Nacho Padilla & Domestic Partner Benefits

You'd think a guy my size would really like a vato named after snack food, but given a recent phone call in to Abel's show yesterday, I think I'm done with Nachos for a while.

Here's the issue, Nacho called in about the El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values initiative that is on the ballot to attempt to reverse action by city council granting benefits to domestic partners.

Domestic partners means a lot of things, like straight couples who co-habitate, possibly have children, or gay couples.

Nacho mentioned that people talking about the potential implications of the poorly written initiative weren't being "truthful". I think it's funny that Nacho's talking about truth.

First of all, because of how confusing the language is, the proposed ordinance could in fact impact retirees. Either Nacho Padilla hasn't read the ordinance closely enough to understand that, or he's deliberately not being "truthful" with the public.

Padillas central argument was that since gay marriage is not legal in Texas, why would the tax payers have to have their property taxes raised to pay for domestic partner to have benefits.

Again, he's either ignorant of the facts or lying purposely. His argument is predicated on a fallacy. City employees don't get tax-payer funded healthcare. It comes out of their check every month. I read the original ordinance and the proposed ordinance and there is nothing in there about property taxes being raised.

Anyone who's ever heard Padilla speak on the radio for any particular amount of time will know that he is, in my opinion, homophobic. Its not very hard to see through his rhetoric.

But I think the real reason Padilla is commenting on the issue is because he has visions of grandeur in terms of a political comeback. Hate to break it to him, but I don't see him as a viable candidate for anything in the near future because he doesn't have a base or the right set of circumstances to get serious consideration.

One last bit of irony though, I think it's a little funny that a divorced guy comments on marriage and traditional family values, but that's just me I guess.