Out Magazine has an article on the ongoing hypocrisy that plagues the Republican Party, particularly in Washington, D.C. It focusses on the gay-baiting, outwardly gay hating closet cases - think former Congressman Ed Schrock form Virginia Beach - who in private can't wait to have some hot gay sex themselves. When one of their number gets caught, all of a sudden they want to keep "private lives" private even though the anti-gay laws they pass impact directly on the private lives of the rest of us. My attitude is that if they want their private life to remain private, then stop meddling in the private lives of other gays. One standard should apply to all: if you want to secretly suck dick, then do NOT tell others how to live their sex lives. Based on the article, Congressamn Barney frank agrees and is a supporter of my friend Mike Rogers of BlgActive.com. I recommend a read of the entire article, but here are some highlights:Once upon a time, closeted gay people mostly feared outing by Washington cops or counterintelligence agents. Now the main danger to closeted Republicans -- especially those working for antigay legislators -- comes from other gay people like Washington activist Michael Rogers. Rogers’s website BlogActive regularly outs gay Republicans -- whom Rogers considers fair game if they actively fight against the rights of gay people in their public lives or work for a legislator who does. (Because Larry Craig has a miserable record on gay rights, readers of Rogers’s blog knew all about the Idaho senator’s bathroom-based proclivities long before he was arrested for them in Minneapolis.)
*What Rogers does makes some Democrats squeamish, because they think no one should ever decide for someone else when he must come out of the closet.
*But Representative Frank is not among Rogers’s detractors.“I think what Rogers does is legitimate,” Frank tells me. “I think hypocrisy is something to go after. If you had pro-life people having abortions, or if Sarah Brady had a gun, there would be no hesitation. Think of any other context in which people would be allowed to blatantly violate the public policies they advocate and say, ‘I have a right to keep this secret.’”
*Practically all Republicans -- and quite a few Democrats -- disagree with Frank about this, but the Massachusetts pol has never hesitated to fight fire with fire in Washington’s inflammatory culture wars. Frank recalls that in 1989, Republican hit man Lee Atwater (Karl Rove’s role model) tried to imply that newly elected Democratic House speaker Tom Foley was gay by comparing his voting record with Frank’s and accusing Foley of occupying a “liberal closet.”
*Frank struck back at once: He announced that if the Republicans didn’t back off, he would out every gay Republican politician he knew. Atwater immediately sued for peace: He had the White House switchboard track down Foley to tell him the attacks would stop forthwith.
*One mainstream reporter who is revolutionizing the way Washington sees its gay subculture is Jose Antonio Vargas, a 27-year-old native of the Bay Area who came out in high school at 17. Hired by The Washington Post two days after he graduated from San Francisco State University in 2004, Vargas started in the Style section, where he was assigned to write about the culture of video games.
*When I ask Vargas what his own attitude is toward gay Republicans, he says that he’s fascinated by them: “When I lived in the Bay Area, I thought they were an urban myth!” “I don’t think I’m sympathetic towards them, and I don’t feel sorry for them,” he continues. “That’s not my job. I didn’t want to demonize gay Republican staffers. It’s not about being gay per se: If you come out on the Hill and you’re a Republican, you lose power.”
*Vargas actually got the best description of the downside of official Republican attitudes toward gay people when he was reporting a story that had nothing to do with politics. Marsha Martin, an AIDS administrator, was explaining the reason for the resurgence of unsafe sex among young gay men. “The truth is, the urgency of the HIV prevention messages we’ve been sending -- Safe sex only! Use a condom! -- has worn off,” Martin said. “And if you think about the political and social climate we’ve been in and we’re still in, what message is that sending to gay men? ‘No, you can’t get married as gay couples.’ ‘No, you can’t be openly gay in the military.’ ‘No, you don’t have equal rights.’ Those things produce a lack of self-esteem, a kind of self-loathing, and in that environment is HIV.”
2 comments:
Who is to call who a hypocrite? It serves NO purpose, other than witch hunts in self-righteousness. I have total disdain for your friend Rogers.
Taking people at their face value, however despicable, at least gives substance to fears. Searching toilets to expose a bisexual in search of his release only paralyzes others likewise afraid.
I don't care if a wretch favors SSM or not, it's the right thing to do. I don't care if queers promote torture porn; it's the wrong thing to do. The values stand on their own, not by the individual making them. To link the two is an ad hominem fallacy. With logic, you don't need to look in closets to see what skeletons dwell -- it don't matter.
I guess when I say I am a "Christian" I do so on the basis of the four Gospels. I pretty much dismiss anything written by Paul to be the ravings of a sexually repressed Pharisee who could never let go a legalistic religious mindset despite his lip service to the holy spirit, grace, etc.
As for the old testament, I again disregard much of it as a tribalistic writing that focused on the Jews being different and, therefore, often condemning the customs and practices of other peoples.
If that makes me a hypocrite, so be it. I simply believe that if one is a follower of Christ, the four Gospels are all one needs.
MBH
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