Why Are Right Wingers So Afraid Of Their Own Homosexuality?

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee today voted 15 to 12 to send the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913) to the floor for a vote. The bill seeks to protect victims of hate crimes who are gay and transgender and, predictably, anti-gay bigots, primarily in the GOP, oppose it. A similar bill passed in 2007 and Bush vetoed it. Only 14 Democrats voted against it in the House in 2007, all bigoted reactionaries: Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA), Bud Cramer (Blue Dog-AL, retired but replaced by another bigot), Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN), Bart Gordon (Blue Dog-TN), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Heath Schuler (Blue Dog-NC), and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS). Keep that in mind when someone tells you Blue Dogs are just about being fiscally conservative and not about being a hateful bigot.

Among the 80 co-sponsors there are 8 Republicans, 3 representing districts with big gay populations, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Miami), Anh Cao (New Orleans), and Mary Bono Mack (Palm Springs), although none of the notorious Republican closet cases signed on-- not even David Dreier, whose closet door has been hanging loose for almost a decade and the best known anti-gay closet queens in the Senate, Miss McConnell and Lindsey Graham are both on board for the expected Republican filibuster.

It's ironic that the bill was voted on the same week as the debut of Outrage, a film that purports to kick open Washington's closet door. The documentary "investigates the secret lives of closeted gay politicians, some of whom have spent years in office with only the skimpiest of scrutiny from the mainstream media." Among those "outed" are Florida's current  governor, Charlie Crist, who was viewed for a time as a front-runner to be John McCain's vice-presidential pick; David Dreier (R-San Dimas), who was once a leading candidate for the House majority leader post when the Republicans still controlled Congress; Ken Mehlman, George Bush's campaign manager during the 2004 election and former Republican National Committee chairman; former New York City mayor Ed Koch; the now-retired Idaho Sen. Larry Craig; Jim McCrery (R-La.), a ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee who retired last year; Ed Schrock (R-Va.), who retired in 2004; and-- gasp-- the prominent Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. 

These were all easy targets and there were no surprises-- no taps on the closet doors of the worst of the gay Republican hypocrites, like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Dana Rohrabacher (D-CA), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Adrian Smith (R-NE) or even McConnell, who I know the filmmakers were investigating and hoping to include. I wonder if any of them will be man enough to vote for the hate crimes bill this year.

I picked up a new book the other day, Marshall Jon Fisher's A Terrible Splendor-- Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played, which tells the story of the greatest tennis match ever played: the "1937 Davis Cup match, played on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon, was a battle of titans: the world's number one tennis player against the number two; America against Germany; democracy against fascism. For five superhuman sets, the duo’s brilliant shotmaking kept the Centre Court crowd–and the world–spellbound." Three of the main characters were closeted gays. And one, Baron Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von Cramm, was arrested by the Nazis after he embarrassed Hitler by losing and charged with being a sexual deviant. The story is fascinating and you may want to read it but the reason I'm bringing it up today is because after getting out of prison, Baron von Cramm was sent to the Russian front and he actually survived the war, returned to Germany and became a major tennis star again. Except for one thing-- because the Nazi Regime had charged him with sexual deviance, he was never permitted to play-- or even enter-- the United States. Even as the husband of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, the puritanical, homophobic USA was strictly verboten to him for the rest of his life. He died in 1976.