wholly on common sense solutions to climate destruction, health care and other issues to send absentee incumbent Peter Roskam packing.

How despicable? Ives called gays seeking to marry "disordered" with gays "trying to weasel their way into acceptability so that they can then start to push their agenda down into the schools, because this gives them some sort of legitimacy... and we can't allow that to happen." Having lost the battle to prevent marriage equality, Ives turned her fury on school administrators seeking to offer dignity to transgenders, likening them to dirty old men in trench coats lying in wait to expose children to sordid things.

As a believer in human redemption, I would welcome an Ives candidacy if she would first apologize for her destructive comments and renounce the politics of hate. If she doesn't, the first question from any voter or any reporter at a campaign stop should be: "When will you apologize, not just gays and transgenders, but every citizen of the Sixth"?