Homophobia Is A Bipartisan Disease, As We Just Saw Again-- This Time In North Carolina

I'll attribute it to bad staff work, but Friday night Rachel Maddow misled her audience into thinking the viciously anti-LGBT bill that the North Carolina legislature just passed, HB-2, was a strictly party-line vote. True, the leadership in both chambers of the legislature is Republican and true, the Republicans pushed this bill through from beginning to end. BUT, at least in the North Carolina House, the Republicans found 11 like-minded, bigoted Democrats to give them a hand.

Maddow: "The Republicans in the legislature did this all in the space of 12 hours, with such a small amount of debate, with so little transparency that the Democrats in the legislature simpy walked out in protest before the vote was even taken." Actually, Maddow gets a "Half True" on that. The Democrats in the Senate did walk out and refused to vote. The House, however, was a different story-- one that Maddow never alluded to.

"Governor Pat McCrory and Republican state legislators may be super-psyched," she offered, "about the fact that they got this done and they may be super-psyched that North Carolina cities are not allowed to prevent discrimination against gay and transgender people..." Look, I don't expect Rachel to know every single legislature in the country, but NBC has quite a large staff for this kind of thing. These are the 11 conservative Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP for the anti-LGBT legislation:

• William Brisson, NC-22 (Bladen, Johnston, Sampson)
• Elmer Floyd, NC-43 (Cumberland)
• Charles Graham, NC-47 (Robeson)
• George Graham, NC-12 (Craven, Greene, Lenoir)
• Ken Goodman, NC-66 (Hoke, Montgomery, Richmond, Robeson, Scotland)
• Howard Hunter III, NC-5 (Bertie, Gates, Hertford, Pasquotank)
• Larry Bell, NC-21 (Duplin, Sampson, Wayne)
• Garland Pierce, NC-48 (Hoke, Richmond, Robeson, Scotland)
• Brad Salmon, NC-51 (Harnett, Lee)
• Billy Richardson, NC-44 (Cumberland)
• Michael H. Wray, NC-27 (Halifax, Northampton)

Although none of them have endorsed Bernie Sanders, at least five of them are part of the Hillary Clinton North Carolina Leadership Team:

• Charles Graham
• George Graham
• Howard Hunter III
• Garland Pierce
• Billy Richardson

What does the affinity of these legislators tell us about Hillary Clinton, whose own record on the LGBT community was pretty dreadful until it became politically safe and politically expedient to support equality. I would imagine if these conservaDems had voted to authorize discrimination against women or blacks or Jews, Hillary would reject their endorsements, loudly and proudly. The gay community should ask itself why she hasn't done so with these homophobes. She takes umbrage-- or she did before she was in a primary with an actual progressive:



HRC (Human Rights Campaign, not Hillary Rodman Clinton), some cocktail-swilling establishment types in DC who make a living by purporting to represent the LGBT community, have given her cover with an undeserved and shameful endorsement. And how offended Bill and Hill were when gays on the frontline against bigotry pointed out that HRC is just another tool of the DC establishment.

HRC gave me a leadership equality award in 1997 and if you've been around DWT for a while, you may recall that I smashed it up with an ax when they endorsed Joe Lieberman. Last the time, I noted that their fancy new 8-story building symbolized their institutional self-perpetuating role inside the DC insider game and that it was clear that what HRC values is access to power. Friday, Michelangelo Signorile, a far more admired and trusted voice in the gay community than anyone involved with HRC on any level, spoke out of their latest outrage against the interests of the people they claim to support as they decided to help the GOP retain control of the U.S. Senate. Illinois incumbent Republican, Mark Kirk, a typical frightened, little DC anti-gay closet case, has a 78% score on the HRC scorecard and his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, has a 100% score, but HRC endorsed Kirk over Duckworth. If Kirk retains his seat, the violently anti-gay GOP majority will retain power in the Senate.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate acknowledged the “long game” HRC may be playing in backing GOPers who vote pro-gay, but nonetheless drew the line at allowing the terribly anti-gay GOP leadership to retain the Senate this year, observing that HRC “does not seem to grasp...simple reality.”

At The New Republic, Eric Sasson rightly pointed to HRC’s “serious diversity problem” per an internal report that leaked, and to the optics of backing a white male Republican with a meager score over a woman of color and a combat veteran who lost both of her legs in the Iraq war-- and who has a perfect score. Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed had obtained the internal report last year, which called HRC “exclusionary,” “sexist,” and “homogenous.” This endorsement certainly lent more credence to that.

The simple truth is that in 2016 in Illinois we don’t need Mark Kirk-- he needs us. Kirk is in a deep blue state and he absolutely must support full LGBT equality in order to win. His coming out for the Equality Act is not brave; it’s about his own survival. And the first vote he’ll take upon winning back his seat will be a cowardly one to make the anti-gay McConnell (with an HRC score of 0) the Senate Majority Leader again.

There’s no question that the Democrats’ path to taking back the Senate very much includes defeating Kirk, who is in the bluest state among those where GOP senators are embattled. So HRC’s action does raise questions about how committed the group really is to seeing the Democrats take back the Senate, and if it perhaps has conflicting interests. Daily Kos’s David Nir surmised that HRC’s Kirk endorsement is all about keeping “donations flowing from corporations and wealthy gay Republicans,” and he may be on to something.

One only has to look at the website where Chad Griffin posted his response to get a feel for HRC’s aims. Rather than posting the response on its own website or on a progressive or LGBT site (or on Medium, where Griffin later posted a response to the North Carolina debacle), Griffin wrote his defense of the Kirk endorsement on the Independent Journal Review, which was founded by former Republican Party staffers Alex Skatell and Phil Musser, and has been described by GOP consultant Alex Castellanos as a cross of “RedState with BuzzFeed.” The New York Times described it as having “a steady stream of articles critical of President Obama and other Democrats.”

Skatell, now 30, started the first Facebook page for the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) when he was 22. One major donor to the RGA is the GOP New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer-- who also happens to be a major donor to HRC. Singer’s foundation and the Daniel S. Loeb Foundation committed $3 million to the group, incurring criticism because Singer makes a lot of his money from a “vulture fund“ that sues poverty-stricken countries for their debt.

Singer has a son who is gay and worked on the push for marriage equality in New York, credited with helping persuade four Republicans to vote with Democrats to pass the bill. But Singer has his priorities: He bankrolled the campaigns of some of the most anti-gay GOP Senate candidates who won in 2014, like Joni Ernst of Iowa and Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia, and he became a key fundraiser for the presidential campaign and super PACS of anti-gay Marco Rubio, who promised to overturn the Obergefell ruling. In 2016, Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, is the third largest contributor to the RGA, which is working this year to re-elect none other than Pat McCrory, the North Carolina governor who this week signed the most anti-LGBT law we’ve seen.

Singer also has been among those leading the anti-Trump effort among Republicans, which doesn’t look very promising right now. Looking at the possibility of Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination, it’s no secret that GOP leaders have focused on putting all of their efforts on retaining the Senate. Surely Paul Singer will be critical in that effort, bringing hard and steady pressure to bear wherever it is necessary. It’s not a surprise, then, that the American Unity Fund, which Singer founded, has been tweeting and retweeting support of HRC for its endorsement of Mark Kirk, in what seems like an attempt to counter the many LGBT people who are expressing their anger and to whom HRC believes it is not answerable.

If HRC is not answerable to LGBT people, however-- and its president, Griffin, rarely even gives interviews to LGBT media, while speaking often in the larger media-- exactly to whom and what is it answerable, and what are its true priorities? One thing is clear: HRC doesn’t speak for the LGBT community, and the sooner that politicians and those in the media grasp that, the smarter they will be.

Why Does The Media Think Aaron Schock's Duplicitous Life In The Closet Is Unmentionable?

Is there still anything to say about Aaron Schock on blogs like DWT which have been talking about his corruption for years and years? Now that TV news has been all over the Aaron Schock scandal, we might as well just walk away and leave it to them, right? Not so fast. Rachel Maddow's report Tuesday night on MSNBC (above) was, as one would expect, better than most of the mainstream media coverage. But like all of her journalistic colleagues, she seems to have left out a pretty key component-- the role of Aaron Schock's life in the closet and how that impacted what turned into a life of duplicity. Are we still too immature to eventually about the subject?

Hunter Walker, writing for Business Insider, asked Barney Frank about "the rumors" that Schock was gay. Schock's gay lifestyle is beyond rumor in DC-- something "everyone" in DC knows about, even if the folks back in Peoria don't. He's not deeply closeted the way Members who actually marry beards are-- like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Tom Cotton (R-AR). Years ago, when Schock was asked by a TV reporter why such a handsome catch like himself was still single, he smiled and said he just hadn't found the right gal yet. Apparently the gay bars he was hanging out at were the wrong places to be looking.

When former Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank first learned that Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Illinois) was resigning, he assumed it was related to longstanding rumors about Schock's sexuality.

"He was outed or what?" Frank said when Business Insider asked for his thoughts on Tuesday afternoon shortly after news of Schock's resignation broke.

...When Frank was told Schock's resignation stemmed from questions over his use of campaign and taxpayer funds, he noted that the congressman was reported to have improperly accepted money to take a male companion on one of his foreign trips.

"Wasn't it [that] he took somebody with him?" Frank asked. "I thought he also traveled with one particular staffer."

Indeed, Schock's travel with a man (who was actually a non-staffer) was one of the things that fueled rumors about his sexuality. The various stories led the gay magazine "Out" to say in a story on Schock's resignation that he was "believed to be working in a glass closet on Capitol Hill."

Frank noted "there's been the rumor" about Schock.

"I don't know if it's true," Frank added.

Frank went on, however, to explain that Schock had no "right to privacy" because of his record on gay issues. Schock has what The Huffington Post has described as a "virulently anti-gay voting history," including votes against hate-crime legislation and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

"I will say this, I don't know if he's gay or not," Frank said. "But if he is, he's forfeited any right to privacy because he votes anti-gay. My view is that people who are gay who vote to support the right of other people to do it have a right to privacy, but the right to privacy does not include hypocrisy."

Schock's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Frank's remarks.

...Frank also suggested that, if the rumors were true, Schock should definitely come out now that he is leaving Congress.

"Of course he should," said Frank, who concluded with a reference to Schock's muscular physique that is often displayed in shirtless photos on Schock's Instagram:

"Yeah, if they're true, and I don't know that they are. I have to say, if they're not true, he spent entirely too much time in the gym for a straight man."

This morning the Washington Post's Terrence McCoy skirted the subject a bit. "Schock’s choice of that vibrant color underscored his lifelong determination to go big and brash. According to a review of newspaper clippings going back to when he was a teenager in Peoria, Ill., Schock always pushed for more, more, more-- and to be the youngest to ever have it... He’s bold, like his bright-red office." But neither McCoy nor anyone else talks about how living a life of duplicity-- a life as a closet case-- was key to Schock's emergence as a skilled and practiced liar. He and other journalists-- all of whom are aware of the "rumors"-- chalk it up to an over-abundance of ambition and drive. But no one even mentions the lavender belt and tight white pants.



Michelangelo Signorile, of course, doesn't beat around the bush but is HuffPo Gay Voices really a mainstream outlet that will get the story out to voters in the heartland?

That claim by Itay Hod [that a journalist caught Schock showering with his gay male roommate] and the media attention it spurred was little over a year ago. It's odd that it's missing now in virtually all the current coverage, because it's a part of Schock's media history that also points to deception. More interesting is how the media runs from this story, refusing to investigate it while looking into all other aspects of Schock's political life-- yet the possibility that he is gay is part of his political life. Just as he's denied wrongdoing with regard to who paid for his office makeover or his trips, Schock denied being gay when I asked him in 2012 in the context of his anti-gay votes. He did not do this by saying, "I'm not gay," but by saying the question was "ridiculous" and pointing to a denial from years past, saying, "I've said that before, and I don't think it's worthy of further response. I think you can look it up." The question is relevant because if Schock is gay, then he is a hypocrite, since he voted against the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and has said he was against gay marriage and for a federal marriage amendment. There are few more stellar examples of past possible deceptions that relate to the current stories about Schock.

That doesn't mean Schock's possibly being gay hasn't been alluded to in the current coverage, however, through code words that show how backward we often still are as a society on homosexuality, as if we've not moved past the 1950s. Both Roll Call and the New York Times, for example, have called Schock "flamboyant," and The Guardian, in an article about the allegedly Downton-inspired office, noted that the decor was "dangerously flamboyant," after first mentioning the White House picnic outfit.

Come on, folks. "Flamboyant" is a word that was most used to describe Liberace but is hardly used to describe any straight male in the public eye. In fact, the Times headlined its obituary of the then-closeted Liberace like this: "Liberace, Flamboyant Pianist, Dead." And in the Times last September, in a review of Behind the Candelabra, the Liberace biopic, reviewer Mike Hale describe Liberace as "a famously flamboyant, closeted-in-plain-sight gay entertainer."

In the recent piece about Schock's current troubles, the Times not only describes the congressman as "flamboyant" but discusses his "ripped ab muscles," his "racy" Instagram account and his "lifestyle"-- a word that is often used pejoratively to discuss gays, as in the "gay lifestyle." In fact, the word "lifestyle" has come up quite a bit in much of the coverage.

It's hard to believe that reporters in D.C. and beyond didn't follow the past discussion of Schock's sexual orientation. Still, I'm not saying all or even most of the code words being used in these articles now are intentional. A lot of it may be unconscious. And Schock is, after all, leading quite a flamboyant lifestyle, painting his office red, posing on the cover of magazines shirtless and jetting around the world and showing it all off.

But whether it's intentional, unconscious, or coincidental, the lack of any overt discussion (or investigation) of Schock's sexual orientation, while wink-wink words keep popping up, betrays a lot. As I discuss at length in my next book, the media and many LGBT activists themselves often breathlessly talk about polls that point to increased acceptance of homosexuality and LGBT rights, as if we've nearly won the war. But when the media still views the possibility that someone is gay as, at best, something that would be too damagingly invasive to report on or, at worst, a dirty little secret-- even when it's relevant or interesting to report on-- then we have surely got a long way to go.

And in Out Magazine Jerry Portwood wrote about "all the talk about the cute, blond-highlighted personal photographer, Jonathon Link, who he employs and even gave a raise to while others in his office had their salaries cut." Even Aaron's father seems to be trying to convince himself his son isn't gay. "He wears stylish clothing, and yet he’s not gay … and he’s not married... and he’s not running around with women," he said. "Everybody’s throwing up their arms. They can’t figure out Aaron. So he must be crooked. So attack him. Bring him down, because he doesn’t fit into our picture."

Yes, There Are Gay Democrats Who Vote GOP On Everything But Specifically Gay Issues

Don't assume from this picture of Sean Patrick Maloney's lovely family that he isn't a conservative

Friday Michaelangelo Signorile picked up on the theme we've been discussing here at DWT about the disappointments inherent in identity politics. He singled out anti-progressive gay congressmembers, specifically Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ).

Both, though Sinema even more so, campaigned for Congress as progressives and both were very upfront about being gay and seemed to hope voters would assume because they are openly gay, they would also back a progressive agenda. Each has accrued voting records that are among the half dozen most conservative among House Democrats. According to the ProgressivePunch crucial vote score Maloney has the worst record of any freshman (31.25) and Sinema has the third-worst (38.46). Both vote against progressive initiatives twice as often as they support them. And both voted with the Republicans in their shut-down-the-government agenda. "Think about this," suggests Signorile, "On what is arguably the most important debate in Congress, two of nine Democrats who voted with the tea party-led blackmailers are openly gay or bisexual. Two of only five openly gay or bisexual members of the House voted with the extreme far right to undermine the president."

The newest iteration in the GOP strategy to undermine the country by continuing their policy of anarchy, nihilism, blackmail and delegitimization of Obama and of government itself, is the piecemeal approach to funding we talked about last week. Sinema and Maloney were among the very first Democrats to break ranks with their party and embrace the Republican strategy-- but only when it suited their conservatism.

The first round of votes required enough Democrats to pass the GOP bills with 2/3s and they all failed last Tuesday-- but not because of Maloney and Sinema. First bill up was to fund veterans benefits and 33 Democrats crossed to the Dark Side, including both of them. A few minutes later, when the GOP tried passing a bill to fund the national parks, 22 Democrats backed them, including Sinema and Maloney. The third bill was interesting because it funded District of Columbia government operations and a lot of progressive Democrats just couldn't vote no. 34 Democrats crossed the aisle on that one though, tellingly, not the corporate-minded Maloney (who does his call time from the offices of a shady hedge fund).

Cantor announced he would bring the bills up again under regular order when only simple majorities would be needed to pass them. So, on Thursday when the GOP passed a bill to pay the national guard, Sinema and Maloney were among the 36 Democrats to cross the aisle to undermine Democratic strategy to end the government shut-down. Next up was a bill to pay veterans benefits and Sinema and Murphy again joined 35 Democrats who crossed over to the GOP. Keeping the national parks open-- Sinema and Maloney were among the 23 aisle crossing Dems. National Institutes of Health… Sinema and Maloney were among the 25 Democrats who collaborated with the GOP on that one. Both voted for all the rest of the piecemeal funding bills this week.

So here you have two very conservative Democrats-- albeit gay very conservative Democrats-- voting with the Republicans to, in effect, pressure the Democratic Senate and Obama to buckle to GOP blackmail that Obamacare be dismantled before the government be allowed to open.(Again, it was telling that the only bill in the two days of voting that didn't have support from Maloney was the one to fund DC. I guess that's why he's the worst freshman and Sinema is just the third-worst.)

We'll end this discussion with another look at what Signorile had to say about these two at HuffPo:

Since taking office, Sinema has voted with the GOP against economic justice issues that progressives, including LGBT activists, view as crucial. Both she and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), an openly gay former Clinton aide, also elected for the first time in 2012, have voted with big banks and Wall Street time and again. Right out of the gate, Maloney, who took a lot of Wall Street money, voted with the GOP on the debt ceiling early this year, and actually co-sponsored a bill that would roll back reforms of the very Wall Street practices that led to the economic collapse. He even voted with the GOP to take authority over the Keystone XL project from the president. Like Sinema, he also voted to jeopardize Obamacare or shut down the government. And he too was supported in his election campaign by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, and other gay and progressive groups, touted as a progressive.

…Some say it's better to have Democrats like Sinema and Maloney than to possibly have a Republican in the seat. If it means they have to vote with the GOP, especially if the vote isn't pivotal, then so be it, the thinking goes. But that breeds the most cynical kind of politics and drives people away from participating when we need to bring them in. It only furthers the disgust with Washington. It's dishonest too, as these candidates are promoted as progressives and sold as such to LGBT and progressive donors, disingenuously using their queerness during Democratic primaries as a way to give them street cred with progressives while their records and intentions are otherwise. (And they're continuing to do it: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is hosting an "Equality Reception" next week in D.C. for them, once again using their being gay or bi to raise money.) President Obama comfortably won both Sinema's and Maloney's swing districts in 2012, and a real progressive could win them as well.

…Klein believes it's healthy to debate whether or not it's enough today for a candidate to simply be gay, lesbian, bi or trans, and I agree. The quicker that progressives learn that just being LGBT doesn't make someone progressive, the better. And the quicker that LGBT people (donors and voters) realize that just because a candidate is LGBT, it doesn't mean that he or she is looking out for many interests that are important to us, the better. As with the rejection by LGBT voters of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the city's Democratic mayoral primary-- and the dismissal of simplistic identity politics--  it's a maturing of the LGBT electorate.

Why Did Some Gays Vote For Republicans Last Week?

Michelangelo Signorile, on the nation's most popular gay-oriented radio show, explored the phenomena that saw some members of the LGBT community voting for Republicans last week, even for radical right kooks like Rand Paul (R-KY) and Paul LePage (R-ME). As we saw last week, as many as a third of LGBT voters pulled the lever for Republicans.

Signorile makes the case against several listeners who claimed they voted their pocketbooks-- or at least the ridiculous but widely believed Republican propaganda that has foolish people believing the GOP is better for their pocketbooks-- over their civil rights. Another thought sending Rand Paul to the Senate for six years would send Obama an appropriate message from the gay community.

And yet, the Republican takeover of the House and many statehouses means there will be no votes expanding gay civil rights protections, in Congress and in most of the states that went GOP (and there likely will be antigay votes, such as in Minnesota where Republican pledge to push a marriage amendment), which begs the question of why gay people would vote Republican in this election. The phones were jammed with people who voted GOP who wanted to offer their explanations for casting votes politicians like David Vitter in Louisiana, for Rand Paul in Kentucky, for Rick Scott in the governor's race in Florida, and for various other, Senate, House and local races.

The must-hear video above doesn't include the gay person who voted for Vitter over Melancon for the U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana. Voting for a homophobic maniac and a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary like Vitter can never be the right thing to do under any circumstances. I would like to point out, however, that it was Blue Dog Democrats like Charlie Melancon who muddied the waters for Democrats and ruined their brand, along a wide front of issues, including LGBT equality. In April of 2009, when the House passed a Hate Crimes bill 17 conservative Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans against including gays in the legislation's protection. One of those 17 was Melancon. How easy could it be for any gay person to ever vote for him? And this past May, when the House passed an amendment by Patrick Murphy to eliminate Don't Ask Don't Tell, again, 26 homophobic Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans against gay equality. (Melancon, already running for the Senate, took the cowardly position that day and didn't vote.) Of the 26 conservative Democrats who voted against repealing DADT, 15 will not be serving in Congress after January:

Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR)
Rick Boucher (D-VA)
Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)
Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)
Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS)
Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN)
Chet Edwards (D-TX)
Bob Etheridge (D-NC)
Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA)
Solomon Ortiz (D-TX)
Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND)
Ike Skelton (D-MO)
John Spratt (D-SC)

More thoughts on that interview with outed California State Sen. Roy Ashburn

"I have had the privilege of serving in elective office for 26 years and dealing with important legislation, and I did so with a huge secret and in many ways a career built upon lies and deceit."

-- Senator Ashburn, in the L.A. Times interview

by Ken

[from a dispatch carried on BakersfieldNow.com, "home of KBAK & KFFX Eyewitness News"]

Change of course: Roy Ashburn urges support for gay rights

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
May 27, 2010

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Sen. Roy Ashburn spoke out passionately in favor of gay rights during a legislative session.

The Republican from Bakersfield was forced to reveal he is gay after a recent arrest for drunken driving.

On Thursday, he urged his fellow senators to "rise above discrimination" and support letting gays serve openly in the military.

Ashburn also weighed in on a bill designed to protect clergy who refuse to perform gay marriages.

"I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals, and so I, um, I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me. And it's highly emotional," Ashburn told fellow senators.

Ashburn said he would not be speaking at all were it not for his drunken driving arrest in March after he left a gay-friendly nightclub near the state Capitol. . . .

My agenda for today was an update on the state of the "conventional wisdom" on anti-incumbent fever, but that will have to wait till tomorrow. (I wish we could always shove the conventional wisdom out of sight this easily.) All I really have in mind for today is a gut reaction to Howie's morning post -- specifically, the large chunk of interview he reproduced by the Los Angeles Times's Patt Morrison with recently self-outed California State Sen. Roy Ashburn, whose "life as a 'family values' politician all but ended months ago," Patt recalls --

in the early morning hours of March 3. He was arrested for DUI after he'd left a gay club, and soon thereafter acknowledged that he was gay. His DUI cost him his driver's license for a time and put him back on a bike, pedaling his life in an altogether new direction.

Howie has repeatedly recommended former Rep. Bob Bauman's post-traumatic book The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, written after he'd come to grips with his ignominious self-outing, and the life of repression and denial that preceded it. I gather from Howie that Bauman achieved some real understanding of the way he'd screwed up a large chunk of his life, and hurt a lot of people who didn't deserve to be hurt, by pretending to be someone other than he was, and in pursuit of that pretense donning the guise of a rabidly homophobic political warrior.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've never actually read Bauman's book, but in the wake of the Ashburn interview, I've just ordered a copy. (You can find them dirt-cheap on amazon.com.) Because what I find so fascinating about the Ashburn interview is how little he can muster to say about his long period of what we might call professional homophobia. It's not that he's inarticulate, just barely articulate on this subject -- and understandably so, given that he's probably only just getting past the "my life as a train wreck" stage.

Listen again as Patt points out, after establishing Ashburn's fascination with politics from his earliest memories, that "you must have realized a public career was incompatible with being open about your sexual preferences":

Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind — the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press — at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice.

And when he was elected to public office himself, "Were your sexual preferences in the back of your mind, or did you just go about your business?"

The answer is both yes and no. I was married and had children. And I had a career and a passion. I also had a huge secret. But given my circumstances and my responsibilities, it wasn't an overwhelming issue for me. The desires were always there, but my focus was primarily on — well, pretty selfishly — on me and my career and my family.

Now Ashburn is set up for the crucial subject of his horrible record on every subject relating to the normal rights of gay people as citizens.

The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

What a way to live! Is it possible not to feel empathy for how hard it must have been? It doesn't excuse his professional homophobia, but now that he's come out the other side, it's hard not to wish him well. Not only is he dealing honestly, finally, with who he is, but he says he's dealing with his alcohol-abuse problem, which you have to figure is not unrelated.

I'm just trying to tell the truth from the reality of the life I've lived, which has been an amazing life. I have had the privilege of serving in elective office for 26 years and dealing with important legislation, and I did so with a huge secret and in many ways a career built upon lies and deceit. Now that the truth is known, actually I am comfortable talking about these things.

As I've said repeatedly, it seems to me that the dramatic shift in public attitudes toward LGBT folk has been largely attributable to the growing awareness of straight folk that they actually know representatives of the once-exotic "other." They're coworkers, friends, and family members, and once you know them as actual people, as opposed to the grotesque caricatures fobbed off by the masters of social orthodoxy, it turns out that they're people just like any other people -- some good, some bad, most somewhere in between, just like everybody else.

It has to be scary as well as deeply shameful for not just closeted by positively bunkered guys like Bob Bauman and Roy Ashburn to accept that ill-informed, malignant characterization of "the other" and applying it to themselves. This of course is the "internalized homophobia" that every LGBT person has to cope with -- and let me say once again (as I did most recently in a post called "Maybe it's not that mysterious why the upper ranks of the GOP and the Far Right are overflowing with homophobic closet cases") that for me nobody has made this more understandable than Mike Signorile, whose "Case for Outing on All Levels," in the June Advocate, Howie cited again this morning.

I'm thrilled in dealing with younger gay men to note how dramatically lower the internalized-homophobia quotient has become. The less of it there is to overcome, the better shot the victim has of getting beyond it. And that manufactured shame doesn't do anyone any good, except for primarily religion-peddling creeps who exploit homophobia for their personal advantage.

To return to that May 27 AP piece, reporter Don Thompson notes:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Sen. Roy Ashburn spoke out passionately in favor of gay rights during a legislative session.

The Republican from Bakersfield was forced to reveal he is gay after a recent arrest for drunken driving.

On Thursday, he urged his fellow senators to "rise above discrimination" and support letting gays serve openly in the military.

Ashburn also weighed in on a bill designed to protect clergy who refuse to perform gay marriages.

"I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals, and so I, um, I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me. And it's highly emotional," Ashburn told fellow senators.

Ashburn said he would not be speaking at all were it not for his drunken driving arrest in March after he left a gay-friendly nightclub near the state Capitol.

Earlier on, Thompson reported:

"Does anyone really believe that a person's sexual orientation affects their ability to serve our nation and protect our freedom?" he said, supporting a resolution urging Congress to change the military's policy on gays.

"The answer is that being gay or straight has nothing to do with ability, devotion, courage, honor, skill and loyalty, the characteristics that I think we would all agree are desirable and necessary for those who serve in our national military," Ashburn said. "The current policy of 'don't ask, don't tell' is clearly out of date and discriminatory."

He cited conservative icon Barry Goldwater's view that government should stay out of people's private lives.

"It calls upon our nation's best instincts and seeks to correct a basic discrimination that is hurtful to people and to our country," he said of SJR9, the resolution by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who is openly gay. "I respectfully ask that we rise above discrimination and vote aye on this resolution."

In this context it's good to hear the last words of Ashburn's quoted by the L.A. Times's Patt Morrison:

"I don't know that I've ever felt more optimistic about the future for myself. I don't know what the future holds, but I think it's going to be incredible."

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Political Outing-- Is It Ethical? Yes, And Aaron Schock Is VERY Gay

Last month, in writing about ex-UK Treasury Secretary David Laws and the impoverishment of the soul that is a life in the closet, I cited a perceptive article in the current Advocate by radio host and human rights activist Michelangelo Signorile, A Case for Outing On All Levels. Yesterday Signorile's two tweets (above) alerted me to the L.A. Times interview Patt Morrison did with outed Republican state Senator Roy Ashburn, a man who seems to have woken from an especially bad dream: his closeted life.

Morrison points out that as a "Kern County supervisor for a dozen years, then an Assembly member and a state senator for another 14 years" Ashburn cast "some of the most conservative votes in the Legislature." After Ashburn was pulled over, drunk, March 3 with a young male prostitute he had picked up in a bar, his carefully crafted "family values" political and personal life was forever shattered. It's an old story for hypocritical closet cases and no one told it better than former GOP Congressman (and the vitriolic homophobic founder of the American Conservative Union and Young Americans For Freedom) Bob Bauman in his post-outing book The Gentleman From Maryland: The Conscience Of A Gay Conservative. And Patt did real well with Ashburn yesterday:

For decades you worked so hard to keep your sexual orientation under wraps. This must have been a torment, but in another sense, was there an element of relief?

I'm sensing relief now. I had not consciously decided to come out, but there's no doubt looking back that I had become increasingly bold about attending gay events, like pride festivals, and going to dance clubs and bars. Last year I attended Las Vegas Pride and San Diego Pride.

Were you looking over your shoulder?

A little more in San Diego than Las Vegas.

...At some point, you must have realized a public career was incompatible with being open about your sexual preferences.

Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind-- the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press-- at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice.

You worked for members of Congress, then were elected to public office yourself from Kern County. Were your sexual preferences in the back of your mind, or did you just go about your business?

The answer is both yes and no. I was married and had children. And I had a career and a passion. I also had a huge secret. But given my circumstances and my responsibilities, it wasn't an overwhelming issue for me. The desires were always there, but my focus was primarily on-- well, pretty selfishly-- on me and my career and my family.

Barry Goldwater had a gay grandson and didn't think government had any business in anybody's bedroom. But the recent brand of Republicanism has championed anti-gay issues.

I truly believe the conservative philosophy as embraced by Goldwater: that the government has no role in the private lives of the citizens. In the 1980s, there was a coming together of the religious right and the Goldwater right, sort of a marriage of convenience. It propelled Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Reagan never repudiated that but — this is just my view — I don't think he really embraced it either. In no way do I want to put down people of strong religious convictions; I happen to have very strong religious beliefs myself. But it was a merger of those two, and the religious [right's issues] were about same-sex rules, same-sex marriage, abortion, gun rights, these sort of core, litmus-test issues.

Did you feel uneasy with that combination? You did help to organize and speak at a rally in 2005 against a legislative bill sanctioning same-sex marriage.

How I ever got into that is beyond me. I was very uncomfortable with that, and I told one of my confidantes, "I'm never doing that again." It was not what I wanted to do, it wasn't me, but I helped to organize and lent my name.

A lot of people, gay or straight, are probably wondering why you voted even against issues like insurance coverage for same-sex partners.

The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

When it comes to marriage, I'm getting the feeling that you're mulling over whether government ought to be in the marriage license business at all.

It's a very complicated issue, marriage, but it seems to me that the government's role is to protect a civil contract, whether it's to purchase a home together, enter into whatever financial or legal arrangement, including marriage. The whole issue of marriage as a 5,000-year-old tradition, a religious context, a historical context-- what government's role is, is the sanctification of the legal bond. Then it seems to me a matter for a church or some other societal organization but not for government.

What have you been talking about with the gay groups you've been meeting with?

The same things we're talking about. I don't have an agenda. I don't have a plan. I don't have an expectation. I just want people to know who I am and what's in my heart. I kept that from people. I concealed it from everyone for almost all my life, so I'm [now] privileged to work with people from all aspects of life, including organizations devoted to advancing the rights of gay and lesbian and transgendered individuals.

Recently in the Senate you spoke in favor of a resolution calling on Congress to repeal "don't ask, don't tell.''

For that day I knew I had to say something. I already had prepared what I was going to say about serving in the military, and I actually had it written out because I wanted to be precise. But I had to preface it with something else, to give context to why all this time in elective office and being so deeply hidden, why was I now standing and speaking on this subject matter, and so I did.

...You're divorced, with four daughters and grandchildren. So here's where I ask about your family, and you can tell me to buzz off.

The things we're talking about were my choices. It was my choice to keep it secret; it was my choice to be a gay man and be married and have children. It was my choice to build a life on lies in order to conceal myself. That obviously had a big effect on my marriage and my children in ways that I don't fully comprehend, but it's my responsibility and not something to be talked about in interviews.

As time goes by Ashburn will come even more to grips with himself. But Signorile's tweets point to the more important issue for society at large. And they bring us right to the notoriously homophobic closet cases currently in the House of Representatives: Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Adrian Smith (R-NE), Trent Franks (R-AZ), David Dreier (R-CA), Aaron Schock (R-IL- that's him with the outfit on the right-- and his queeny tweet below that), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Yes, there are some names missing from the list... but for a reason. Every one of the above gay men has a zero score on their lifetime votes regarding gay people. Like Ashburn, they're all in terror and voting on automatic pilot when anything comes up regarding gay people, even something as assisting local law enforcement to protect gay men and lesbians from hate crimes. As Signorile put it, these hypocrites are "too traumatized to make critical decisions" with clear minds. They belong on therapy, not Congress.

One guy, much in the news since being outed a week or so ago, Mark Kirk (R-IL), actually tried a little-- until the demands of conservative political calculus "forced" him to oppose repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. His overall lifetime score on gay issues is 26.67, higher than all but 7 House Republicans (none of whom are gay but most of whom have large gay constituencies). Kirk, who wants to be a U.S. Senator, refuses to publicly admit he's gay and his voting record, though headed in a more homophobic direction, is around that of the worst of the anti-gay Blue Dogs. His 26.67, in fact, beats several hysterical southern bigots-- Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS- 13.33), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS- 14.29), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC- 21.43)-- and is in the range of several other exceptionally abhorrent "Democrats"-- Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL-28.57), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK- 30.77), and Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA- 37.50).

Are there other conservative closet cases in the House? Absolutely. So why aren't they on the list? They're not so traumatized by their own homosexuality to vote against gay people. So even though all of them vote badly on other matters the ones that I know of at least voted in favorite of human decency when it comes to gay equality.

Maybe it's not that mysterious why the upper ranks of the GOP and the Far Right are overflowing with homophobic closet cases

Miss Mitch and Lucky Lindsey wonder (or maybe just
make us wonder): Are there straight male Republicans?

"[Filmmaker Kirby] Dick argues that the political closet has grown more oppressive in recent years, largely thanks to the Republican Party's fervent embrace of anti-gay policies, which has sent lesbian and gay conservatives scurrying for cover."

-- Andrew O'Hehir, in a Salon.com column,
"Behind Washington's closet door"

by Ken

I'm always impressed as well as grateful when someone can make sense for me of apparently irreconcilable phenomena. Often once the connection has been made it seems obvious, even blindingly so, but that doesn't make me any less grateful for the help in making the connection.

It happened again when I read Howie's Thursday night post, "Conservative Gay Lawmakers Rejecting a Degrading Life in the Closet" (referring, alas, not to American conservatives but to British Conservatives), and followed the two Salon.com links he provided in the last paragraph. Not that Howie doesn't always provide us with valuable links, but these two struck me as especially valuable.

There was, first, the interview with writer James Hannaham, conducted during the book tour for his first novel, God Says No, about salaciously sinful life in the deep closet of the hard-core Christian Deep South. And then there was the one Howie described as "an even more direct must-read," indie-film columnist Andrew O'Hehir's "Behind Washington's closed door," about (and including an interview with) Outrage filmmaker Kirby Dick.

Is there anyone within shouting distance who hasn't been serially confounded, even dumbfoundewd, by the ever-growing number of homophobic closet cases crawling, or more often being smoked, out of the woodwork of the leadership of America's Far Right and Republican Party (functionally the same things these days)? As Howie has been noting, in places like South Carolina, it's enough to make a person wonder if there are any straight male Republicans. Well, Dick and O'Hehir have an answer, and again, obvious as it seems once it's been laid out, it's a connection I didn't make.

I'm also grateful to Howie for trying to pin down the meaning, or rather meanings, of being "in the closet," which are a whole lot more various than most of us tend to assume. And here I need to backtrack a bit.

It should go without saying that Howie has always been more 'in the know" than I have -- and for us "always" dates back to about 1961. But going back just a number of years (don't ask me how many years; at a certain age your sense of time goes all out of whacks, and things that happened maybe 30 years ago feel like "a few years ago," while more recent events could have taken place anywhere between two and 20 years ago), it used to drive me crazy when Howie would write or tell me that "everybody knew" so-and-so (fill in the name of a closeted public figure) was gay when I sure didn't. I didn't know much about much of anybody who was gay. Liberace, OK, but J. Edgar Hoover? (Bad example, perhaps -- in so many ways.)

The real eye-opener for me, and I can still hardly recommend the book highly enough, was Mike Signorile's Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power, which has what were for me fog-lifting treatments of three related but quite different power closets in American life: in the New York-centric media, the D.C.-centric federal government, and the Hollywood-centric entertainment industry.

It was from Signorile that I came to understand the phenomenon of "everybody knows"-type closets. Within their worlds, he explains, everybody does know, and the filthy preverts are free to practice their vile preversions -- as long as they do so discreetly and never, ever rock the boat. "Keep the faith," as it were, meaning the faith of rigid social orthodoxy, and they will never be outed.

And for many gays, especially of the older generations, the deal worked fine, because they were so thoroughly filled with internalized homophobia -- another subject about which I learned worlds from Mike Signorile -- that by and large they believed as strongly as their oppressors that their homosexuality is a disgusting, degrading preversion, for which they should feel the deepest shame. This is the internalizing of all those screamingly hateful voices we grow up with.

And it's the internalized homopobia, Signorile helped me to understand, that has kept so many gay folk imprisoned in their closets. To which, by the way, James Hannaham adds a fabulous insight in the Salon.com interview: that for many of the afflicted, the shamefulness and sordidness themselves become erotic turn-ons. And so it has been that in those "closets of power" the homophobic enforcers and their internalized-homophobic closet-case victims coexisted in mutually assured harmony.

Which doesn't mean that there weren't still more deeply closeted gays in the ranks of the Right, and in particular Far Right. Adding Hannaham's insight we can see that far from being stymied by the shamefulness of it, the shamefulness added to the thrill of the hunt. It may be that not even the homo-hating homos really understood how far from alone they were, and are.

My favorite example came from David Brock's invaluable memoir Blinded by the Right, in which he recalled his dual "coming out": his awakening from his former existence as a hard-core -- the hardest of the hard -- Far Right-wing attack "journalist" (see note below* on the use of quotation marks around "journalist") and the outing of what he thought was the darkest and terriblest of all possible dark and terrible secrets: that he's gay. In this case, clearly, by "being gay" we mean not the "everybody knows" kind, but the "I'll die if anybody finds out" kind.

Which doesn't mean, by the way, that Brock's secret was necessarily totally, impenetrably secret. Remember, since he was reasonably discreet about his preversion and publicly preached the full gospel of the Wacko Homo-Hating Right, he would in any case have been protected by the Don't Tell, Don't Complain compact.

Inevitably, though, there came a time -- by amazing coincidence the very same time that Brock was finding himself slipping out of the Wacko Right belief set he had so long sworn by (and made such a handsome living by) -- when he was made aware that his secret not only wasn't secret but was about to be made very public. He's vivid in his description of his terror. Outing meant certain ostracism by all the good Far Right folk who had been his community, his mainstay and nurturers. The revelation that he was this secret monster would mean the end of everything.

That's not quite what happened, though, when he walked the plank and outed himself. He found all those hideous creeps he had expected to scorn him hitting on him! (Well, I mean, have you seen pictures of the guy back then? The phrase "to die for" leaps to mind.)

Now if someone as deeply entrenched in the bosom of the virulently, violently homophobic Far Right had no clue, it's hardly likely that the rest of us should be clued in. And while we still need a proper psychological understanding of the kinship between self-hating homosexuality and far-right-wing politics (the affinity can't be accidental, can it?), the above-noted insight provided by Andrew O'Hehir in collaboration with Outrage filmmaker Kirby Dick does, I think, explain why, at a time when so many LGBT people, now able to accept the naturalness of our various sexual attractions (bye-bye, internatlized homophobia!), have left the closet behind, on the oppressive Far Right the closet-builders can barely keep up with the demand for new, even more heavily fortified models.

As I said, it sounds ridiculously simple once you've heard it, but then, so did the whole concept of gravity once the famous apple-plunking opened Sir Isaac Newton's eyes:

Dick argues, in fact, that the political closet has grown more oppressive in recent years, largely thanks to the Republican Party's fervent embrace of anti-gay policies, which has sent lesbian and gay conservatives scurrying for cover. He agrees that politicians, whether gay or straight, out or closeted, are entitled to some degree of personal privacy. A politician who is cheating on his wife with a man is not inherently more newsworthy than one cheating with a woman. But a politician who is voting for a rabidly anti-gay agenda while seeking out anonymous gay sex partners in bathrooms, in his view, is a dangerous hypocrite and very likely a disordered personality. In voting against his own natural interests, that politician is directly damaging gays and lesbians, and depriving the entire country of an honest debate about policies and attitudes on homosexuality.

*Note on the need for quotation marks around "journalist" as applied to practitioners on the Far Right: As I've written numerous times, the single most important revelation in Blinded by the Right is David Brock's discovery that what right-wing "journalists" practice has nothing to do with actual journalism, that he and his colleagues approached every story with all elements predetermined by their rigid ideological gridwork. "Reporting" then consisted of finding stuff with which to embellish this invented "truth": facts if possible, but factoids would be just as good, and ditto hearsay, lies, and on-the-spot totally made-up stuff.

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So you've come to DWT expecting another round of childish, tasteless Larry Craig-being-gay jokes? Yeah, okay, can do

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho)
Celebrating a Quarter-Century
of People Gossiping About Me Being Gay
(1982-2007)

In his younger years, our Larry plays dress-up with
"one of the nation's most requested cowboy entertainers" (by
his own description), Cowboy Rudy. (cowboyrudy.com)

Attention, people, this is serious. It's our Larry's silver anniversary. Which naturally raises the question:

What do you get for the man who's had folks officially gossiping about his homosexuality for a full quarter of a century?

Is he listed anywhere?

Oh, you don't think it's a problem? Okay, let's say you think long and hard and come up with something really thoughtful and appropriate. A solid-silver cock ring, say.

It may be a tad familiar for someone you've never so much as personally shared an adjacent men's-room stall with, but what the heck, you decide to run with it. You're going for "the personal touch." (If there's a pun in there, it's mostly intentional.) And then it turns out he's already got one! If not an entire collection. Or else he's a tad shy about keeping it with the rest of his jewelry, where his wife might see it and get that same wrong idea people have been gossiping openly about for a full quarter-century now.

So now he has to go try to exchange it for something he needs, like maybe a set of butt plugs. (I'm just making it up as we go here.) But he doesn't have the receipt! Have you ever tried to do that? Have you?

But seriously, what are you planning to give our boy? Isn't it tacky just to send a card, presumably from the "Congratulations on Not Being Gay (Wink-Wink)" section. Say, did the Singing Senators make any records? (I can't find any on Amazon.com.)

My own inclination would be a copy of Michelangelo Signorile's Outing Yourself: How to Come Out as Lesbian or Gay to Your Family, Friends, and Coworkers. Amazon's got the paperback edition for $11.05 plus shipping, with used copies from $1.37. Our Larry might also appreciate Signorile's still-stirring Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power, for its consideration of the "closet of power" dearest to the senator's heart, the one in Washington, D.C.


COUNTDOWN POSTSCRIPT

By the way, did you catch the Countdown Players' Dragnet-style dramatic reenactment last night--straight from the official officer's police report--of the great men's-room encounter? Favorite moment here: when "the senator" hands the officer a business card, and says, "What do you think of that?"--and we see a business-size card that has nothing on it except the hand-scribbled word:

SENATOR

UPDATE: HOWIE WEIGHS IN

Just when I had finally decided that I had had it with Larry Craig stories, Ken ambushed me with the one above. How could I resist jumping back in? (Were I a Republican I'd say, "He started it!") I've thought a lot about this since it first came out that Senator Craig was arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom, something he has been prone to do-- and deny-- over the years. I went from mean-spirited schadenfreude on Monday afternoon to pity on Tuesday and anger towards his Republican homophobic tormentors on Wednesday.

Today I called Senator Craig's office to offer a redemptive strategy that will help him capture his dignity and his soul. I don't think he'll bite. But I very much agree with Barney Frank, who kind of outed him back in October of '06 on the Bill Maher show. He didn't actually out him. He just left the question hanging and said something about hypocrisy: "The right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy and people who want to demonize other people shouldn't then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves."

This morning Barney took issue with Craig's homophobic colleagues, playing to the GOP's Know Nothing base, like John McCain and Norm Coleman, who have called for Senator Craig to resign at once. Barney's message to Craig: resist!

The GOP is after Craig's scalp so they can go to their base and say, "See, we'll not all toe-tappin' homos and when we find one, we root him out." They actually applauded David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) when he admitted he had broken the law by hiring hookers. No one asked him to resign from his committees. And no one asked Ted Stevens (R-AK) to step down from his committees, let alone from the Senate, after the FBI announced an investigation into a massive and systematic bribery operation Stevens has been running, an operation based on abusing his committee assignments. But Stevens and Vitter are straight, so Republicans don't even care what laws they break. "What he did, it’s hypocritical," said Barney of Craig this morning, "but it’s not an abuse of his office in the sense that he was taking money for corrupt votes," a subtle slap at Stevens and Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, a closet queen himself, who is leading the charge to purge Craig.

Barney went on: "It’s one thing to say that someone can’t be trusted to vote without being corrupt, it’s another to say that he can’t be trusted to go to the bathroom by himself."

And as far as resigning, Jeff Merkley the ballsy Democrat looking to replace Oregon's rubber stamp Republican Gordon Smith, has a far better target than the pathetic Larry Craig. Merkley sent the pathetic George W. Bush an evite suggesting he resign.