I have been a fan of Jodie Foster even before confirming, even before hearing, that she liked the ladies.  She is an incredibly versatile actress who has crafted a number of powerful performances, with my favorite one that earned her only a handful of nominations, and two only wins, but no Oscar, not even a nomination, the 1997 film Contact. And I liked her in Panic Room. And she stood out in The Silence of the Lambs, but she did win an Oscar for that–not to mention numerous other honors.

Last night, as nearly everyone knows by now, she, without using the “L” word, acknowledged (as far as I know) for the first time in a public forum that she once had a romantic relationship with another woman and asked, as per the Yahoo! headline below, that people respect her privacy:

. . . I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now I’m told, apparently that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show. (more…)

“If covering the allegations against Herman Cain taught me anything,” writes Tina Korbe about the allegations leveled against Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu . . .

. . . it’s to wait for more information to come to a conclusion about accusations of a personal nature. It’s almost never possible to be certain of the facts in he-said-she-said (or, in this case, he-said-he-said) controversies, but a general sense of things gradually emerges.

As many of our readers know, Babeu “stepped down Saturday from a state leadership position with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after a newspaper published allegations that he threatened to deport a former boyfriend.”

In a press conference yesterday, Babeu denied all but one of the allegations against him:

Yesterday, a tabloid article made a number of false allegations about me. Only one was true: I’m gay. Today, I held a press conference to discuss this. I want to be judged on my service: 20 years in the military, two deployments – including one in Iraq, a police officer who has responded to thousands of calls for help, and a Sheriff who has cut response times while reducing my own budget. I hope you will stand with me as we talk about the issues that matter: securing our border and ending the record debt and deficit spending that is stalling our economy and bankrupting the country we all love.

Provided Babeu is telling the truth, there is no story here save the invasion of the Sheriff’s privacy.  It seems that our friends in the media believe we should respect the private lives of gay politicians under only one condition — they’re not Republicans. (more…)

Huh?  (h/t – Blogger phenom Gabriel Malor)

It’s happened so often that it’s now a cultural cliche: the gay politician pretending to be straight. In most parts of the nation, homosexuality or bisexuality is a clear electoral liability.

Not in Center City’s 182d state House district. There, it’s a badge of honor.

Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

“I outed him as a straight person,” Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, as some in the audience gasped or laughed, “and now he goes around telling people, quote, ‘I swing both ways.’ That’s quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy’s a gem.”

Kravitz, 29, said that he is sexually attracted to both men and women and called Josephs’ comments offensive.

“That kind of taunting is going to make it more difficult for closeted members of the LGBT community to be comfortable with themselves,” Kravitz said. “It’s damaging.”

I’m not even sure what to say.  I’m truly text-less (the blogging version of being speechless).   I used the category “Leftist Nutjobs” because one or both of them just HAVE to be.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Bravo.

GOProud Unequivocally Opposes “Outing”
Statement of Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director

(Washington, D.C.) – In light of the latest debate regarding “outing,” sparked by the release of the film “Outrage,” Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud, issued the following statement:

“GOProud is the only national gay organization that is unequivocally opposed to outing. We stand for the proposition that an individual’s personal life isn’t relevant to policy – period.

“We want the government – as well as liberal activists – out of people’s bedrooms. The sex police is just as distasteful coming from the far left as it is coming from the far right.”

This blog was originally formed to combat the intrusion of liberal activists in the personal lives of gay Republican Congressional staffers. Log Cabin (Republicans) has a history of selectively opposing “outing”. It is time that we take a stand on personal liberty and oppose these gay fascist tactics. And we can’t be afraid to call it out as such. These are bully, brownshirt tactics meant to suppress free speech and individual decision-making.

Here is a very good CNN segment about the new film.

Notice how Charles Moran of Log Cabin is steamrolled by both Don Lemon and Michelangelo Signorile. I would note that I once appeared on Signorile’s SIRIUS radio program. He was one of the most angry, hateful individuals I have ever encountered. So I’m not surprised he plays bully in this CNN segment. He is a bully 24/7. Very typical of the rest of the self-righteous Gay Left activists.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In his piece, Democratic party partisans ‘outing’ gay Republicans, Rick Moran gets at the real reason for this type of “witch hunt:politics.  Those who engage in “outing” may dress up their tactics with noble-sounding rhetoric about exposing hypocrisy and exposing the deleterious effects of the proverbial closet, but they’re just looking for whatever weapon they can find in their campaign against conservatives:

They don’t agree politically with the targets of their slimey attacks, that’s why. And basically, it comes down to the issue of gay marriage and their notions of “gay rights.” Because their targets don’t promote their idea of a political agenda, this is “hypocrisy” in their book and must be “exposed” by ruining careers and families.

In other words, despite the fact that their disagreement is political, they have chosen to respond by personally attacking the objects of their rage and in the process, attempting to ruin their lives.

Emphasis added.  Moran adds a notion which seems to be one of the primary themes of this blog:

There is more than one political “agenda” for gays as just about any gay Republican or conservative can tell you.

Those who promote “outing” believe they should decide what the appropriate views someone harboring homosexual views should have.  They want to define the “gay rights” legislation someone should support if he wasn’t a hypocrite who hated himself.  If you have these inclinations, they contend, you must vote this way.

In short, they’re trying to make the personal political.

Indeed, for all too many who promote or otherwise support “outing,” there is no such thing as the personal.  It’s all politics, all the time.

Here we go again.  Someone else is trotting out the tired trope of the left about the hypocrisy of closeted politicians.  “Oscar nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick is turning the spotlight on closeted American politicians in his latest documentary, ‘Outrage.’”  And given the current sensibilities of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he stands a good chance of snagging yet another nomination and possibly a golden statuette.

He’s got a winning formula: point out the “hypocrisy” of certain Republicans.  (Wonder if he’ll followup with a film on the hypocrisy of a man running for the presidency promising a “net spending cut” yet, once in office delivering a severe spending explosion.)

Dick’s

film examines the double lives of a number of current political figures, mostly Republican men, who have masked their homosexuality through marriage to women and by actively working against the gay community. It explores the stories of politicians who, through their policies and voting records, actively bash gay people in order to prove they themselves are not gay. And it details a media establishment that keeps their secrets. The lives of former elected officals (and even some mainstream media figures) are also examined as the film explores the dual lives of public people who have chosen to live in the closet.

How will he define “working against the gay community”?  Probably means something like working against the agenda of the Human Rights Campaign and opposing liberal legislation.  Dick interviewed Larry Kramer and radio personality Michelangelo Signorile as well as openly gay Democratic Congressmen Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin for his project.

Doesn’t look like he talked to any opponents of “outing.”  I wonder if he asked ol’ Barney about his own hypocrisy, you know, grandstanding for a company acting in accordance with a legislation he voted for.

Don’t bet it.  Only Republican hypocrisy is newsworthy, provided they (those on the left and in Hollywood) get to define what hypocrisy is.

Finally, here’s an interesting nugget, “IndieWIRE [my source for this story] recently watched an unfinished cut of the film and we have agreed to refrain from detailing certain aspects of the film, and some of those who may depicted (sic) in it“.  Looks like they’re trying to make news about whom they’ll be “outing.”

Maybe I’m wrong and maybe this will provide a nuanced view of “outing” with interviews of those opposed to the practice as well as some with serious reservations.  If so, it could serve to promote a serious discussion of the choices people make.

But, given the agreement the reporters made to see the film, it’s pretty clear he’s not looking to start a conversation, but only to get some attention.  This is Hollywood after all.  And when it comes to politics, the best way to get favorable publicity in this town is portray Republicans in a bad light.

Call me cyncial if unlike, but for some reason, I think that’s his real intention.  Kriby Dick wouldn’t be the first to ride that formula to Tinseltown success.

UPDATE:  Jenn Q. Public offers:

Publicly exposing the sexual orientation of gay Republican congressmen is, of course, a poor strategy for achieving pretty much anything other than schadenfreude.  Most conservatives are indifferent to what goes on in the private bedrooms of public officials so long as all participants are consenting adults.

A representative from Magnolia Pictures, the distributor for Outrage, told indieWIRE the film “could be a ‘game changer’ for same sex civil rights.”  They would be hard pressed to come up with a more shallow, tone deaf analysis than that.

Read the whlole thing.

When addressing the recent revelations about how Bill Moyers, when in the Johnson White House, requested the FBI investigate the private sexual lives of his professional colleagues and political adversaries, liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald echoed some of our critics in pointing out that those things happened “45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration.”

In my Pajamas piece, I acknowledged, “Greenwald’s got a point that this happened 45 years ago. But doesn’t it bother Greenwald that Moyers never publicly acknowledged what he did, much less apologized for it?“  Well, in his response to Jack Shafer’s pieces in Slate on this matter, the one-time Democratic White House aide and current host of a program on a government-subsidized television network, fails to do just that.  He didn’t acknowledge his mistakes, indeed, responded as if he had done nothing wrong.

Instead he blames Goldwater (Johnson’s 1964 rival for the White House) and his allies for trying to politicize the arrest of Walter Jenkins, a Johnson Administration official who was caught having sex in a public restroom.  He goes on to praise the Johnson’s campaign for not leaking a supposed “tip” from then-FBI head J. Edgar Hoover that Goldwater operatives set Jenkins up!  (“What!?!?” was how I reacted when I read that.)

Only tangentially* does Moyers address the recently revealed memo detailing his requests that the FBI investigate administration officials suspected of having homosexual tendencies.   HIs letter is as Shafer describes it a “nondenial denial.”

This isn’t the first time when caught making a mistake, Moyers lashes out at a political rival. (This time, he even goes on to praise his own team!)  If he were a Republican, he’d be called paranoid.

The least Moyers could do is say that when he served in the Johnson White House, he did some things which, with the passage of time, he now realizes (has long since realized) were wrong.  He made mistakes and regrets them.  Instead, he refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing, refuses to admit making any mistakes, doesn’t says he’s sorry, refuses to apologize.

I did page searches for the words, “sorry,” “mistake,” “apology” “apologize” and “regret” and came up empty.

Recall how back during the Bush Administration, the media were so eager for the then-president to acknowledge his mistakes?  I wonder if Moyers was among their number.

For now he has shown himself even less capable than that Republican to admit wrongdoing (less capable even than Richard Nixon).  No wonder Shafer calls the Democrat’s smugness intolerable.

* (more…)

From Bill Moyers to Mike Rogers – liberals now have a documented history of shamelessly and ruthlessly rooting out The Gays(tm) who are in public service in Washington, DC.

So, since we have such an alleged “progressive” Administration now…. there is simply no reason for any gay or lesbian to be in the closet if they work in the Obama Executive branch.

Therefore, I am officially kicking off an effort to promote the openly gay and lesbian staff and officials who work in the Obama Administration.  Come out, come out, all of you!   I’m now accepting names and titles and will proudly publish them as I get them.   You can’t be afraid of anything — you work for the OBAMA Administration, right???

I fully expect liberals and progressives to avalanche me with emails with these out and proud public servants.  Again, there is simply no reason for all gay and lesbians in the Obama Administration to publicly declare their sexual orientation.

So let’s see how this turns out, folks.   My email address is BRUCE@GAYPATRIOT.ORG.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Welcome Instapundit and Corner Readers!

If it weren’t for his Power of Myth series where he introduced Joseph Campbell to a broader audience, Bill Moyers would have contributed little to our national discourse.  He has otherwise dedicated his career almost exclusively to destroying Republicans.

It’s too bad that despite his deep affection for Campbell and his work, Moyers all but ignored that great mythologist’s politics.  Campbell was a Republican and, as I understand, a pretty conservative one at that.

A true investigative reporter who regularly denounces conservatives might want to explore more deeply how his hero’s lifetime study of mythology did not shake his conservative political convictions.

In his White House days, working for then-Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, Moyers was more curious about the sexuality of some of his coworkers:

Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

And he wasn’t just looking to find out if his coworkers were gay:

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men’s room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater’s staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers’ memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

Isn’t using the FBI to dig up dirt on political opponents kind of similar to what Nixon did in Watergate?  There’s even a memo in the FBI files.

Oh, and this story about Moyers’ snooping around for evidence of gay people in the Goldwater camp came out in July of 2005.  For three-and-one-half years, the leading gay organizations have been silent on the matter while this onetime practioner of outing prattles away on national TV.

I daresay they’d have reacted differently if Moyers were a former Nixon aide with a show on FoxNews.

(more…)

Please note I had written this piece before John has posted his, but had been holding it.

When I first heard from a gay reader that a gay blogger had posted that a gay radio host had “outing” John McCain’s Senate Chief of Staff, I wondered where the story was.  The blogger went out great lengths to explain to us that McCain is anti-gay because, well, he didn’t support the legislation gay activists want politicians to support to demonstrate their pro-gay bona fides.

So, of course, this man, in the words of the radio host, has to be engaged in “hypocrisy.”  Give me a break.

Hypocrisy?  Huh?  How?  Oh yeah, because Republicans are by definition, anti-gay.

Well, anyway, we already know how John McCain treats friends and colleagues when they come out to him as gay.  It doesn’t matter to him.  He treats them he same as he did the day before he learned about their sexuality.  If he didn’t bother him when he found out Jim Kolbe or Neil Giuliano was gay, it wasn’t going to bother him to learn his Chief of Staff was gay.  And, heck, maybe he already knew.  So what?

Given McCain’s professed tolerance for gay friends and colleague’s, his campaign’s contacts with Log Cabin and gay bloggers, this “outing” in a total non-story.  No wonder the mainstream media hasn’t picked it up.  

And if they did, it would only redound to the benefit of John McCain, providing further evidence of his absence of anti-gay animus.

The Republican presidential nominee treats gay people as individuals.  That’s been a matter of public record at least since 2000.  I don’t know why some activists think it’s some big scoop now to report that he trusts a gay man to run his Senate office.  Maybe it’s their belief that this somehow will matter to Republican voters.  Or maybe their own anti-Republican animus.  Why else would they think people would care?

Mark Buse is assuredly a very competent administrator.   And that’s what matters to John McCain.  

End of story.

Well, well, well.

The U.S. Senate aide arrested for arranging a three-way with an undercover informant and who he thought was a 13-year-old male was previously an employee with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest GLBT rights group. Mike McHaney, 28, was fired from his job as a scheduler for Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state within hours his arrest for attempting to sexually exploit a minor.

McHaney, who remains in federal custody without bond at least until a hearing tomorrow, was arrested by FBI agents after showing up to meet a cooperating witness and the fictional teen.

Brad Luna, an HRC spokesperson, confirmed that McHaney worked as an executive scheduler for the D.C.-based gay rights group from September 2005 to May 2006.

The Gay Left cabal must be close to a complete meltdown.   After all, for three years they have been criminalizing and personally punishing gay Americans for merely not towing the liberal political line on gay policy issues. 

But now they would have to make a moral equivalent of an alleged child sex predator commiting an actual crime to merely denying your gay sexual preferences.  Otherwise, wouldn’t they be outraged and condemn the emerging Democrat child sex predator problem they have.   Because, there is no equivalent here.

I wonder do the masters of outing gay Republicans believe that being a child predator the same as being against same-sex marriage?

The cricket-chirping silence of condemnation of the liberal bloggers and the MSM about James “Mike” McHaney arrest is now becoming uber-deafening.

In addition to his HRC experience, it turns out that McHaney is quite the seasoned Democratic political operative.  Dick Gephardt, John Kerry.  Wow.

Picture of alleged child sex predator and
Democrat Party activist, James Michael McHaney.

One has to ask the following question, since it was repeated ad nauseum during the Mark Foley affair:   Who knew and/or enabled Mike McHaney’s alleged child sex predatory activities?  

Mike Meehan, Sen. Cantwell’s chief of staff, worked with McHaney at Kerry 2004 HQ.  Did Meehan bring McHaney along to Cantwell’s office?  What does Meehan know about McHaney’s history and when did he know it?

And do McHaney and Lane Hudson — revealer of all things Mark Foley – know each other?  After all, they both worked for the HRC, John Kerry for President and Rep. Rodney Alexander.  It stretches the imagination to think Hudson and McHaney don’t know each other.   If so, what does Hudson know about McHaney’s child sex predatory ways? 

If the Republicans have a closeted gay denial issue, it appears the Democrats have a closeted child sex predator who-happens-to-be issue.  I’ll let you decide which is the crime.

The onion is just beginning to be peeled back, folks.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Via The Corner:

Gallup Poll Results — PRINCETON, NJ — Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.

*befuddled*  I can’t see how this is news? 

After all, what else would you expect from a bunch of communist-protecting, socialist-breeding, Islamist-coddling, free speech-destroying, America-hating, angry anarchists who see a conspiracy in everything and try to destroy the lives of Americans that don’t share their angry view of the world?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

Many of those who advocate the “outing” of closeted gay Republican staffers and elected officials justify their practice as exposing political hypocrisy. Yet, their definition of hypocrisy, depends, in large measure, on how they believe men who have sex with (or solicit sex from) other men should vote on “gay” issues. As if one must favor state recognition of gay marriage merely because he is attracted to other men. Or must favor non-discrimination laws protecting gay employees from being fired because of their sexuality.

There are compelling religious/cultural reasons to oppose gay marriage and compelling libertarian reasons to oppose non-discrimination laws, reasons not based on animus against gays. I’m not saying these view are right. I do understand the former arguments and agree with the latter. I’m just saying there are a number of reasons to oppose such legislation.

Yet, the “outers,” those who would expose the sexuality of public figures (or those who work for such public figures), gay Republicans (or Republicans who solicit sex with other men) must toe a certain line lest the “outers” make public their private lives, including the most embarrassing details.

While I have criticized soon-to-be-former Idaho Senator Larry Craig, I have not joined the chorus of left-wing bloggers (and at least one sensible centrist) in faulting him for his hypocrisy. First of all, the man seems to experience dissociation between what he does when he goes to relieve himself in a public restroom and what he says when he speaks out (and votes) in public fora. Moreover, he doesn’t need to vote a certain way just because he’s (apparently) attracted to other men.

I may discount the hypocrisy argument, but critics of the GOP seem to celebrate it. As Robbie, now of The Malcontent observed two years ago, “The hypocrisy argument is a tactic used by thought fascists who believe an immutable personal characteristic must dictate – without exception – the ideological and political state of a person’s mind.”

The “outers” define the meaning of hypocrisy to suit their purposes. Or maybe they’re just trying to put a highfalutin gloss to their own prurient passions, a strange fascination with the sexual behavior of a handful of their ideological adversaries and a perverse glee in making that public.

(more…)

Every now again, I come across a story which so astounds me, I’m speechless. And for those who know me well, it takes some doing to put me at a loss for words. But, this morning, when my friend Rick Sincere e-mailed me a link to his latest post, I was dumbfounded, in both the denotative and etymological sense of the word.

But, then again, given that it was the actions of gay left bloggers (and those who comment to their blogs — and sometimes even to this one) that rendered me speechless, perhaps I should have been less astounded, given their past actions and statements.

You see, these bloggers have worked themselves into a lather because an eighteen year-old conservative activist who works for the doomed presidential campaign of Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo happens to be gay. And they have determined not merely to out the teenager, but also to level the most vile insults on him.

While this story rendered me speechless (and perhaps accounted for my “brain cloud” during the better part of the day), it did spur Rick and the ever adorable Robbie to write some pretty good posts on the topic. Robbie notes how:

The gay blogosphere reacted with disdain, hatred, vitriol, and hundreds of vicious, borderline unhinged comments. From Dan Savage to Signorile to Joe.My.God, gays poured scorn, bile, and rage on an eighteen year-old fellow traveler. . . .

At what point does basic humanity take a back seat to political identity? While the justification of this mass out-pouring of hatred is (as ever) “the hypocrisy”, it is difficult not to note the deep and deeply unsettling hypocrisy laid bare in these putative guardians of the gay community.

In a prior post, Robbie had asked:

Do my fellow gays really believe this makes us look at all good? That picking on a teenager with the kind of hatred and venom of Signorile and his followers is the path to acceptance and admiration?

Meanwhile, Rick wonders:

You would think that none of these people had never gone through the anxious, raucous, frightening, unpredictable process of coming out. . . . It wasn’t that long ago that most of us — liberal and conservative alike — were facing the daunting prospect of inching out of the closet. . . .

Have any of these gloaters thought about the personal consequences for Tyler Whitney, the consequences that any one of us might have faced had we come out to the wrong person or at the wrong time? How will it affect his relationship with his parents, his grandparents — or even, perhaps, with his boyfriend (if he has one)? Could he be disowned, disinherited, sent to an ex-gay treatment facility where he would be scarred by psychotherapeutic quacks?

Rick also records some of the insults leveled on the teenager. Some of their vile and hateful remarks make some of the comments on this blog seem pale in comparison. Why do these people hate so? Why must they so denigrate a very young man with political views different from their own?

I can’t really improve on what Robbie and Rick have to say, so just recommend you read their posts (here, here and here), but will conclude this post by asking: What does this accomplish?. It seems that all these people are just looking for more means to express their hatred of Republicans. Or it is that they simply refuse to understand that a gay young man, a teenager, could have different political opinions than they? Or are they acting out some other kind of rage?

I don’t really know why they’re doing what they’re doing, so I’ll just go back to my primary question and ask again (in astonishment, curiosity and befuddlement) — What does it accomplish to out this young man? What does it accomplish?

This should be a lesson to American Liberals (*cough* David Corn *cough*) who think it is okay to “out” people in public.  In Nigeria, outings have resulted in the gay community being terrified to have dinner with each other.  And now the government is considering all forms of gays interacting with each other in Nigeria.

In the Muslim north of Nigeria, Bisi Alimi could be stoned to death for having gay sex. In the south, he could face three years in prison. Now, a proposed law would make it illegal just to share a meal at a cafe with gay friends.

The proposal under debate in Nigeria’s House of Representatives would outlaw not just gay marriages, but any form of association between gay people, social or otherwise, and publication of any materials deemed to promote a “same-sex amorous relationship.”

Anyone attending a meeting between gay people, even two friends in a private house, could receive a sentence of five years under the act. Engaging in homosexual acts is already illegal in Nigeria, with those convicted facing jail terms in the south and execution in the north.

Alimi’s been trying to drum up united opposition to the legislation, but says Nigeria’s homosexual community is so far underground and the subject is so taboo that it’s been difficult. The 27-year-old activist is one of few openly gay Nigerians, having been “outed” by a university newspaper three years ago. None of his companions have told their families they are attracted to men. The risk of arrest, beatings or even death is why they requested that only first names be used for this article.

It’s funny how the American Left accuses the Bush Administration of gay oppression and alleges that Bush is building “gay concentration camps” in the Western States.  But the leading indicators of actual gay crimes are coming from the Gay Left itself….. Outing Their Own Community.

Sick.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

**UPDATED THURSDAY MORNING**
(see below)

Welcome to readers from Instapundit, Corner, Wizbang, Polipundit and The Anchoress.

This is a stunning development in efforts to peel back the onion of the Mark Foley scandal and expose who knew what and when they knew it.

I have been flying back to Charlotte for most of the day, so I have been unable to “elevate” the comment by Brad Luna of the Human Rights Campaign to a full posting.  I emailed Brad last evening asking the HRC to respond to Dan’s posting challenging Joe Solmonese to respond to the accusations that the entire Foley affairs orginated at the Human Rights Campaign.

“The email exchanges in question between former Congressman Mark Foley and a House page have been in the possession of bloggers and media outlets for some time now. Yesterday, it came to our attention that an HRC employee, hired just last month to work for us in Michigan, was responsible for initially posting these emails on his blog. We investigated the matter, determined that HRC resources had been inappropriately used, and let him go. No one at the Human Rights Campaign, other than this individual, had any knowledge of his activities,” said Brad Luna, Spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

Luna’s statement was also emailed to the blogger of “Stop October Surprises” who is the first to connect the dots linking the Human Rights Campaign to the bogus blog “Stop Sex Predators”.  SSP, you will recall, was the blog set up to leak out the details of the Foley connected the dots.  We now know that a former employee at HRC was behind the entire affair. 

I have repeatedly highlighted the HRC’s involvement in the Foley affair from the start.  Many of you dismissed it.  But the HRC has finally admitted it.

So my questions now are the following:

• What is the name of the fired HRC employee? 
• When did the HRC employee come into possession of the Mark Foley emails?
• Why did he hold them until October, instead of going to the proper authorities immediately if he truly wanted to expose a potential sex predator?
• What did the officials at HRC know about the Foley matter before today?
• What connections might the fired HRC employee have with the two-year old “outing” campaign targeting gay Congressional staff?
• Were other HRC employees involved in this conspiracy?
• Does this former HRC employee have any connections to Democrat Party officials?

Finally, it is worth noting that one of the central figures in the Foley affair is also a Board of Directors member of the Human Rights Campaign — Jeff Trandahl, the former Clerk of the House.

I think the HRC needs to come clean and fully explain to those of you who give them money exactly what the hell they are up to.  This entire matter has put every gay American into a bad light by equating child predators with being gay.  The HRC has a responsibility to tell us what they know and when they knew it.  They are now directly responsible for the anti-gay atmosphere that has emerged from the scandal that one of their own employees helped launch.

**UPDATE** – The New York Times has picked up the story.

A liberal gay rights group said Wednesday that one of its employees, acting anonymously, had created the Web site that first published copies of unusually solicitous e-mail messages to teenagers from former Representative Mark Foley, which led to his resignation.

A spokesman for the group, the Human Rights Campaign, said it first learned of its employee’s role this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group’s resources. The scandal surrounding Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, has been a burdensome distraction for members of his party in the month before the midterm elections, and some Republicans have speculated that the e-mail messages were planted by a Democrat.

The rights campaign’s spokesman, David Smith, said the employee, whose name he declined to disclose, was a junior staff member hired last month to help mobilize the organization’s members in Michigan. “The minute we learned about it we took decisive action,” Mr. Smith said.

The Miami Herald and other news organizations have acknowledged obtaining copies of the same e-mail messages months ago but declining to publish them because of their potentially ambiguous contents.

Ummm.. I thought the Hypocrite Rights Campaign was “bi-partisan”?  (LMAO).  And, thank goodness for the bloggers who alerted the HRC this week about their rogue employee doing all of these things mysteriously with no knowledge of the HRC hierarchy, according to them.  (Yours truly was one of the bloggers who put the HRC’s feet to the fire, thanks to Dan’s post.)

Finally, wthere is smoke there is fire…. keep watching the truth come out over at StopOctoberSurprises!  That’s where this HRC bottom-feeding was uncovered.

This is the HRC’s version of Rathergate.  Let’s see how the largest gay rights group in America handles their worst scandal.   Many deep pockets will be watching.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Since Joe Solmonese was appointed executive director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) last year, we have been critical of his selection and of his leadership. He came from EMILY’s List, a partisan Democratic organization. At HRC, he has been quick to criticize the Bush Administration & the GOP and eager to ally himself with left-wing groups*, many of which have partisan Democratic agendae, few of which are active in promoting pro-gay policies.

HRC’s very selection process ensured that the organization’s new leader would be a Democratic partisan. In the aftermath of an election in which approximately one in four gay and lesbian Americans voted to reelect a Republican president, HRC included only one Republican on its 24-member committee to pick its new leader. And that ostensible Republican only gave money to Democratic candidates.

Under Solmonese’s leadership, the group removed the word “bipartisan” from its Mission Statement and removed a press release entitled, “Alito’s Gay Support Raises Hope.” While the release still shows up when one searches HRC’s web-site for Alito, when you click on the title of that press release you get this message: “HTTP/1.1 404 Object Not Found.”

Despite evidence that the President’s then-nominee for the Supreme Court, current Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr, was broad-minded on gay issues, HRC, likely removed its favorable release when they joined a chorus of liberal groups opposing his confirmation. His pro-gay statements and attitudes mattered less to this gay rights’ organization than his conservative judicial philosophy. (I have a copy of the release in my files.)

And now one blogger has uncovered evidence that suggests HRC may be behind a web-site, StopSexPredators.com, that attempted to capitalize on the Foley scandal. On Saturday, reader Brit noted a link in Ace’s blog to a new blog Stop October Surprises which traced the anti-Foley blog to HRC.

Despite Joe Solmonese’s liberal record, there is no evidence linking him to the blog. Still, there is some pretty substantial evidence suggesting that HRC’s employees have been involved in a dirty political campaign designed to hurt the GOP. Many on the gay left are up in arms that closeted gay people are working for conservative Republicans. Now, it seems that some on the gay left are behind a closet attempt to hurt the GOP. And so far, gay organizations have been silent.

As head of HRC, Joe Solmonese must order an immediate investigation to find who was using its ISP on behalf of the bogus blog. If it turns out they were employees of his organization, he must fire them.

HRC has every right to pursue a left-wing agenda. But, it should refrain from such underhanded political tricks. That is why Joe Solmonese needs to address the evidence that someone is using his group’s ISP to set up a bogus blog. He needs to make clear that he disapproves of such underhanded tactics, even when they’re used against his political adversaries.

- B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)

* via The Malcontent‘s Robbie.

When I was coming out as a gay man in the early 1990s, I searched in vain for books which could help me deal with my difference. With the possible exception of Andrew Tobias’ (then published under the alias John Reid) The Best Little Boy in the World, I didn’t find a single book where the ideas or anecdotes corresponded to my ideas, my feelings or even my hopes. To be sure, there were a few novels I read and enjoyed, but too many included some notion of a gay consciousness, sense of some sort of abstract group identity, defined by the community rather than individual gay men and women.

That is, until 1993, when I discovered Bruce Bawer’s A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society. That wonderful book comes to mind today primarily because of its subtitle–the Gay Individual in American society. The other books developed an abstract notion of gay identity, based on the sociopolitical values of the gay community. As if merely by coming out, we abandon the values and ideas of those around us.

Given the focus on a community identity, it’s no wonder that so many gay activists — and their allies on the left — have difficulty grasping the notion of a gay conservative. So, so many on the left show so little sympathy for the lives of those individual gay men and women whom they would out to advance their partisan agenda.

Not only do they lack sympathy for these individuals, but it seems that some of those involved in the “outing” campaign want to punish them for not being “good homosexuals,” that is, by not adopting the party line on what it means to be gay. It almost seems that they want us to suffer. And their notion of coming out is not to promote the well-being of the individual gay man or lesbian, but so that her or she can become part of an interest group which promotes a left-wing agenda and works to elect Democrats to office.

They see us not as gay individuals, but as members of yet another interest group advancing the left-wing cause. No wonder they treat us as apostates.

While many of the leaders of the gay movement see themselves as part of a broad “progressive” force to change society, gay conservatives know that the modern American conservatism developed in opposition to the growth of the secular state. At least since Barry Goldwater, their focus has been on freedom, the right of the individual to live his life as he sees fit. Individualism has been at the core of American conservatism since its very early days. For example, in the 1960s, at the dawn of the American conservative movement, Chicago students called their quarterly journal the New Individualist Review.

It is this no wonder as Bruce noted yesterday that American conservatives are sticking up for Gays. They respect the privacy of gay Republicans, not necessary because we’re gay or Republican, but because we’re individual citizens. They may not agree some of our choices, but they respect our right to make them.

And that is really the difference between contemporary American conservatism and the ideology that defines the American left. Most of those on the right see us as individuals who should be left to live our lives as we see fit. While too many of those on the left see us as members of a group who should have the attitudes they deem appropriate to that group.

They may claim that they are for gay people and promote legislation which is supposed to advance our cause, yet when it comes to individual dealings with particular homosexuals, too many of them are no different that their social conservative adversaries — for they have a fixed notion of what it means to be gay. And that is why, in most debates, I side with the conservatives for as has been made manifest in numerous blog posts and even Op-Eds, the thinkers on the right, the true heirs of Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan nor interested in bashing gays or even in using the state to advance their interests, but in treating us as individuals and letting us alone to live freely as individual Americans.

Since George Washington, the rallying cry of Americans has been liberty, freedom. And that freedom extends to gay people, whether they’re conservative or liberal, even if they want to live in the closet. We may not agree with their choice, but we support their right to make it. It’s their lives we’re talking about, not ours.

It’s time for gay leftists to stop being such nosy busybodies and learn to appreciate the diversity of our community. And take the time to understand why some gay people may not share their political ideology.

- B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)

I find one element in our post-Foley world very encouraging.  In this atmosphere of Radical Gay Liberals hunting down gays and rooting them out of public service, it is conservatives sticking up for gay people and their privacy. 

And while the Gay Leftists continue to pursue a “mutual assured destruction” campaign against gay people our national gay groups are silent.  Our “gay leaders” are also allowing the nutty gay fringe to be the face of the gay community in the national media.  One exception — Patrick Sammon from Log Cabin on Larry King Live last night (which I was unable to watch).

First example…. Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt.com — “Who’s Really Being Outed?”.

More interesting is what this line of attack tells us about the left’s beliefs regarding the right. The left strongly believes that conservatives detest homosexuals and will be disgusted by the presence of a Lavender Mafia in the GOP tent. I can understand how they would reach this conclusion – certain chronic right wing embarrassments like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have historically fed such a notion.

But if those on the left actually knew more practicing Christians, they would know that the stuff about condemning the sin but loving the sinner isn’t mere lip service. If the members of the left actually knew the people that they so casually and easily defame, they would also understand that infinite forgiveness is a hallmark of America’s Christian community.

In short, this entire offensive rests on notions hatched in the left wing echo chamber without any dissenting voices available to disabuse the strategists of the their faulty assumptions. If the left actually took the time to understand the dynamics of the community they so loathe, they would know that professional Outing Scumbag Mike Rogers will inspire the Republican base, not the opposite.

BUT MOST DAMNING OF THE LEFT is the casual assumption of group-think that this exercise demonstrates. The logic is that if you’re gay, you must therefore support gay marriage. What’s more, you must support everything that someone like Glenn Greenwald supports. To do otherwise evidences self-hatred and a betrayal of the cause.

(read the WHOLE thing!)

And this from Eric at Classical Values — “Which Party Persecutes More Homosexuals?”

In what will go down as one of history’s great ironies, in enlightened, modern America, there are still people engaged in exposing and persecuting homosexuals working in the government or in important positions, and they are activists in the Democratic Party. (Michael Rogers and John Aravosis are two notorious, longtime practitioners, and the latter was recently invited to lunch with Bill Clinton.)

The difference is that the Democrats doing the persecution today can’t fire gay Republicans directly; instead they are tracking them down and exposing them in the hope that the Republicans will be bigoted enough to fire them. Unfortunately, this has failed. Even Rick Santorum, supposedly the worst gay basher of the lot, refused to fire his gay aide after the man was outed.

What this has created is a huge (if ironic) double standard between the parties. Gay Democrats have a right to their privacy, but gay Republicans are hounded and live in fear of the new (Democratic) sexual McCarthyism.

The reason they are made to live in fear while their Democrat counterparts are not is because gay Republicans are said to be self hating hypocrites. According to this argument, because the Republican Party does not support same sex marriage, any gay Republican is by definition betraying himself — even if he disagrees with the Republican Party on that issue. For that, it is fair to invade his privacy and make his identity and sexuality known to the world, in the hope that he’ll be fired by bigoted Republicans.

Yet the outed Republicans are not being fired. Their only persecutors are on the left. And they’re redoubling their efforts in order to combat more “hypocrisy.”

I’m not saying that the Republican Party is free of bigotry, because it isn’t. But if the activists keep this stuff up and ordinary voters find out about it (I’m not sure whether they have) pretty soon someone’s going to ask which party has more bigots.

This awesome salvo from Captain Ed — The Left Hates Gays?…

These kind of slimy allegations have no way to be proven or disproven, leaving Craig with limited options to clear the air. How does one disprove a sexual orientation? He has three children with his wife Suzanne, and nine grandchildren. That seems to be proof that he has a heterosexual orientation, but Rogers and the scandal brigade will argue that Craig’s just in denial. It’s a no-win argument, and its use of anonymous sourcing is especially egregious and despicable. Rogers wants to ruin Craig politically, and yet he doesn’t produce a single source for his allegations to go on the record.

Once again, the Left shows its obsession with sexuality, but it’s really more than that. The Left obsesses over identity politics in all forms, and that obsession comes out in pathological terms. Rogers reveals this in his blog post, demanding that gay staffers on the Hill identify their orientation publicly, or else he will do it for them. Sexual identity is everything to him, and the concept of sexual privacy has no value to him at all. He wants to humiliate gays who prefer to keep their sexual activity private, forcing them to wear the virtual pink triangle against their will to experience obloquy and castigation.

However, the obloquy and castigation seems to only come from Rogers and his ilk. I couldn’t care less whether Craig is attracted to men or women; it’s really none of my business, and none of Rogers’ either. As long as he’s not importuning minors, then it makes no difference to anyone except Craig and his family, and that’s if the allegations have any basis in fact. The only time it becomes a public issue is if Craig insisted on an official government status of a same-gender relationship, which as a policy issue should be decided by the people. Most conservatives, moderates, and liberals share the same conviction that sexual orientation is a private matter. Only extremists like Rogers allow themselves to get worked up over it.

The only bigot who should be ashamed of himself is Rogers. And if he’s a libeler, he better get himself a damned good lawyer.

And finally, in one of the best written blog pieces I’ve seen in a while…. the incredible satirical “It’s the Homos, Stupid” — a letter from Howard Dean (in the form of IowaHawk) to the Conservative-American Community.

[T]his is just the tip of the GOP gayberg. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the mincing minnie who ran the GOP’s Foley coverup? A former high school “wrestling coach.” California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger? A curious fondness for flexing his oiled pecs while parading around in a pair of skimpy Speedos. “Dick Armey”? You do the math.

And if their rampant homoism weren’t enough, the GOP has further betrayed traditional conservatives by secretly nominating negros in races across the country. Yes, you read that correctly: actual negros. No matter how many times they try to hide the genetic truth from conservatives like you, GOP nominees like Michael Steele, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell are black as the ace of spades. Imagine the devastating impact on US property values if the world learns that more of those types have moved into the Congressional neighborhood.

Are these Republican negros also gay? It is too early to say definitively, but much more will be revealed in the upcoming weeks. Our research teams are busy still digging up evidence, but what we’ve learned already should be enough to destroy whatever shred of faith you have left in the Gay Old Party. I have, in my hand, a list of of over 200 GOP insiders suspected of sodomy, locker room towel-snapping, dancing with fat girls, and open negroism. As Christians like you, we would rather persuade them to forfeit their election campaigns peacefully, but if necessary we promise to get the charges out in time for your November 5 Sunday sermons.

Are you fed up with the GOP’s miscegenation and gay bathhouse shenanigans? I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but maybe it’s time for conservatives like you to give Democrats a fresh new look. The Republicans like to talk about having a “big tent,” but we at the DNC are actually taking concrete steps to bring conservatives back in the fold. Just look at our innovative Iraq quagmire withdrawal plan, which has earned the praise and endorsement of rock-ribbed, traditional American conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Fred Phelps, and David Duke.

Like us, these no-nonsense mainstream conservatives know it’s time to bring US troops home where they belong, protecting our children from the clutches of the Republican congressional gay negro NAMBLA mafia. With our troops safely back, the people of Iraq can then begin building a faith-based society emphasizing the same traditional values that motivate conservatives like you: women at home, prayer in school, capital punishment for homos.

I am very proud of the excellent work by the conservative blogosphere by standing up for gay Americans while our own gay community turns on itself in a feeding frenzy.  I’d like to think our voices have had some impact in how conservative bloggers view gay issues and how their perceptions may have changed over the past two years.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

When I used to read Andrew Sullivan’s blog with great regularity, I would find that while I didn’t always agree with him, when I did agree with him, it sometimes seemed that he nearly perfectly expressed my own thoughts. Just today when linked to his post on outing (via Ann Althouse, via Instapundit), I discovered the old Andrew Sullivan whose blog I once very much enjoyed.

Andrew doesn’t mince words when taking issue with what he calls the “outing crusade:”

The fact that their motives might be good is no excuse. Everybody on a witchhunt believes their motives are good. But the toxins such a witchhunt exposes, the cruelty it requires, and the fanaticism of its adherents are always dangerous to civilized discourse. What you’re seeing right now is an alliance of the intolerant: the intolerant on the gay left and the intolerant on the religious right. The victims are gay people – flawed, fallible, even pathetic gay people. But they are still people. And they deserve better.

While I’m not so sure there’s an alliance between the intolerant gay left and the intolerant social conservatives, I do think that the intolerant gay left is trying to use the intolerance of those social conservatives to split the GOP.

I agree with Ann that this tactic will likely backfire, that “these creepy, gleeful efforts at outing will only make social conservatives more conservative, and they will continue to look to the Republican party to serve their needs.” Jonah Goldberg (also via Instapundit) agrees: “The sort of scorched earth attack liberals have mounted in the wake of Foley is creating precedents I guarantee will haunt them in unexpected ways in years to come.“

That there are those on the left who would attempt to play into the prejudices of the most anti-gay forces in our society in order to help defeat the GOP shows that they are more interested in advancing their own partisan agenda than in respecting the private lives — and personal choices — of individual gay men and women. For them, it’s all politics. (I’ve said this before. As have countless others.) While they may express noble sentiments about helping gay people, they could care less about gay individuals who happen to be Republican.

I can no longer count how many times those on the left have wondered how I could support a political party which has contempt for gay people. And yet while I don’t always agree with my party — or the attitudes of some of its members — I have never encountered the level of hate or vitriol that those involved in the outing campaign have directed against closeted gay Republicans.

On the one side, certain social conservatives criticize gay people in general. On the other, certain voices on the left, many of them gay, show no regard for the private lives of individual gay people. And demonize those with a political agenda at odds with their own.

It’s time to call these angry voices for what they are. I’m glad that Andrew has taken on those who would compromise the lives of individual gay men and lesbians to further their partisan agenda.