Double Lives

This guy, Cliff Kincaid, is editor in chief of the nutty conservative group Accuracy in Media. He has a column this week called "Homosexual Blackmail on Capitol Hill," and I'd have to say his conclusions are wacky, but there's something fun here. I don't know, I guess I should admit I see a certain kind of dark humor in some of this. Get this, the first few paragraphs of the piece:

It has been tempting for some conservatives to blame the Mark Foley homosexual predator scandal on George Soros and the Democratic Party, rather than Foley himself and the Republicans who protected him. But Soros and the Democrats did not put Foley in the position of House Deputy Majority Whip. What’s more, Soros and the Democrats did not establish or maintain what the New York Times describes in an explosive Sunday article as a secret network of Republican homosexuals on Capitol Hill.

The Times story by Mark Leibovich reports that “The presence of homosexuals, particularly gay men, in crucial staff positions has been an enduring if largely hidden staple of Republican life for decades, and particularly in recent years. They have played decisive roles in passing legislation, running campaigns and advancing careers.”

In another dramatic revelation, The Los Angeles Times reports that one former page was seduced into having sex with Foley, and that Foley used the page program to physically assess male teenagers in order to cultivate them as sex targets.

As I contended during an interview on the public television program NOW, the Republicans have only themselves to blame for this scandal. House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage. The facade is now in ruins. The press can’t be blamed for seizing on a real and legitimate story. Homosexual Blackmail on Capitol Hill

Now, this guy's a nut but it's still nice to see Republicans admitting that their party is run by gay guys. That particular irony has been noted by many observers, but the ruling party has been in a ... what did he call it? ... a State of Denial.

But the idea that they've "inflitrated" the party is, of course, classic conspiracy-theory junk. Gays didn't infiltrate the party, they are the party. Look, who wants to bet their hard-earned money that the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, is heterosexual? Nobody in their right mind. That isn't "inflitration," that's the Top Guy.

It's like saying that Sicilians have infiltrated the Mafia.

You've had gay men running the anti-gay party, and so of course they had to keep their own affairs secret. And that is the problem. It's not that they're gay, it's that they're gay in an organization whose mission is to malign gay people.

I have seen several bloggers make an interesting observation in the wake of this Foley mess and the excuse-making that has followed it. They say, it makes sense that Republicans hold a sex-obsessed, dirty, devious stereotype of gay people -- that seems to be how gay Republicans really are. The rest of us know normal gay people, who are just like everybody else except for who they go home to at the end of the day. The gay people we know don't have to hide it from us. I'm not proposing sainthood for anybody, just saying that our side doesn't recognize the stereotype, because our gay friends aren't like that.

So, yeah, the anti-gay party has a lot of gay people in it. Did anybody think that would go somewhere good?

Look, it's easy. Give it up, already. We hear these stereotypes, we hear the scare stories, we see the ugliness, but look, just get over it. Some people are gay. They don't do it to hurt you, it's just how they are. The more you force them to lead double lives, the more this kind of stuff is going to happen. The solution is obvious: tolerance, inclusion, get over it.