REPUBLICAN HATRED & BIGOTRY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN HENDERSONVILLE, TENNESSEE-- MEET REP. DEBRA MAGGOT

When I was general manager of Sire Records, we were most famous (at least in my mind) for being a punk/alternative rock label, home of The Ramones, the Dead Boys, Richard Hell, The Saints, Depeche Mode, Ministry, Talking Heads, The Cult, The Cure, Primal Scream, The Smiths... But the reality was more prosaic. Madonna sales paid all the bills. And when Seymour Stein, the genius behind artist acquisition, signed a kind of young male Madonna-ish singer... well, who was I to question?

Tommy's music may not have been my cup of tea genre-wise-- I seem to recall he had an album out at the same time as The Pretenders-- but I certainly knew how to appreciate his single flying up the pop charts and landing at #1. Unless you're a New Kids on The Block fanatic (or from South East Asia, where he was still a beloved superstar long after his U.S. singing career was over) you might not even remember Tommy's music. But there are only 52 number 1 records a year and most of them are "reserved" for superstars like Madonna and Mariah Carey, so to get a new artist a #1 is one of the biggest things you can achieve in the music biz. And in the process of that, Tommy and I became friends. He was just a teenager, all wide-eyed and confused. But he had a solid upbringing from loving-- albeit Republican-- parents and he had his head firmly on his shoulders.

When Tommy's career had played out, he, unlike most new artists, had saved a great deal of money-- despite being the victim of a larcenous manager-- and he made some smart investments and put himself through college. Before college he asked me if I would help him find a job in the music business when he graduated. Why say no when it's 3 or 4 years away and anything could happen between now and then? So I said sure. In the interim Tommy realized he was gay. He settled into a long-term romantic relationship with Charlie, his college's star athlete, who went on to become an incredibly successful teacher of handicapped children. I mean so successful that the parents of these kids pray to God everyday to thank Him that their child is in Charlie's care.

Meanwhile, after graduating, Tommy came to work as an assistant at Reprise, where I had become president while he was in college. He started at the bottom and was an instant star-- a guy who was never afraid of hard work and more hard work and more hard work. He quickly rose through the ranks and became a different kind of star-- obviously using his natural rapport with artists and his ability to understand their points of view. Tommy's been a vice president of Warner Brothers Records for 5 years now and has continued to grow and to shine, one of the company's most valuable employees.

Tommy and Charlie adopted their first son, Owen, two years ago. God must have wanted to do something super special for little Owen. This is one of the happiest and most loved babies I've ever met. The 3 of them live in a suburban neighborhood in New Jersey where they are completely accepted and loved by their neighbors-- breathing, walking advertisements proving that Representative Debra Maggart (R-Hendersonville) needs to seek psychiatric or spiritual counseling to help her get over her hatreds, phobias, ignorance and bigotry. More about the disturbed Debra Maggot below.

Everyone who knows Charlie and Tommy is all excited because they're expecting their second son, Alden, in May. This time they have a surrogate mom carrying their baby. All Tommy's neighbors came to the baby shower, of course. They're very lucky they have no Maggots in the neighborhood. (This is very off-topic but you know who else they're lucky to not have in the neighborhood? Ramesh Ponnuru. Never heard of him? You will.) I was so excited in 2004 when Tommy's dad, a former Fortune 500 CEO and lifelong Republican, confronted the homophobia endemic to his political party and a threat to his son and his son's family. In November he pulled the lever for John Kerry-- and never looked back.

Now why have I asked DWT readers to consider all this? Debra Maggot or Maggart-- people spell it different ways-- is a vicious far right Republican homophobe in Tennessee. She's been on an anti-gay crusade for her whole miserable career and recently she's been on a tear to make it illegal for gay men and women to adopt children. "We also have seen evidence," she lied, "that homosexual couples prey on young males and have, in some instances, adopted them in order to have unfretted (sic) access to subject them to a life of molestation and sexual abuse." This is a very, very sick woman and the voters in Tennessee's mostly moderate 45th district should look closely and see if this hate-monger is what they want representing them. I don't know if it's because of her unfortunate physical appearance, because of her shrewish personality, or because she is a crooked and dishonest pol (who was caught breaking campaign finance laws-- I mean how many Republicans ever think the laws are made for them to obey?) but Maggot's husband divorced her and left her a hateful pile of human rubble.

Jerry Jones from the Vanderbilt Medical Center broke the story about this psycho homophobe in OUT & ABOUT a few days ago. Maggot's district is uncomfortably close to Nashville, which prides itself on being the Athens of the New South. Their representative is very, very Old South.