To the Editor:

The writer of a recent letter to your paper (Opinion: This is not normal politics, says Massena woman, Jan. 23, 2023) lamenting the ideology of Northern New York Republicans, need not be dismayed. NYS Republican leaders may not be in lockstep with the Democrats, but they are certainly not far behind, and they are doing their best to catch up with the self-styled progressives. The North Country's Republican congresswoman voted for the misnomered Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, which read in part, "the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.’’

I am astonished that the writer of the recent letter, a champion of homosexual prerogatives, would be critical of a congresswoman who believes that marriage does not mean a union between a man and a woman only and who votes accordingly.

Given the trajectory of the party, it is likely that we will soon have NYS Republican leaders telling us, in harmony with their Democratic colleagues, that gender is a social construct, that a goose is not really a goose but a gander, and a gander is not really a gander but a goose, and that goslings must be brought up gender-neutral.

The decadence of the state party extends to the county level. The executive committee of the St. Lawrence County Republican Committee has no problem with one of its members attempting to remove a sitting town councilman for writing a letter in defense of the rights of parents to safeguard their children's physical and moral well-being in the public schools.

There are of course many decent, traditionally-minded Republicans in the area. But unfortunately most of them choose not to be actively and effectively engaged in Republican Party politics, leaving the control of the executive committee in the hands of the ideologically anemic and the morally apathetic.

And so North Country progressives need not fear. The Democratic Party's anti-family values are in the ascendancy in the NYS GOP.

Kevin Beary
Colton