Ken Mehlman--Bush-Cheney campaign manager, ex-chairman of Republican Party--comes out as gay

(OK, the current string of self-loathing Republican homosexuals who vote against gay rights while covering up their true sexuality is enigmatic to me. I understand Mormon underwear, Ahmish technophobes, Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentacostal snake handlers more easily than I understand the homosexual who not only covers up and denies his sexuality--which is almost understandable considering how homophobic American society can be, particular the religious right--but goes even further by oppressing his fellow homosexuals, denying them the same rights everyone else has which are guaranteed by The Constitution. And Ken Mehlman wasn't just a self-hating gay man, he was a total shithead dick. It used to make me angry when he would give interviews because of his extremely narrow view of who should be included in the Republican Party. He once said the party didn't need moderate Republicans who didn't embrace the entire platform of the party, which to me, was the beginning of the GOP's demise. They are a much weaker, less focused, more appealing to fringe level nuts, neocons and teabaggers than to honest conservatives. In the same light with Karl Rove, history will view Mehlman as a major cause of the demise of the GOP, should their effort falls short to reclaim in the 2010 midterms the huge number of seats they lost in the 2006 midterms. Of course, it looks like they will regain quite a few, but not the majority they so confidently boast will be theirs once more.

But why do these men do this? We all remember Republican Sen. Larry Craig and his "wide stance," hustling for dick in an airport mensroom after voting for an amendment to ban same sex marriage. He said he confessed to soliciting sex from a male prostitute in an airport bathroom with the hopes of "making it go away." He is no longer in the political game since being outed.

And we remember New Life Church founder, Pastor Ted Haggard, who for 3 years, smoked meth while having sex with a male prostitute, Mike Jones, in his early 20s--though Pastor Ted was a huge proponent of Colorado Amendment 43 which would have banned same sex marriage in that state. He even had another fling with another male prostitute after confessing and saying he...er...put it all behind him.

And who could forget Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley, a staunch opponent against same sex marriage in his own state, all while he sexually harassed teenaged boys who had served as congressional pages, texting them questions like "how big is your penis when it's erect?" And "I want to get you drunk and suck your cock." Again, he said this stuff to teenaged boys. Most homosexuals don't seek underaged youths for sexual relationships, but Foley proved to be one of the biggest self-hating scumbags in the Republican caucus. His partner in crime was  Republican Congressman, Jim Kolbe, who also faced allegations of inappropriate conduct by the House Ethics commmittee. Other Republican leaders were alleged to have knowingly been covering up Foley's behavior (which included at least one drunken night standing in the rain outside the page dorm sobbing and pleading for this one page to come out and hold him). Foley resigned in disgrace in 2006. The cover-up would eventually also cost the jobs of  House Speaker Dennis Hastert, NY Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds and his chief of staff who was once Foley's Chief of Staff, Ken Fordham.

And then last May came Rabidly Anti-Gay Activist and Southern Baptist minister, George Rekers'  10 day romp to Bermuda with a 20 year old "rent boy" who was paid to give Rekers nude massages daily--which included a whole lot of genital fondling. Rekers claimed the rentboy was merely hired to carry his luggage for him, but as the photo to the left shows, Rekers seemed to have no problems handling his own luggage while his rentboy looks on. Rekers was forced to resign from his position on the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), the country's more prominent gay cure organisation. You know, the folks who believe you can "cure" homosexuality.


No one would bash these guys for just being "closeted gays" if they weren't such huge goddammned proponents of anti-gay legislation, which effectively attempted to relegate homosexuals as second class citizens in the US. It's one thing to be in the closet, but quite another to betray the rights of your fellow citizens who are homosexuals, all while pretending to be one of the straight good ol' boys. It's the very definition of hypocrisy!  And all because of bible verses condemning homosexuality, when Jesus never said anything for or against homosexuality. It was the former tax collector/murderer Saul-Paul--who never met Jesus while Jesus lived, but who saw a vision of Jesus, after he was crucified, on the road to Damascus, and that inspired him to muscle in on the other apostles and effectively take over and bastardize Christianity--yeah, that guy, Saul-Paul, who denounced homosexuality in the New Testament.


And now, Ken Mehlman...
--jef)

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Bush-Cheney campaign manager, ex-chairman of Republican Party comes out as gay

By John Byrne
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Raw Story revealed effort to keep sexuality quiet in 2004; Led aggressive anti-gay effort in Ohio in 2004

Ken Mehlman, the erstwhile chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for George W. Bush's 2004 reelection effort, has come out of the closet as gay in a column published in The Atlantic.

Mehlman came out in a column by Mark Ambinder on the website of The Atlantic, after the blogger who outed former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and onetime Virginia congressman Ed Schrock revealed that Ambinder was to publish the story. Blogger Michael Rogers was the subject of the documentary Outrage, a film about outing gays in government who have used their positions of power to advocate against gay issues, which aired earlier this year on HBO.

Mehlman, 44, spearheaded the Bush re-election campaign. The campaign used aggressively anti-gay tactics, including the mailing of a flyer in some states which suggested liberals would allow gay marriage and ban the Bible. Some believe Bush’s support for anti-gay marriage measures carried him to victory, particularly in Ohio, which had a gay marriage measure on the ballot.

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

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," Mehlman told Ambinder. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."

Mehlman's coming out marks a significant reversal for the man who was at the heart of the Bush-Cheney re-election strategy. The onetime chairman of the RNC has previously refused to discuss his sexuality in both public and private settings.

The onetime RNC chairman's sexuality received treatment in the 2009 documentary Outrage, which was aired in theaters and was later broadcast on HBO. Michael Rogers, who outed Mehlman on his blog, blogACTIVE, as well as this author, discussed the media's complicity in keeping the conflict between Mehlman's private and public life under wraps.

Prior to the 2004 presidential election, two New York newspapers received calls urging them not to publish information suggesting Mehlman was gay. Raw Story revealed this in November 2004. Raw Story was party to an investigation of claims Mehlman was gay in the run-up to the 2004 election but no one was willing to go on the record.

When asked about his sexuality in 2004 by blogACTIVE's Michael Rogers, Mehlman hung up the phone.

Two sources told blogACTIVE in 2004 that they had been pressured by the Republican Party to remain silent. The site added that two New York City newspapers "were called by press folks at the Bush campaign attempting to kill the Mehlman story."

The Washington Blade asked Mehlman about openly gay staff in an interview in May 2004.

"I'm not going to comment or provide information on the private activities of campaign staff," he said, when asked if there were out gays among the president's campaign advisers. "The president is leading based on principle. His principles are reflective of his values and his values are compassionate and conservative."

Staffers at the nation’s then-largest gay newspaper chain told Raw Story at the time the Blade's editor thwarted efforts to run a story reporting Mehlman was gay. Chris Crain, the Blade's editor at the time, denied killing the story.

“If you talked to people on my staff,” he said, “you know how many times I’ve brought up in meetings that I wanted to nail this story. And I don’t want anyone to get it before me.”

The staffers asserted that Crain refused to print an article regarding Mehlman's sexual orientation.

Crain -- who was Mehlman’s supervising editor for a Harvard public policy journal in law school and partnered with him in an organization in the early 1990’s -- said he has not “credibly” confirmed Mehlman’s sexuality. He denied that their previous involvement had any bearing on his editorial decisions.

The Blade editor said he helped former Blade reporter Adrian Brune get onto a call with Mehlman during the campaign, instructing her to ask him directly about his sexuality, which she did not. Brune asked about campaign aides being gay and Mehlman “completely evaded” the question.

Brune said she repeatedly tried to interview Mehlman.

“The Bush campaign and Ken Mehlman were very restrictive with access,” Brune remarked. “I was always denied any sort of access; they largely ignored all of our requests.”

A secondary source, Brune said, “knew Ken Mehlman at Harvard Law School and everyone knew very well that he was gay, but there was no empirical evidence to back that up.”

Raw Story and blogACTIVE revealed in 2004 that both the then-Chief Financial Officer and the number two political adviser to the Republican National Committee were openly gay. Neither would answer questions relating to the party's policies.

Dan Gurley, the then-political adviser, has since championed gay issues.

The 2004 Republican Party platform denounced prejudice and trumpeted equality, despite the party's political positioning on gay issues. It said, "Ronald Reagan believed that people were basically good, and had the right to be free. He believed that bigotry and prejudice were the worst thing a person could be guilty of," and included a bolded section titled, "Ensuring Equal Opportunities," leading with the sentence, "Our nation is a land of opportunity for all, and our communities must represent the idea of equality for every citizen."

Such equality and freedom from prejudice didn't apply to gay Americans. The 2004 platform continued, "We believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage."

The party's position continued, "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millenia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization, the union of a man and a woman in marriage."

In 2005, a top GOP official denied Mehlman was gay in a GQ interview.

"Ken Mehlman is not gay," Steve Schmidt, a senior official of the Bush campaign told Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent who wrote the piece for the magazine.

Tapper also interviewed Dan Gurley, the former National Field Director for the Republican National Committee, who acknowledged to RAW STORY and Rogers that he was gay in a phone interview last year. Gurley blamed liberals for the mailer he sent to Southern states that said liberals would ban the Bible and allow gay marriage.

“I would rather it not have been done,” Gurley told GQ. “But if the left had pursued civil unions as a positive affirmation of legitimate gay relations as opposed to calling it marriage, it’s highly unlikely a mailing like that would have existed.”

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(And now, once more, in honor of the outing of Ken Mehlman and the memories of Haggard, Craig, Foley, Rekers, et al, ad infinitum, here is the song, Republican National Closet, for your listening pleasure.--jef)