Candidates Who Play Anti-Gay Card … might not be doing as well in the next election cycle as they expect:

Here’s a press release from Ron Grignol, the Republican challenger for a House seat in the 43rd District in southeastern Fairfax near Fort Belvoir: Del. Mark Sickles, a Democrat, “sent a mail piece deliberately misleading the voters” by showing Sickles cradling a toddler in his arms. “The problem is Mark Sickles does not have a child or a family.”

Grignol notes in the release that he indeed has children, which he says helps him understand how to improve schools, while Sickles “feels he needs to mislead voters.”

Curiously, while Grignol’s Web site shows him with his two daughters, it is silent about his own family status. He is divorced, something he does mention in his campaign speeches.

Oh, the hypocrisy. Of course I don’t fail to note that “not having children” equals “gay” in the minds of what another Republican calls “a small, vocal minority” in the party. He knows, because they smeared him with a lie about an endorsement from a Washington “gay” paper in his party’s primary. Now he’s endorsing the Democratic candidate in the race, against the Republican that did the smear job. Nice.

Fortunately, a coalition of Virginia clergy and religious leaders has come out (heh, heh, etc.) to issued an appeal to candidates not to appeal to sexual prejudices. As of press time, one of the most vocal “anti-gay” candidates had not responded to the request.