Yesterday on the House floor, David spoke out against the anti-Jewish, anti-gay hate group that happened to be targeting the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond on the same day that David was scheduled to invite a rabbi to offer the invocation opening the daily floor session of the House.
The following is the text of David’s remarks:
Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, every once in a while, I’m reminded that perhaps the world is not as random as it may seem. It so happens that on the very day the Clerk’s office scheduled me to invite a rabbi to deliver the opening prayer, a group of so-called Christians have traveled to Richmond from Kansas, and at this very moment they are picketing the Virginia Holocaust Museum with a message of unvarnished anti-Jewish hatred. This is the same group that targets and disrupts the funerals of fallen American servicemembers and who later today will picket Hermitage High School in Henrico to intimidate its gay and lesbian students. Moments ago, while we were standing in this chamber listening to Rabbi Kranz offer words of blessing, the thugs of the Westboro Baptist Church were targeting one of Virginia’s symbols of hope and tolerance with a message of violent hate.
When events like these align, it gives us an opportunity to reflect upon what we have built here in our great Commonwealth, where, on the wall across from me in this very chamber, Thomas Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom is inscribed, and where that great man from Northern Virginia, George Washington, wrote of a “Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” While we have a long way to go as a Commonwealth when it comes our treatment of our gay and lesbian citizens, it is thanks to these ideas and the Virginians who have defended them that Jews have been part of Virginia’s fabric from our nation’s birth. In fact, the only Jewish military cemetery in the world outside the state of Israel is the Hebrew Confederate Cemetery on Shockoe Hill, right here in Richmond.
Mr. Speaker, we owe Jay Ipson and his staff at the Virginia Holocaust Museum a debt of gratitude, not only for what they do each day to teach tolerance through education, but for what they are doing this day by defying hate and keeping their doors open. We can be proud that members of this House of both parties have been strong supporters of the museum. In fact, the Gentleman from Richmond City, Delegate Loupassi, and the Gentleman from Henrico, Delegate O’Bannon currently serve on its board. Therefore, as a show of solidarity and support for the Virginia Holocaust Museum, I urge all of my colleagues, as well as the staff who may be watching, to stop by the museum today or sometime this week. Take in some of its exhibits and reflect upon history’s lessons for us all. In doing so, you will help stand up to today’s hateful protest, and perhaps even be inspired to help move us closer to that vision George Washington so eloquently expressed when he wrote the following, and I’ll end with this:
“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Thank you Mr. Speaker.
