Day: October 14, 2006

Will GOP Gay Purge Cast Suspicion on Over-40 Singles Like Mehlman, Bolten and Condi?

Jon Ponder

The problem with purges is that the purgers rarely know when to stop.

Via Digby: Leaders of the Christian right such as Rev. Lou Sheldon at the Traditional Values Coalition and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, are demanding a “Come to Jesus Meeting” with the GOP to discuss expelling gays from high positions within the party.

“Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?” asks Perkins.

He has a point, the Republicans have controlled the government for six years, and yet abortion is still legal and gays aren’t routinely rounded up and sent to forced reorientation camps.

But if “nuts” like Perkins and Wildmon want to cleanse all but God-fearing breeders from the party’s top ranks, will they stop with the Congress?

Digby mentions Mary Cheney, whom the party faithful embraced during the 2004 campaign. Shouldn’t she go too? After all, she is an out lesbian who often works for the vice president. Maybe she is part of the stealth cabal of liberals posing as gay Republican in order to stall the values agenda.

What about gays who are not out? Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, for example, has refused to come out as a heterosexual.

How about top Gops who are middle-aged singles?

White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten is over 50 and single — and has been photographed on the arm of every Republican’s favorite beard, Bo Derek.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who apparently thinks of herself as George Bush’s “second wife,” is pushing 52 and very single, as far as we know.

When the Night of Long Knives comes, they’ll all have to prove their heterosexual purity, or they will have to go.

And that’s problem with purges. The purgers rarely know when to stop.

Kolbe Charges Smell Like a Witch Hunt

Jon Ponder

Is the GOP Trying to Discredit Kolbe Because He Says He Acted on a Complaint about Foley in 2000?

The alleged victim told NBC News that “he had a ‘blast’ on the trip and did not report anything improper to his parents or any House officials after the trip. He said he has a favorable impression of the page program to this day and likes Kolbe.”

The FBI has launched an investigation into the behavior of retiring GOP Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona, who is openly gay, toward a teenaged boy on a camping trip in 1996.

Details are sketchy but based on the news accounts so far, the allegations seem a bit suspicious. For one thing, and this is crucial, the former page who was the alleged victim denies that anything untoward happened.

While I am completely unsympathetic toward gay Republicans, even those who are out — as Stephen Kriz put it in these pages yesterday, “a gay person being a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders” — we cannot allow the Foley scandal to escalate into a witch hunt in which people are accused of improper behavior simply because they are gay.

Why would someone level false charges against Kolbe? Last week, Kolbe inserted himself into the Foley scandal when he announced that he had received a complaint in 2000 from a page about improper behavior from Rep. Mark Foley, and that he took steps that led to “corrective action” against Foley then. This addition to the timeline of the Foley scandal runs counter to the GOP House leadership’s narrative that they were only informed about Foley’s penchant for teenaged boys within the last year.

It is possible — even likely — that someone in the GOP had these charges brought against Kolbe in order to shut him up.

Here are the facts that are available today:

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