IF HOMOSEXUALITY IS SO HARD TO ADMIT IN SHOW BIZ, IMAGINE HOW DIFFICULT IT IS IN POLITICS-- ESPECIALLY IN RIGHT WING POLITICS!

By the end of his congressional career Florida Republican Mark Foley was cracking up. He was at the breaking point and he was begging RNCC chair Tom Reynolds to let him retire. Reynolds and Speaker Denny Hastert, also alleged to be a closet queen, assured him everything would be alright if he just hung in there. Foley knew better; he was addicted to alcohol and young boys. He had hit on dozens of young congressional pages, had tried breaking into the pages' dorm on night in a drunken stupor, and was notorious around West Palm Beach, just outside his district, for his promiscuity towards young men. None of them knew that Rahm Emanuel already had the goods on Foley and that he and his handpicked ex-Republican shill, Tim Mahoney, were waiting to spring it just before the election.

As far as I know-- and I've tried to check-- California Republican David Dreier is not a child molester-- just an old fashioned hypocritical homophobic GOP closet case, as notorious as Foley on Capitol Hill where "everybody" knows. When Hastert decided to replace the disgraced and indicted Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay with Dreier, you could hear the screaming and cursing from one end of Washington to the other. Roy Blunt (R-MO) shouted some pretty awful epithets about gay men and absolutely refused to serve under one. Humiliated, Hastert got the message and backed off. Dreier's upward rise in the party of hatred and bigotry had come to an abrupt end.

Dreier gets most of his campaign cash from corporate interests who don't care if someone is gay or straight or asexual. They want candidates with dead souls and no consciences who will sell out their constituents for a pile of cash. David Dreier is one of the most corrupt whores in Washington. In 2006 he spent $2.5 million to get re-elected against an opponent who spent a grand total of $17,182. His campaign warchest is already loaded with $2,227,487 for 2008. Real estate developers, investment firms and banks, lobbyists, oil and gas interests, insurance companies, Big Pharma, HMOs, casinos, Big Media conglomerates are all gigantic donors to Dreier's campaigns. But one of his major contributors who won't be giving again was Merv Griffin, like Dreier a closeted Republican in very tolerant L.A. Griffin died last week.

Today's Hollywood Reporter carries a story about Griffin's life in the closet by a friend and admirer, Ray Richmond. Richmond wonders why it is still so hard for our society to talk about homosexuality and he seems sad that Griffin was trapped by that societal mindset.

Merv Griffin was gay.

Why should that be so uncomfortable to read? Why is it so difficult to write? Why are we still so jittery even about raising the issue in purportedly liberal-minded Hollywood in 2007? We can refer to it casually in conversation, but the mainstream media somehow remains trapped in the Dark Ages when it comes to labeling a person as gay.

Like his friend and fellow closet case Dreier, there is something tragic that "a man of Merv's renown, of his gregarious nature and social dexterity, would feel compelled to endure such a stealthy double life even as the gay community's clout, and its levels of acceptance and equality, rose steadily from the ashes of ignorance."

What a powerful message Griffin might have sent had he squired his male companions around town rather than Eva Gabor, his longtime good friend and platonic public pal. Imagine the amount of good Merv could have done as a well-respected, hugely successful, beloved and uncloseted gay man in embodying a positive image.

Around this town Dreier long squired right wing fag hags like Bo Derek and Bush's sister Doro. But in his other life, away from the eyes of CA-26 voters, Dreier and his chief of "staff," Brad Smith, one of the highest paid congressional staffers in Washington, were squiring each other to every gay hot spot in the world-- from Iceland to Tahiti. The papers in his district have prohibited their reporters to report about any of this.

Merv's secret gay life was widely known throughout showbiz culture, if not the wider America. It gained traction in 1991 when he was targeted in a pair of lawsuits: by "Dance Fever" host Denny Terrio, alleging sexual harassment; and by assistant Brent Plott, seeking $200 million in palimony. Both ultimately were dismissed.

Over the past 16 years of his life, however, Griffin deflected the sexuality questions with a quip, determining that his private life remained nobody's business. He certainly didn't owe us an explanation, but maybe he owed it to himself to remove the suffocating veil he'd been forced to hide behind throughout his adult life. Then again, Merv carved his niche in the entertainment world at a time when being gay wasn't OK, when disclosure was unthinkable and the allegation alone could deep-six one's career.

If you're Griffin, why would you think a judgmental culture would be any more tolerant as you grew into middle and old age? Even in the capital of entertainment -- in a business where homosexuality isn't exactly a rare phenomenon -- it's still spoken of in hushed tones or, more often, not at all. And Merv's brush with tabloid scandal no doubt only drove him further into the closet.

While it would seem everything has changed today, little actually has. You can count on the fingers of one hand, or at most two, the number of high-powered stars and public figures who have come out. Those who don't can't really be faulted, as rarely do honesty and full disclosure prove a boon to one's showbiz livelihood.

Nonetheless, the elephant that was his sexual orientation never really stopped following Griffin from room to room. He could duck it for a while, but it would always find him. It's disheartening that Merv had to die to shake it for good.

And the elephant that was his political party is still oppressing men and women who opt to live their lives in the open like everyone else. Somehow Republicans feel the right orientation is stealth and deceit. I can't for the life of me see how this will encourage the kind of moral character one hopes to find in trusted public servants. I very much trust gay congressmembers like Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and very much distrust sneaky, even delusional, closet cases Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jim McCrery (R-LA), Larry Craig (R-ID), and, of course, David Dreier.