National Elections are up and coming in November. They will be here before you know it. While doing some research online about local issues I continuously ran across an organization known as Citizens for Community Values (CCV) based out of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I finally decided to research them a little bit, considering they are a major force in Ohio politics. I started browsing their site and reading up a little bit on what they consider "Community Values".

It made me want to stab my eyes out.

I scrolled across the Issues menu selection and Homosexuality appeared, with another side menu that said Where do we stand?

I began reading and was pretty much just started rubbing my eyes when I got to this part:

"Destructive Behavior" was the first thing that caught my attention. I am not quite clear on how being Homosexual is considered destructive behavior. Being with the person you love and desire to spend time with never really seemed destructive to me.

But hey! They said this:

"Trapped in this behavior"? So they don't have problems with homosexuals, they just don't want you to be homosexual and will help you do whatever you need to do to repress your homosexuality in so much that you gain a stomach ulcer, go bald, grow old and unhappy, join a right wing organization and then enforce ignorant policies on the rest of the citizens of your state. They have to get members somehow, right?

After reading (and chuckling) a little more about Homosexuals being an outright threat to the decency of my life, and realizing that they could have summarized the whole page with one sentence that read, "God hates fags!", I headed back to the Issues tab and found how billboards are harmful to our children. According to CCV, billboards should not:

I agree with that one! (it was one of very few things I agreed with on this site)

No penis on our billboards please. Errr, uhm "male genitalia". We definitely don't want our children knowing that men have penises. Actually teaching them about this would be too much, rather than talk to our kids, we should just remove all ads for men's underwear.

Tits and ass are just unacceptable. While I have yet to see a billboard with a giant vulva, giant boobs, or a giant ass on it yet, it's probably because I am doing better things than running around checking to make sure that the billboards are free of tits and ass.

Mostly, because even as a single-father, I just don't care. If my daughter saw a scantily clad man or woman advertising something, and she asked me about it, I would actually talk to my daughter and explain it to her, not hide her from it.

Ha! Wait. WTF? Uhm. Beyond a couple low-talent hack DJ's in our area that might attempt something like this, I am pretty sure we don't need to worry about seeing people do this on a billboard. The majority of the billboards around here are owned by bigger corporations, that just wouldn't want the hassle from people beyond CCV.

To tell you the honest truth, there are so many billboards around here that I have for the most part, zoned them out. I don't really even pay attention to them. So technically, I could drive past a billboard with two people defecating on each other and not even know it. Actually, probably not, because the majority of the billboards around here are for McDonald's anyways.

Then I finally found the Holy Grail on their site. Pornography. Seeing that SuicideGirls could be deemed soft-core porn or art, depending on who you talk to, this caught my eye:

Damn you SG for sending me straight into Satan's lair! I knew this subscription was a bad idea, now I am going to have to suffer in the after-life burning in Hell while being poked and prodded with a giant pitch-fork by an over-sized red guy in a loin cloth who has hooves and horns.

CCV prides themselves on their site for cleaning up the Cincinnati area. They speak proudly of having removed strip-clubs from that area, and how they helped get stricter stripper legislation passed in all of Ohio. They have even gone as far as launching a "Dancer Hotline" in which you can call to help an exotic dancer leave the industry that is supposedly killing them.

They're patting themselves on the back for keeping gambling and casinos out of Ohio. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan, Indiana, all the states that border Ohio have casinos. But not in Ohio!

Thank you CCV for protecting the decency of my life by preventing companies that could potentially supply thousands of jobs for Ohioans from coming here. Thank you for saving me from that evil money that is spent at casinos, and driving it out of Ohio to the surrounding states. Thank you for protecting me from the deviant homosexuals and strippers. I feel much safer.

While CCV continues to battle these issues and congratulate themselves on removing jobs from Ohio, wonderful blogs and articles like this one continue to come out.

So while Ohioans are attempting to find work, the CCV does everything it can to prevent jobs from coming into the state, and are destroying jobs that are still in Ohio.

I strongly suggest that if the CCV wants to improve things, that they start within their own community before preaching to me and pushing legislation on how I should live my life.

What's the point of all this? While states like Oregon, which elected an openly gay mayor and California which legalized gay marriage take huge strides forward with organizations that promote self awareness, states like Ohio continue to take huge strides backwards with organizations that continue to oppress people due to their lifestyle choices.

CCV strongly backed Mike Huckabee, but since he dropped from the race, it seems they will continue to support Republican candidate John McCain, while attempting to get him to change his policies and views in order to keep the organization backing him

It is almost like extortion.

The 2008 Election will be historical, regardless of the winner. I just hope that the religious fanatics, racists, sexists and otherwise ignorant people don't make up the majority of the United States. Regardless of who people vote for, I hope that people base their decision on issues that matter rather than issues that don't, like race, gender or sexual orientation, I am just not sure it's possible.

I hope this helps explain Ohio a bit better politically. While it's no excuse, it may help you scratch your head less when trying to figure out what the population of the state is thinking.

DevilsReject went through 12 years of Catholic School and no longer believes in religion or God, but is highly amused by Raptor-Jesus