And it’s a great question, because the GOP has backed itself into a corner by declaring a new standard — a misdemeanor — is sufficient grounds to run a loyal member of its party out of town when it involves even the hint of revealed homosexuality or, if you take Larry Craig’s likely viewpoint, a desire for sex with men.
Mike Signorile, in a spot-on post, notes that the swift purge of Craig was led by a man whose own sexual orientation has been questioned for years in the same way as the soon-to-be-former Idaho senator.
The New York Times reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell forced Larry Craig’s resignation by threatening Craig with a sensational, televised, McCarthyesque ethics investigation that could bring forth Craig’s history of prior male-on-male sexual activities and force him to answer to all the lurid details.At the core of this is that outing the Republican Sexual Hypocrites is going to be the internal tussle within the party. They drew the line in the sand by running Craig out of town, and some in the GOP recognize the politically dangerous (and less-than-intelligent) defensive move for what it is. Take Mike Murphy, the Republican consultant who appeared on Meet the Press (see my earlier post). He’s already trying — and failing — to convince people that the sorry state of his party when it comes to hypocrisy is the fault of others.…If, for example, the Senate Minority Leader himself, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, were secretly gay — and there have been unsubstantiated though persistent rumors about him for many years, a la those previously unbelieveable rumors about Craig — his antigay voting record wouldn’t now be the only criteria that would make his secret homosexuality relevant. We now have him using blackmailing tactics against another senator, threatening to reveal that senator’s past homosexual activities. Certainly that would rise to the level of relevancy to report on McConnell, wouldn’t it?
[T]here has been this case of bloggers on the far left trying to expose closeted politicians if they don’t fall completely into lockstep with a certain liberal gay agenda. And I think that’s unfair. It’s a form of McCarthyism, really.Remember, the person who threatened an official investigation to — ahem — get to the bottom of Craig’s same-sex potty trolling was McConnell. And Larry Craig was shaken to his core when his colleagues came for him with the torches and pitchforks (NYT):
“Larry was shocked by the deafening silence by some and rush to judgment by others, even in his own leadership,” said the person, who is a confidant and adviser to Mr. Craig and asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the behind-scenes deliberations. “He had to evaluate what it would be like to go back into that environment.”His friends called for his head.
The purge of gays from the GOP is what the much-courted Base has also set as the new standard. Look at the Idaho Family Values Association:
Even setting Senator Craig’s situation aside, the Party should regard participation in the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle as incompatible with public service on behalf of the GOP.That clearly goes beyond purging pols guilty of a sex-related misdemeanor — it’s specifically about homosex. Or is it? The ridiculous public claim by the defenders of sex worker customer David Vitter is that he didn’t plead guilty to the crime. OK. I’ll let’s take that at face value, since yes, Craig’s criminal intent was to have sex in a public restroom, it’s behavior that is offensive to most people who don’t expect or want to be exposed to that in a public venue. However, that’s not what the Idaho Family Values Association or the Base is drawing as a line in the sand.
The GOP is now forced to make a choice — defend its witchhunt as conditional upon whether someone is convicted of (or pleads guilty to) a tawdry misdemeanor, or affirm that same-sex illicit behavior is fine as long as you don’t get caught. I wouldn’t want to be in that slippery position with Daddy Dobson’s crowd
But back to McConnell. As Mike says, the senator’s leadership on this issue means this story has surely risen to the level that warrants MSM investigation into other similar situations.
Some will say that I should not even discuss unsubstantiated rumors and thus further them with no evidence (and let me point out that I do not have any idea if the rumors about McConnell are true). Well, to that I say the world has changed (particularly in the past week): 1) I do not believe being gay is a bad thing so I certainly don’t believe that speculating that someone is gay is a bad thing; 2) Larry Craig proved, once again, that where there is smoke (for decades, no less) there is fire. Sometimes rumors are prevalent for a reason: They are true. And lately, that seems to be the case more often than not.
Who might be next? Surely the GOP should worry about the long-standing rumors about anti-gay voting South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham that have openly swirled around DC and the Palmetto state. The same goes for the stubbornly politically closeted California Republican Congressman David Dreier, who has actually been outed (more here and here). Surely the leadership of the GOP must do something about this — or at the very least, make an official statement to the “family values” crowd that being gay is OK with the party as long as it is not publicly known to the sheeple. Anything less and their bigoted Base will continue to dog the party, or decide to stay home, disgusted that hypocritical Republicans don’t stand for their family values.
The political undercurrent here is that Mitch McConnell’s threat to Craig — an investigation that ensured additional public exposure and humiliation — is actually a signal to the rest of the conservative closet cases in the GOP’s midst — don’t get caught in a sex-sting or we’ll dump you, no matter that you loyally voted against LGBT issues. You — and your closet — are expendable. I wouldn’t want to be a Log Cabinette having to shill for these folks.
Graphic: BlogActive.
26 Responses to “Signorile asks ‘who’s next?’ after Craig”
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What’s absolutely amazing about assholes like Murphy, is that they’re blaming gay people. I was shocked watching MTP this weekend. What a disingenuous fuck (and let’s be perfectly honest, the world would be a better place without Mary Matalin). They do the same thing that Dana’s always doing, only looking at particularly policy questions and denying the entire history of Republican demonization of gay people, including Reagan’s whole “let the faggots die” approach to AIDS.
Out every one of them. Show them no mercy.
I’m Shcrocked! Shrocked!!!
Gay men being put “on notice” by other gay men - don’t let the secret out or you’ll be used for kindlying at the next witch trial. I’m starting to get the feeling that if the Republicans ran all of the gays out of their party, they wouldn’t have much representation left in Congress…
The best thing that the closeted Republicans could do is gather on the Capitol steps, chanting, “We’re queer, we’re here, get used to it.”
Actually, the best thing the Republican closet cases could do is get the fuck out of the way of those of us who are trying to improve conditions for gay people.
Given your choice of quotes, could you please make that “closeted gay men being put on notice by other closeted gay men”?
As you chose to phrase it, though, closeted gay public officials ARE being put on notice that the days of helping them maintain their closets while they dump all over the rest of us are over. It isn’t “don’t let the secret out” - because we don’t think it should be a secret in the first place. It’s more “we’ll overlook the fact that you are keeping it secret as long as and to the degree that you don’t use the secret to hurt us.”
The hits for my Lindsey Graham post have gone through the roof… lots from Columbia (state gov) and Washington DC. I’d say he’s next–or at the very least, he better seriously watch his back.
Of course, even better, he could come out and apologize for his anti-gay politics.
Nah.
The hits for my Lindsey Graham post have gone through the roof… lots from Columbia (state gov) and Washington DC. I’d say he’s next–or at the very least, he better seriously watch his back.
Of course, even better, he could come out and apologize for his anti-gay politics.
Nah.
My personal pet theory is that the convolutions and internal deceptions necessary to be a “modern” Republican (especially on the national stage) are so twisted and internally inconsistent, that the party is inadvertently selecting for folks that have years of practice in massive internal deception - closeted gays being perfect examples. Only someone with years of self-denial and a previously-contructed massive internal rationalization scheme about something as important to the psyche as sex could get up there and spew most of the current Repub BS with a straight face. Rick Santorum is a good case in point.
JP Stormcorw,
I agree - and they self-select against anyone with an actual life that hasn’t spent huge amounts of effort covering it up.
They can never have gone on record (even with a school term paper) stating anything against the current GOP dogma, in many cases, not even a moderating “it’s wrong but shouldn’t be illegal” particularly on hot-button issues, nor can any member of their immediate family. No periods of experimental sex, drugs, alternative religion, atheism, etc, etc. etc.
But then, they need to be driven enough to seek power in the first place, and able to schmooze huge amounts of money from people.
The folks next door just aint going to be that way, and the genuine statesmen and stateswomen around aren’t going to jump through the hoops.
Of course they did. These are people who (as I pointed out in another context in another comment to another column a few months ago) regard ubiquitous mutual swindle as the only conceivable foundation on which society may rest. Larry Craig, willingly or not, confronted them with a situation in which that kind of a swindle was no longer supportable. Naturally, they wanted him gone. So far as they’re concerned, he became a danger to civilization the moment the Minneapolis cop made him into an honest man. (So far as I can see, his homosexuality itself can never have posed much of a moral problem for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have borne with it so long.)
Peter -
I actually assumed the word “closeted” based on the context of the quoted text, but I should have been more explicit in my usage. My fault.
NonyNony,
I figured that. Just a bit sensitive to the broad brush these days.
if they don’t fall completely into lockstep with a certain liberal gay agenda.
I’m trying to figure out exactly what this “certain liberal gay agenda” should be. “Homosexuality should be legal”? “Homosexuals should not have to be closeted”?
If murphy is suggesting that we’re defining the gay agenda too narrowly, who exactly are we failing to accomodate here?
McConnell has a gay nephew(he’s my best friend), and his entire family has disowned him. So, good luck trying to get that broom out of the closet.
the best thing the Republican closet cases could do is get the fuck out of the way of those of us who are trying to improve conditions for gay people
Denying rights to gays helps the Republican closet cases stay in the closet. Closet cases have to pretend they’re straight all day, every day. To maintain their cover stories, they have to differentiate themselves from gays as much as possible. Because a “real” gay would support civil rights for gays, they therefore must oppose those civil rights.
If you want a friend in Washington DC, get a dog.
Although Lindsey Graham’s voting record is predictably bad, he has never campaigned on an anti-gay platform or participated in any gay baiting (unlike our other Senator, Jim DeMint) and would probably drop it all tomorrow except that doing so would be political suicide in SC.
The Democrats down here aren’t much better, but then again, do they have much of a choice? The constitutional amendment to ban the already illegal gay marriages passed with over 80% of the vote. Perhaps most surprisingly is that the amendment won with the largest margin in the counties that are considered Democratic strongholds.
Yes, South Carolina really is a backward state.
The other thing about SC politics, and in the South in general, is that politicians have always known that the people are backward and ignorant and exploit this at every opportunity.
George Wallace is the classic case of this. Wallace had a fairly progressive record on race relations before he ran for Governor in 1958. He was even endorsed by the NAACP, while his opponent, John Patterson, had the support of the KKK. After Patterson won, Wallace vowed that he “would never be out-n***ered again.”
And so begun Wallace’s career as a segregationist. Wallace took a hard line for segregation in 1962 and won. He was very successful as a race baiting politician in the state of Alabama during the civil rights era.
When segregation went out of style, Wallace “found Jesus” and changed his views.
My point is that it’s not just a Republican idea or the idea of a few radical wingnuts that keeps the anti-gay agenda hot and active. Wallace would have never been a segregationist had the voters of Alabama not demanded a segregationist governor, and I would bet that most of these Republicans would not be anti-gay if the voters in their districts did not demand it.
What I want to know is how many other Republicans knew about Craig’s arrest in the intervening months?
Remember, top House Republicans knew about Rep. Mark Foley’s activities for years, but kept quiet so they could retain his “safe” Republican Florida seat.
In Craig’s case, there’s also some missing time.
And during these months, he didn’t hire a lawyer to contest the more serious charge, and yet somehow got the charges reduced to a lesser offense. I doubt if Craig’s family even knew that he had been arrested earlier this year, and only learned about it along with the rest of us.
Minnesota has a Republican governor and senator. Did Craig possibly call on them to do him a favor, possibly putting pressure on the local authorities to handle Craig with kid’s gloves and keep it out of the news if at all possible.
Then, someone found out, and now we are seeing some very strange behavior and statements coming out regarding Craig, especially when compared to their handling of the Vitter sex scandal.
Saw a bit on CNN (Anderson Cooper on tape) last night around 2am that supposedly Craig is trying to REVERSE his plea so he doesn’t have to resign after all!
Not sure what the heck is going on- anyone else see it or hear anything?
I’ve seen it too. Apparently, he is claiming that he only plead guilty and paid the fine to try to limit the publicity, specifically because the papers back home were already investigating him (falsely, of course) for homosexual misconduct, and this would only fuel the fires (or flames, I guess.)
Now he wants a “do-over” to clear the record, since it blew up in his face after all. And we all know, for Republicans, at least, the regardless of the evidence, if you don’t confess to it, then it never happened. So if he gets his do over, then his record and reputation magically clear up.
Harumph.
What about former wrestling coach Dennis Hastert, the one behind the maf54 coverup?
from Schmitz Blitz:
schmitzblitz.worpress.com
I am somewhat conflicted about the tactics of Rogers. The process of accepting and disclosing one’s gayness is very stressful and scary–you have to worry about rejection from the people you care about the most, and begin to deal with the changes that come with being identified as a gay American. When someone else outs you, you loose control over this very difficult process, and it adds to the emotional turmoil.
What’s more, Rogers’ tactics create a new sort of McCarthyism targeting gays. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable to see again this kind of a witch hunt going on within the walls of our government.
Those concerns noted, I ultimately support the outing of anti-gay politicians. These politicians take their own shame and self-hatred over being gay out on open gays who just want to live their lives with dignity (as opposed to finding sexual fulfillment through secret trysts in public restrooms and parks). To me, using your democratically elected office as a closet is an abuse of power, and we need people like Rogers to expose that.
What a great post. This is such a brilliant and perceptive summation of the whole mess that the Repuke hypocrites have brought down on themselves — and for which completely innocent Americans, who just want to go about their lives without interference, have had to pay the highest prices for so long.
If there were any justice in the world, Pam would have an OpEd slot at the Times, and some of the tools that currently “own” those slots would have to actually work for a living.
The impulses that keep these poor sods closeted for their entire lives (at least until… oops!) are literally tragic. You’d think that by now these people would have figured out that their sick attitudes are literally life-destroying, and get over it. I don’t know if they’re stupid, crazy, or both. At least we can take some solace in the survey results that keep showing, over and over, that homophobia is age-related, and careering toward extinction. (Though of course we’ll never quite get there. The Dobsons and Falwells and Haggaards will ensure that)
But at least we’re approaching the point where blatant homophobia will be as unacceptable in normal society as unrepentant racism was for a while there. (We’ve been losing some ground on that one since the Reagan years, but maybe we’re heading back in the right direction on that too now.)
The day can’t come soon enough.
Maybe it’s time to go beyond outing the closeted homophobic politicians and start outing the closeted Republicans who raise money for them.
Money plays such a huge role in politics. People who raise money for bigots should be held accountable.