By: Joe Siegel/TRT Reporter
Openly gay Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox is now the subject of a YouTube video, F**k You, Gordon Fox.
The video features Jim Carroll, who wrote new lyrics to the popular song F**k You by Cee Lo Green.
Fox stunned the LGBT community on April 27 when he announced his support for a civil unions’ bill, noting there were not enough votes in the House for a marriage equality bill.
“I found it difficult in my head to come up with a rational explanation as to why a gay man would do something like that,” Carroll told The Rainbow Times.
The video, which features the State House in Providence as a backdrop, was shot in one day. Carroll said he and his fellow “second class citizens” – Roy Harcourt, Steve Ferrera, Ricky Fortier-Kay, Austin Tyler, David Damato, Joe Krzak, and David Boudreau “had a good time doing it.”
Carroll selected Cee Lo Green’s song in order to let Fox know he disappointed the LGBT community.
“I wanted to be bold,” Carroll said. “I wanted to make sure there were no mixed messages.”
Governor Lincoln Chafee (I) supports allowing gays and lesbians to wed. Polls released by Marriage Equality Rhode Island (MERI) showed the majority of Rhode Islanders support same-sex marriage. Hearings on the marriage equality bill were held in the House and Senate.
A vote on the civil unions’ bill passed the House in May and is awaiting a vote by the Senate.
However, many same-sex marriage advocates remain bitterly disappointed and blame Fox for stopping marriage equality.
“Gordon Fox’s move to stop fighting for equal marriage to pursue the “practical compromise” (read: separate and unequal) dead end known as civil unions is both unprincipled and unnecessary,” said Josh Kilby of Providence. “To say that I’m disappointed would imply that I ever thought that Gordon Fox was anything but a weak-kneed insider politician, I am angry that my civil rights were squandered away for a deal cooked up by the Fox/Paiva-Weed team primarily to please themselves. This is perhaps the biggest political fiasco I’ve ever witnessed.”
Carroll does not accept Fox’s reasoning for supporting civil unions instead of full marriage rights for same-sex couples.
“I don’t believe anything he says,” Carroll said. ‘(Fox) says things like: ‘some rights are better than no rights’. That’s not true. Some rights are still not equal and a matter of fact, it’s worse.”
Reaction to the video has been mostly positive. Fox’s spokesman, Larry Berman, had no comment.
Carroll doesn’t have a lot of faith in Fox’s leadership abilities, particularly in regards to marriage equality.
“I have never seen a politician be as inarticulate as Gordon Fox when speaking on this subject,” Carroll said. “I would go toe-to-toe with him any day.”
