"The questions came at them like bullets.

And the candidates for the 5th Congressional District, responding to recurring themes of jobs, gay marriage and the war in Iraq, had only a minute to respond to each one.

U.S. Republican Rep. Virgil Goode and his opponent, Nelson County Democrat Al Weed, spent Tuesday night at the American Legion Memorial Post 325 in Danville, taking questions from the news media and the audience in the first of several panel discussions scheduled over the next several weeks.

Several questions focused on homosexual unions, also known as gay marriage.

“They should have the same rights as a heterosexual couple,” said Weed, who spoke of his own gay daughter in his response. “She is my child. I want her to have the same rights that my son does with his wife.”

When asked whether Goode would change his anti-gay marriage stance if he had a gay child, he responded, “My position would be the same,” adding that he would “give it some guidance and hopefully change its ways.”

George Washington High School senior Kathryn Hamilton, 17, can’t vote this November. But she still came to the forum to support Weed, mainly because of his support for civil unions.

“It’s like a no-brainer,” she said, adding that she doesn’t see any difference between civil unions and the civil rights movement.

Danville resident Kemp Hobbs may have had the most buttons and stickers supporting President Bush and Goode hanging on his plaid shirt Tuesday night.

He spoke plainly, and slowly, to make sure his points for Goode were understood.

“He’s a Christian man. He’s against abortion. He’s for family rights, not gays and lesbians.” he said.

Southside jobs and the economy, with its double-digit unemployment figures, weighed heavy on some voters’ minds.

Weed offered an education solution, saying that America has for too long depended on low-wage jobs.

“Those jobs are no longer coming to America,” he said.

Instead, he supports education funding and tax incentives to train people for the next generation of Southside Virginia jobs.

Goode placed the blame directly on free trade agreements between the United States and foreign countries like China that he said has nearly taken every “wooden bedroom furniture” manufacturing job from American workers.

“I don’t buy into the globalism theory when it costs jobs in Southside Virginia,” he said.

Weed did not support the vote to go to war in Iraq, saying Congress failed to do its job by accommodating the president.

“They were to be the voice of the people to answer to a strong executive,” he said.

Goode did vote to authorize the war in Iraq, saying Bush needed the tools to end Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“If we had had some in the 1930s with the courage of George Bush, we wouldn’t have had to fight World War II,” he said." (Kevin Crosset, Lynchburg News & Advance, October 13, 2004)

• Contact Kevin Crossett at kcrossett@newsadvance.com or (434) 385-5539.