Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives for eight years, but during that time they haven't held a single hearing on minimum wage.
The GOP's very first hearing on minimum wage in a nearly a decade was scheduled to take place today, but the hearing was abruptly canceled for reasons that are beyond parody.
As it turns out, one of the GOP's key witnesses who was going to speak against raising wages has called for imposing taxes on gay people.
The House Education and the Workforce Committee postponed a hearing scheduled for today on the economic consequences of a $15 hourly minimum wage after homophobic and sexist blog posts surfaced that were penned by one of the Republican witnesses, San Diego State University economist Joseph Sabia. In a 2002 post published on his personal column "No Shades of Gray" (which has since been taken down but can be accessed through the Wayback Machine, an internet archive) Sabia suggested the idea to “tax and regulate homosexual acts.”
I do not recommend reading it for yourself, but Sabia's 2002 post is actually worse than Politico's description makes it sound.
In his essay, or whatever you want to call it, he said Republicans should respond to taxes on junk food -- big gulps and cheeseburgers -- by imposing taxes on gay people because gay people are responsible for worse health outcomes than junk food is.
This was going to be one of the GOP's witnesses against raising the federal minimum wage, but I suppose that's not necessarily surprising. What I can't figure out is how this man became an economist for San Diego State University. He may not be for much longer once word of this spreads on campus.