Tag: Veterans

Attention Larry Craig: It’s National Coming Out Day

Trish

Come out, come out, wherever you closeted Republican hypocrites are! Oct. 11 is National Coming Out Day, a time to resolve to live openly as you are. And, in the case of some Republican politicians, to quit trying to make homosexuality go away by legislating it out of existence.

You can even find help at www.comeout.org. There, you’ll get answers to such questions as “Does the Bible really say gay people go to hell?” “Can you turn me straight?” and “Does God make mistakes?” (Hint: all the answers are “no.”)

If only former New Jersey Republican Governor James E. McGreevey, former Florida Republican Representative Mark Foley, and former evangelist Reverend Ted Haggard had come out sooner, who knows how many wives, pages, and victims of homophobia would have been spared.

So come on, Larry, come out! And while we’re at it, let’s not forget to invite:

  • Former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed (yeah I know he’s married but let’s get real)
  • South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (not married but ditto on the get real part)
  • Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (labeled “My Old Kentucky Homo” by many in the state)
  • Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who owns a house with her long-time female “friend”)
  • Chief of Staff Josh Bolton (BFF with skank Bo Derrick — nuff said)

Who’d I miss?

Larry Craig’s Guilty Plea Stands

Jon Ponder

Sen. Craig was supposed to step down on Sept. 30 but apparently has not. Maybe he was waiting on this:

Senator Larry E. Craig failed today in his effort to withdraw his guilty plea in connection with an undercover sex sting operation. The decision dealt the Idaho Republican a crippling setback in his attempt to hold on to his seat and caused new anxiety for other Republicans.

A Minnesota judge rejected Mr. Craig’s arguments entirely, declaring that, contrary to what Mr. Craig asserted, his guilty plea was made unambiguously and without coercion.

“The defendant, a career politician with a college education, is of, at least, above-average intelligence,” Judge Charles A. Porter Jr. ruled in Hennepin County District Court. “He knew what he was saying, reading, and signing.”

No word on whether Craig will appeal the ruling.

UPDATE: Craig says he will serve out his term:

“I am extremely disappointed with the ruling issued today. I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options.

“I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that. As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively …

“In addition, I will continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee – something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate.

“When my term has expired, I will retire and not seek reelection. I hope this provides the certainty Idaho needs and deserves.”

Outings in Offing Disavowed, But Flynt Says He’s Got ‘One More’ Gay Congressman in His Sights

Jon Ponder

Mike Rogers of Blogactive, who is widely credited with setting the outing of Sen. Larry Craig in motion, wrote yesterday to disavow my assertion that two Republican senators were on his list to be outed.

If there are more outings in the offing, it will be interesting to see if the GOP continues its pursuit of moral relativism by allowing Sen. Vitter to stay in office while forcing out another one of their own because he is gay.

“Come on guys,” Rogers wrote. “Do the fact checking. I am not Down With Tyranny I am Blogactive. Please get my name off this rumor and innuendo…IT’S NOT ME.”

Rogers was referring to the story, Four More Top GOP Outings Could Be in the Offing, published on Sept. 4.

Rogers has a reputation for being careful about his reporting, and the attributions were confused, so I removed links to Rogers (including one to his site, Blogactive, and another to Counterpunch) but preserved sourcing to this and other assertions by Klein:

Interesting that [Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)] is moving rapidly against his fellow homosexual [Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho] — who loudly denies having done anything wrong — while he never did a thing when it came to David Diapers Vitter (R-Louisiana), who admitted to hiring prostitutes (a crime). The right-wing grassroots is howling for homo blood and McConnell is more than aware how quickly that could turn against him — and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is already in trouble with the violently homophobic Know Nothing wing of the GOP for his support of Bush’s immigration agenda.

Meanwhile, my colleague Trish noticed that ABC buried a lede in the final paragraphs of its story about Larry Flynt and Wendy Cortez, the New Orleans woman who says she had a four-month sex-for-pay relationship with Sen. David Vitter, the GOP family values ideologue from Louisiana:

“We’ve got a lot more coming,” claimed Flynt. “There is one more gay senator or congressman, and he also votes against matters of self-interest all the time. … I think he should go, he’s at the top of the agenda now.”

If there are more outings in the offing, it will be interesting to see if the GOP continues its pursuit of moral relativism by allowing Vitter, who has admitted illegally paying female prostitutes for sex, to stay in office because he would be replaced by a Democrat, while forcing another closeted gay congressman because his seat is safely Republican.

Four More Top GOP Outings Could Be in the Offing

Jon Ponder

In the wake of closeted Sen. Larry Craig’s self-outing in an airport men’s room this summer, word from Washington says more revelations are coming about the secret sexual identities of two leading GOP senators, while two allegedly gay Republican congressmen are making headlines and drawing unwelcome attention to themselves, the timing of which could not be worse.

The senators are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, from Kentucky. More about them below but first let’s look at two allegedly closeted members of the House, representatives Patrick McHenry and David Drier, who have been in the news lately.

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Republicans Painted Themselves Into Gay Corner

Trish

When the Karl Roves and Andrea Laffertys of the world decided that the best way to get out the vote was to fire up the masses about gay rights, they never considered that some of their own were gay too. It’s kind of like forgetting that some Republicans are black, and one or two are poor. Easy to do, but a mistake nonetheless.

Houston Chronicle: “A party that harps on sexual orientation, as the Republicans now do, forces many of its own into furtive, destructive behaviors”

When reality intrudes into their rhetoric, the dissonance stings — hard. The Houston Chronicle notes the consquences for a party, “which since the 1980s has, culturally and legislatively, demonized gay men and women.”

By preoccupying the party with homosexuality…Republican strategists have helped force out or into hiding numerous lawmakers who served the party well. Instead of disclosing their orientation and getting on with their work, gay or bisexual Republicans typically have felt compelled to choose between personal integrity and political survival.

Yet heterosexuality is hardly a bedrock Lincolnesque value. [Sen. Larry] Craig’s own constituents happily re-elected him for years — despite rumors about his orientation — before he began opining on others’ sexuality.

An even better example of this dynamic is the successful career of former U.S. Rep. Steve Gunderson, a Wisconsin Republican who told voters he was gay while still in office. Then he continued working diligently for the causes they cared about most.

…Gunderson backed the balanced budget amendment. He supported President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, approved the first Gulf War and promoted the dairy industry. Rural, conservative voters re-elected him eight times in a row for his conservative values before he chose not to run again in 1996…Gunderson never betrayed voters or himself.

In contrast, since 1980 the Republican Party has lost at least three once-closeted House members to scandals…But the scandals were at least partly fueled by each congressman’s need to deny his sexuality. Craig, now frantically trying to deny his guilty plea, may be the latest on the list.

…a party that harps on sexual orientation, as the Republicans now do, forces many of its own into furtive, destructive behaviors.

So while those caught are passing around blame — in Craig’s case to newspapers, lying cops, and wide stances — they should examine their own willingness to jump on the hate train, and partake of the payoff at the end of the line.

GOP Moral Relativism: Sen. Craig Must Resign But Sen. Vitter Can Stay

Jon Ponder

The clamor for Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig to resign is growing by the minute among Republicans in Washington. The senator’s inadvertent self-outing in an airport men’s room in June has rendered him too morally impure to remain in the GOP.

So what are the moral dictates behind the decision that Craig should go but Vitter can stay? There aren’t any. It’s all politics.

But when it was revealed in July that Sen. David Vitter’s number appeared in the D.C. Madam’s call list, these same Washington Republican elites readily accepted his apology for his “sins.” No one among the capitol’s conservative elite called for Vitter to step down.

Whatever happened to the Republicans’ vaunted “moral absolutism” on matters like these?

We have two Republican senators, both vocal supporters of “family values” — both have admitted to engaging in illegal activities. One pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover cop, the other got nabbed paying for sex, allegedly had a child with a prostitute and reportedly has a fetish for diapers.

So what are the moral dictates behind the decision that Craig should go but Vitter can stay?

There aren’t any. It’s all politics. The governor of Vitter’s state is a Democrat, and she would be eager to replace him with a Democrat. The governor of Idaho is a Republican, so his seat is safe. It’s that simple.

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Journalistic Ethics: When to Out a Guy

Buck Banks

In his “Everyday Ethics” column, Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute mulls over the question of when it is appropriate or germane to a story to identify a public figure or politician as gay. He notes that there were intimations that the latest scandalized pol was gay almost a year ago:

Last fall when a gay activist and radio show host claimed that Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was secretly gay, newsrooms around the country agonized over how and what to cover. Since Roll Call ‘s revelation Monday evening that Craig was arrested in a sting operation in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis airport, I have been fielding calls from reporters asking if and when journalists are justified in covering the sexual orientation of a politician.

Because Craig pleaded guilty, McBride argues, his alleged gayness is certainly part of the story. But on the axis of reasons to cover a person’s assumed sexual orientation, Craig also qualifies on several other measures:

  • Hypocrisy: It is fair game if a certain politician has consistently voted on public policy issues that appear to undermine the rights or the political agenda of gay and lesbian citizens and if there is evidence that he is gay himself. I actually support a higher threshold. Merely voting a certain way on issues doesn’t quite cut it. The only time the hypocrisy argument really works is when an individual has railed against gays and lesbians as a campaign platform. We don’t call women who vote against public policy that would be beneficial to other women hypocrites.
  • Honesty: If a guy says he’s not gay and it turns out that he is, he’s a liar and voters deserve to know. Here again, I believe a higher threshold is in order. Has he deceived a spouse? Has he actively created a false impression?
  • Infidelity: We don’t care if he’s gay. We care if he is having affairs and breaking his marriage vows. Then focus on the infidelity, not the sexual orientation. We’ve cared about philandering ever since the days of Gary Hart.
  • Criminal behavior: This is the clearest justification. If a politician is engaged in or charged with behavior that is deemed to be against the law, then we usually care. But go one step further and explain why such behavior is criminal, especially when it involves tapping ones foot in a men’s room.
  • The impact the rumors/story have on the voters and politics: We don’t care whether he’s gay. We report on the effect the story has on the political scene. This is a cop-out, a great way to back into a salacious story without taking responsibility for the information at the heart of the story. News editors, executive producers and political hacks, take your pick. If you’re going to cover the Senator Larry Craig story, find a journalistic purpose for the space and time and energy it consumes.

A 1996 Study Suggested That Many Homophobes Are Frustrated Gays

Jon Ponder

News of rabidly anti-gay Republican Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest for lewd behavior in an airport men’s room has highlighted, once again, a signature phenomenon of our era: highly placed, secretly queer rightwingers living on the down low.

“Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”
– Study

Bisexual men like Sen. Craig and Rev. Ted Haggard would not feel compelled to create public personas that are homophobic if homophobia were not such a powerful dynamic in the country and in our politics these days.

But why are so many people drawn to bigotry against gays? One theory suggests that homophobes have unresolved issues about their own sexuality and transfer their internalized anger, frustration and shame about their own attractions onto people who are gay. In 1996, this theory was tested at the University of Georgia:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia …. The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored.

They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire… Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

A single study is hardly conclusive but the idea that homophobes are deeply frustrated bisexuals contains a germ of common sense. Why would a secure and happy straight person be obsessed with gay people and what they do in bed, and why would that obsession be exhibited as hate and even rage?

H/t: Mr_Smartypants

Sen. Craig Blames His Men’s Room Trysting Guilty Plea on the Media

Jon Ponder

Sen. Larry Craig, the proudly homophobic Republican who pleaded guilty to soliciting an undercover cop in an airport men’s room the summer, apologized today — but not for his behavior in the bathroom stall in June, but rather for entering a guilty plea in August. Craig said he acted hastily because he was being “harassed” by a newspaper’s investigation into allegations he is gay:

It strains credulity that an innocent person — especially one as powerful a United States senator — would plead guilty to accusations of this sort.

For a moment, I want to put my state of mind into context on June 11. For eight months leading up to June, my family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been.

No? Well then why such agita over the newspaper’s investigation?

Let’s review what Craig did in the bathroom stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June, according to the officer:

“Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

It strains credulity that an innocent person — especially one as powerful as a United States senator — would plead guilty to accusations of this sort. An innocent man would have hired a lawyer right away and set about to fight the charges, come what may. Craig’s first priority was managing news about his arrest, not clearing his name or declaring his innocence.

Now he’s claiming innocence, of course, and says he screwed up after the arrest because he was operating solo, without counsel from lawyers, his staff or family. It’s probably true he didn’t bring his family into it, but at some point after his arrest on June 11 and before the hearing on August 8, someone came up with the strategy that has played out before our eyes: Plead guilty as quietly as possible and then, in true Bush Republican fashion, go before the cameras and lie with all the steely-eyed fervency that can be mustered.

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The complete text of Craig’s statement follows:

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