FLASHBACK: Here’s a clip of from CNN’s “Larry King Live” from 2006 in which Bill Maher outs Ken Mehlman during the live broadcast:

CNN edited out Maher’s mention of Mehlman’s name in the re-broadcast.

The fact that Ken Mehlman is gay was one of the worst kept secrets in modern politics — now he has come out of the closet in an interview with the Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder:

Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman told Ambinder. Mehlman also said his friends and family have been “wonderful and supportive,” and that coming out has made him a “happier and better person”

“It’s something I wish I had done years ago,” Mehlman said.

You and a few million others, Ken.

As campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004, Mehlman — along with Bush political advisor Karl Rove, whose father is gay — presided over the most anti-gay national campaign in history. By hiding his identity as he led a campaign to (literally) demonize gay people, Mehlman participated in a vicious game that destroyed people’s lives and contributed to a culture in which violence toward gay people was not just acceptable, it was warranted. Via Ambinder:

Mehlman’s leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities — such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party’s platform (“Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country…”). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.

John Aravosis at Americablog fills in the gaps:

From the New York Times, Nov. 4, 2004:

Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates including President Bush in Ohio and Senator Jim Bunning in Kentucky….the ballot measures also appear to have acted like magnets for thousands of socially conservative voters in rural and suburban communities who might not otherwise have voted, even in this heated campaign, political analysts said. And in tight races, those voters – who historically have leaned heavily Republican – may have tipped the balance.

From the Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2004:

According to religious leaders, the conference calls with White House officials started early in the Bush administration and became a weekly ritual as the campaign heated up. Usually, the participants were Rove or Tim Goeglein, head of the White House Office of Public Liaison. Later, Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman and Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and the campaign’s southeast regional coordinator, were often on the line.

The religious leaders varied, but frequent participants included the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, psychologist James C. Dobson or others from the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, and [Watergate felon turned right-wing Christian extremist Chuck] Colson.

From Huffington Post, Jan. 22, 2006:

There are no objectionable facts, troubling data, or pesky documents that Mehlman isn’t ready to swat down with instant lightning salvos. His dexterity with factoids, and his ability to jiu-jitsu them into a nimble counterattack are part of the reason Mehlman won the top slot last January to run the GOP. Not that he ever had much competition after running the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, in which Mehlman commanded a volunteer army in precinct-by-precinct, hand-to-hand combat to get out just enough of the vote, notably in Ohio…

A longtime bachelor, many in Washington assume Mehlman is gay. His name was among those mentioned in a recent GQ article by Jake Tapper about the blogger Mike Rogers, whose website outs closeted Republicans. Steve Schmidt, a senior Bush official, flatly denied the allegation to Tapper. “Ken Mehlman is not gay,” said Schmidt. But Mehlman himself has been a tad evasive. At the Summit County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner last March, Mehlman responded to a reporter who asked if he was gay, “[you] have asked a question people shouldn’t have to answer.”

Democrats and gay conservatives say the issue is fair game, pointing out that Mehlman ran herd on his volunteer army of 80,000 in Ohio, urging Republicans to go to the polls if only to ban gay marriage. Mehlman defended his party to me by laying blame on Boston liberals. “I think the issue was injected when a liberal court in Massachusetts said they were going to redefine a 200 year old institution in this country by judicial fiat,” said Mehlman, who also endorses a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage — political catnip for the Christian Right.

David Catania, a former Log Cabin Republican, has known Mehlman since 2000. “I think Ken Mehlman is a profoundly decent person,” says Catania, an attorney who sits on the Council of Washington D.C. since 1997. “He is not a homophobe, but he is surrounded by bigots, which is why I switched parties at the end of last year. Ken is trying to reconcile his Big Tent thinking with a certain amount of party bigotry and racism. I’ve heard the rumors but I don’t know if he’s gay. I do know that he’s comfortable in his own skin.”

Ambinder again:

Mehlman is aware that his attempts to justify his past silence will not be adequate for many people. He and his friends say that he is aware that he will no longer control the story about his identity — which will simultaneously expose old wounds, invite Schadenfruede [sic], and legitimize anger among gay rights activists in both parties who did not hide their sexual orientations…

“I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic,” he said.

No one else knew, Ken? On the contrary. Everyone who had even slightly sensitive gaydar and a television knew.

Mehlman has also come out as an adviser to AFER, the group that hired Bush v. Gore lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies to advocate for gay couples in the federal trial against Proposition 8:

Chad Griffin, the California-based political strategist who organized opposition to Proposition 8, said that Mehlman’s quiet contributions to the American Foundation for Equal Rights are “tremendous,” adding that “when we achieve equal equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it.” Mehlman has become a de facto strategist for the group, and he has opened up his rolodex — recruiting, as co-hosts for the AFER fundraiser: Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, hedge fund executive, and the president of the Manhattan Institute; Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the GOP’s top lawyers; Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and two former GOP governors, William Weld of Massachusetts and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey.

Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award winning writer of “Milk,” said, “Ken represents an incredible coup for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. We believe that our mission of equal rights under the law is one that should resonate with every American. As a victorious former presidential campaign manager and head of the Republican Party, Ken has the proven experience and expertise to help us communicate with people across each of the 50 states.”

In his roles as a top Bush White House political operative, 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign chair and chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman contributed to a culture of homophobia that caused irreparable harm to gay people, especially young at-risk people in Ohio and the other places where the Republican Party spent millions of dollars to foment anti-gay hatred — not because they believed the anti-gay rhetoric they were encouraging, but rather simply in order to keep their claws on political power.

For that reason, shunning is too good for Ken Mehlman. In a just world, he’d be forced to live in the world of darkness, fear and hatred he helped perpetuate.

Obviously, that is not what’s going to happen here. He’s too tied in to the national power structure — as Ambinder put it, “Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.” — so we have little choice other to let him seek atonement through good works. If he can help create a world in which the next generation of gay young people take the right to marry for granted, then his life won’t have been a total, wretched waste.

Plus, by treating him with a modicum of dignity, maybe it will encourage other closeted gay Republicans to come out and finally put an end to the party’s abuse of homophobia as a vote-getting tool.