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Political Commentary (05-30-2005)
The Gay Old Party?
In the Tennessee Williams' classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", the character Brick (played by Paul Newman in the Hollywood version) possesses an overarching hatred of mendacity (or the presentation of false appearances). Brick and I share a distaste for mendacity. It is one of the major problems I have with the current administration and the Republican Party as a whole. The party's nickname is "The Grand Old Party" but it is beginning to look as if a better moniker would be "The Gay Old Party".
I live in a neighborhood on South Grand in St. Louis that possesses a vibrant gay community. The annual gay pride parade passes down Grand Avenue a mere city block from my house. My wife and I go every year and enjoy watching the gay community march in force and express who they are. In my view, this is exactly where the strength of America lies: individuals freely expressing who they are and respecting one another as human beings regardless.
The Christian Right takes a different view of our society. They believe that the bible forbids homosexuality and that they have a moral duty to impose their values upon the rest of us. I disagree with the Christian Right; however, I can respect the fact that they are acting upon an honest and heartfelt belief.
Give me a minute to digress before returning to mendacity. The Republican Party has its roots in the anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln. As the intellectual class of the Eastern seaboard was heavily anti-slavery, they were heavily Republican. After the end of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, the Republican Party lost it's focus around the slavery issue. Populist Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt (who was elected to four terms) pretty much beat the Republicans to a pulp during the war years. The power of the Democratic Party in Congress built under Roosevelt held for 40 years. The Republican Party, originally a party of the monied elite on the East Coast, desperately needed a strategy to broaden its appeal. Enter Richard Nixon and his southern strategy. When the Democratic Party under Kennedy (as carried out by Johnson) enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this drove the white voters of the southern states out of the Democratic Party. Nixon courted the disaffected southern segregationists. This helped but, as times changed and segregationists either died off or went under cover, a new strategy for the south and rural boarder states was needed. Enter Ronald Reagan and the courting of the Christian Right.
It's interesting to see the basic conceptual symmetry between Nixon and Reagan's strategies for capturing the South: the tacit agreement to allow states to abuse an individual's personal freedom. Segregationists and the Christian Right desire to impose their view of social morality upon the rest of the citizens of a state. This is why the Christian Right places such a high importance upon getting their judges into power as it is the judiciary's function to protect individual freedoms and rights as found in the US Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights). The Christian Right views the judiciary as an obstacle to its agenda.
In order to get into bed with the Christian Right, it's necessary for the Republican Party to parrot the views of the Christian Right on all "moral" issues. The real power in the Republican Party always rested with the monied elite and, in their eyes, it was an easy Faustian bargain. None of the issues the Christian Right was interested in (pro life, no gay marriage, no stem cell research) had any impact upon the leadership's true agenda: money and naked power. In practice, they are one in the same thing. Get power and the corporations will fill your pockets with money. Get money and you can buy power. Thus, the foundation of the Republican agenda as practiced by George Bush and Karl Rove is to pamper the Religious Right on its pet issues while pushing huge financial give-aways for corporate America (i.e., corporate tax cuts, the prescription drug bill, rollback of clean air and water rules, oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, the war in Iraq, private social security accounts, etc.).
Now back to mendacity. To curry favor with the Christian Right, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are decidedly anti-gay. There's really no question about this point. The current head of the Republican Party and its chief fundraiser is Ken Mehlman. Here is a link to an article about Mehlman using anti-gay marriage legislation as a wedge issue with voters during the 2004 election. Ken Mehlman has been often rumored on the internet to be gay. He refuses to answer the question when asked by reporters (although his spokesman does deny it). Mr. Mehlman is single, professionally successful, reasonably attractive and in his late 30s but has never been reported to have had a girlfriend in his adult life. The gay Republican group (the "Log-Cabin Republicans") also believe there are gay individuals employed at high levels of the Republican Party: “'The reality is there are gay men and women working in tons of Republican offices, in the White House and in the president’s re-election campaign,' said Chris Barron, Log Cabin’s political director, repeating a quote he gave last month to the New York Times Magazine. 'That’s all Log Cabin is willing to say on the matter.'” Link. These people ought to know!
The trend continues. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has been reported to be gay (link). Interesting (although Scott did get married in November of 2003). I wonder if that has anything to do with Jeff Gannon, a clearly unqualified journalist for a Republican front organization who was granted over 200 day press passes into the White House? FN1 Jeff Gannon is widely reported to have previously run male escort web sites in which he himself was featured as a male escort. Armstrong Williams, an African-American journalist who was paid $240,000 by the Bush Administration in exchange for hyping the No Child Left Behind program, was reportedly sued by a male employee, Stephen Gregory, for sexual harassment in 1997. Robert Traynham, Communications Director for Republican Senator Rick Santorum (a huge opponent of legalizing gay marriage), has announced himself to be openly gay. However, despite being gay, Mr. Traynham declares his allegiance to, and support for, the regressive Santorum. Story. There is even a book out claiming that George W. Bush had a homosexual relationship with a Yale classmate, Victor Ashe (the former mayor of Knoxville, TN who lost a senate race against Al Gore and was later made ambassador to Poland by his buddy George Bush). Link. Mr. Ashe and Mr. Bush are close to this day.
I don't know which of these stories is true (if any) but my gut tells me there are a number of gay individuals at the top of the Republican Party. Which is neither here nor there except for the fact that the Republican Party is against gay rights on every single public policy issue. These gay Republican men clearly do not believe in the social policies of their party yet they push them to further a political end. Mendacity of the highest order and I despise it. Memo to Mehlman and like Republicans: just come out of the closet like big boys and honestly tell us what you truly believe in rather than spouting slogans designed to kiss the butt of the Christian Right.
JJR
5-30-2005 (updated at dates noted below)
Link to related JJR article: Pagegate--An Anti-Republican Tsunami? (10-10-2006)
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Footnote 1: Check out this blog post from someone claiming to be a Republican who works inside the White House (second entry on page, entitled "The Voice of the White House"). The poster alludes to former male prostitute Jeff Gannon as having been George Bush's sexual companion.
Update 1: Wonder of all wonders, Tim "don't ask hard questions" Russert (of NBC News) mildly pressed Ken Mehlman on the use of gay marriage as a wedge issue. Link to article. 6-5-2005.
Update 2: And where is Tony Blair's son Euan interning this summer? Answer: in the office of "Republican Congressman David Dreier, the powerful conservative chairman of the House Rules Committee and a hypocritical gay closet case who supports the Republicans' homophobic political agenda." Link. Here is a story regarding the outing of Congressman Dreier. It claims that his lover is his highly paid chief of staff. 6-26-2005.
Update 3: As it now appears I'm building here something of a Bush Administration roll call of gay officials, I'll add Israel "Izzy" Hernandez, a reportly gay man who is a former aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove, to the list. 8-3-2005.
Update 4: You can add President Bush's liaison to the Jewish Community, Jeff Berkowitz, to the list of gay men working in the Bush Administration according to this report. In Arkansas, Jeff helped to get conservatives registered in time for the vote against civil marriage equality in that state. 9-26-2005.
Update 5: Here's a great post by Faye Anderson on long-time GOP operative Finkelstein: "I nearly spilled my coffee this weekend when I read that a longtime GOP political consultant, Arthur Finkelstein, had married his male partner of 40 years. Mind you, Finkelstein is no ordinary consultant. He was the Karl Rove (and here) of the 1980s and ‘90s, who destroyed Democrats with a single word: Liberal. Or phrase, including 'liberal, liberal, liberal' and 'too liberal for too long.' Finkelstein was revered by GOP candidates and activists for his political attack ads. For a while he was joined at the hip with the homophobic Jesse Helms." Link.
Update 6: According to Blogactive.com, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is among the the list of Republicans who base their support upon conservative "family value" voters yet are secretely gay Link. Story dated: 10-17-06.
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