Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community (https://thetfp.com/tfp/)
-   Tilted Politics (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/)
-   -   Maher to out gay Republicans; and CNN censorship (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/110501-maher-out-gay-republicans-cnn-censorship.html)

hiredgun 11-10-2006 02:01 AM

Maher to out gay Republicans; and CNN censorship
 
On CNN's Larry King Live, Bill Maher promised that on his show Friday night, he will name members of the Republican leadership who are closeted homosexuals.

Live on the air, Maher mentioned RNC Chair Ken Mehlman as one of them. Larry King claimed to be completely surprised.

Quote:

BM: A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party, are gay. I don't want to mention names, but I will Friday night...

LK:You will Friday night?

BM: Well, there's a couple of big people who I think everyone in Washington knows who run the Republican...

LK: You will name them?

BM: Well, I wouldn't be the first. I'd get sued if I was the first. Ken Mehlman. Ok, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it when he's been, people have suggested, he doesn't say...

LK: I never heard that. I'm walking around in a fog. I never...Ken Mehlman? I never heard that. But the question is...

BM: Maybe you don't go to the same bathhouse I do, Larry.
Even more interesting is that CNN censored the mention of Mehlman from subsequent airings of the show, and is now sending out cease-and-desist letters to have it pulled from the internet. Link: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006...own-video.html

Link of the videos and transcripts (live and taped versions): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/1...h_n_33701.html

So the long line of staunchly anti-gay homosexuals in the GOP has at least one more member; from the sound of it, Maher will announce a few more tomorrow night. I find the timing interesting in that at least this can't be seen as an attempt by Maher to influence the elections. At the same time, I'm not sure a witch hunt should be the first thing on the progressive agenda at the moment, when there is so much to be done.

I find it even more interesting that CNN is scrambling to keep a lid on this thing. They can't possibly believe they will really contain the information; in the age of TiVo and blogs, it's far too late for that. Perhaps it is just a measure to minimize their own liability in the matter, if Maher draws fire for Mehlman's outing. I'm sure they also don't want to be seen as a venue for some 'left-wing agenda', and would rather let Maher take the inevitable flak.

I'm also left to question the wisdom of this revelation when Mehlman is soon stepping down anyway (or so I think I've heard... someone want to confirm that?)

Some questions:

This has been done recently, but what is your take on the propriety of outing public figures? Is it more legitimate to do so if that figure's public position on homosexuality is hypocritical?

What is CNN's proper role here? They are obviously within their legal rights to alter a broadcast or control the use of their copyrighted material, but do you see a problem with journalistic ethics here?

What implications might this have for the social policies of the Republican party?

Charlatan 11-10-2006 07:26 AM

CNN is covering their ass. Libel lawyers are a tenacious lot.

Mojo_PeiPei 11-10-2006 08:08 AM

ANd here I thought the election was the reason he stepped down...

Seaver 11-10-2006 08:44 AM

Sounds like Bill Maher's trying to stir up some controvercy so when the season starts again people will watch.

Hope he enjoys libel lawsuits.

Seriously though, who cares? I thought Dems were supposed to be accepting of everyone. Yet so far every gay republican has been treated worse by them then terrorists.

Willravel 11-10-2006 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver
Seriously though, who cares? I thought Dems were supposed to be accepting of everyone. Yet so far every gay republican has been treated worse by them then terrorists.

Let's say that a Republican leader is pushing legislation that brings more christianity into government....then he's outed as a Muslim.

It's not the fact that these people are gay, it's the fact that they are hypocrites.

The_Jazz 11-10-2006 08:52 AM

How is it libel if he can find a source to go on record about personal relationships? It becomes a he said/he said thing.

Seaver, which gay Republicans are you talking about? The only one that's been in office recently villified himself.

JustJess 11-10-2006 08:52 AM

The reasoning behind that is because those very gay Republicans are the ones espousing the worst anti-gay rhetoric and gay marriage bans, etc. So the hypocrisy is what's awful about them. No one I know cares that they're gay, it's that they're hypocrites affecting policy.

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 09:12 AM

Like I said in the general discussion thread, outing people due to their politics is petty, vindictive, and useless at best.

Maher's scum.

Willravel 11-10-2006 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Like I said in the general discussion thread, outing people due to their politics is petty, vindictive, and useless at best.

Maher's scum.

...and turning your own self loathing due to your inability to come to terms with your homosexuality into anti-gay legislation is a sign of severe depression disorder, and anyone in that state of melancholia has no business in any office, let alone poltiical office. Maher is doing us all a big favor by pointing out who, in political office, has an emotional disorder.

Cynthetiq 11-10-2006 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustJess
The reasoning behind that is because those very gay Republicans are the ones espousing the worst anti-gay rhetoric and gay marriage bans, etc. So the hypocrisy is what's awful about them. No one I know cares that they're gay, it's that they're hypocrites affecting policy.

aren't ALL politicians hypocrites affecting policy?

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
...and turning your own self loathing due to your inability to come to terms with your homosexuality into anti-gay legislation is a sign of severe depression disorder, and anyone in that state of melancholia has no business in any office, let alone poltiical office.

Assuming that they haven't "come to terms" with their homosexuality privately.

Assuming that a lack of "coming to terms" could only lead to depression.

Assuming that their homosexuality and their politics couldn't possibly be reconciled.

Assuming that a depressed politician can't function well enough to fulfill the duties and wishes of his constituents.

Whole lotta not necessarily warranted assumptions here.

Willravel 11-10-2006 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Assuming that they haven't "come to terms" with their homosexuality privately.

Assuming that a lack of "coming to terms" could only lead to depression.

Assuming that their homosexuality and their politics couldn't possibly be reconciled.

Assuming that a depressed politician can't function well enough to fulfill the duties and wishes of his constituents.

Whole lotta not necessarily warranted assumptions here.

I'm not assuming anything. It's the truth. They haven't come to terms with their sexuality if they can't stand up for themselves. Not coming to terms with, and more importantly striking out at other because you haven't come to terms with latent homosexuality is a textbook sign of severe depression disorder. Clinical diagnosis is basically the "if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck," with the DSM. It's pretty obvious most of them suffer from severe depression disorder, and someone with that disorder can be dangerous is a position where they can take out their rage and depression on a lot of other people.

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
I'm not assuming anything. It's the truth. They haven't come to terms with their sexuality if they can't stand up for themselves. Not coming to terms with, and more importantly striking out at other because you haven't come to terms with latent homosexuality is a textbook sign of severe depression disorder. Clinical diagnosis is basically the "if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck," with the DSM. It's pretty obvious most of them suffer from severe depression disorder, and someone with that disorder can be dangerous is a position where they can take out their rage and depression on a lot of other people.

Assuming that they aren't standing up for themselves.

Assuming (again) that they haven't come to terms with it.

Assuming that there's any rage in what they do.

You're assuming nearly everything.

Willravel 11-10-2006 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Assuming that they aren't standing up for themselves.

Assuming (again) that they haven't come to terms with it.

Assuming that there's any rage in what they do.

You're assuming nearly everything.

That's the difference between trained psychologists and laymen. I have all the information I need. Give me a few 1 hour sessions with these men, and I can prove it.

sapiens 11-10-2006 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
That's the difference between trained psychologists and laymen. I have all the information I need. Give me a few 1 hour sessions with these men, and I can prove it.

You don't have sufficient information about these men to diagnose them. You say as much in the post above. Yet, in earlier posts, you claim that it is a textbook example of severe depression disorder. FoolThemAll is right. You are making assumptions even if you are a "trained psychologist". Even if you had a PhD in clinical psychology, which I doubt, I would question your conclusions. With the present information we don't have enough information to demonstrate that the people meet DSM criteria for a depressive disorder.

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
That's the difference between trained psychologists and laymen. I have all the information I need. Give me a few 1 hour sessions with these men, and I can prove it.

Generally, psychologists carefully observe the subject before making any claims about them. But hey, you're innovative or something. You just make up characteristics and then make a diagnosis from those fantasy qualities.

pig 11-10-2006 11:07 AM

Yeah, already covered in general in the other thread on Craig. If there is hard evidence, and if the public figures credibility is directly affected by the hypocritical details of their private life, I have no problem with it. You can't compartmentalize like that, then run on personal integrity. That's what all these guys do. "Biff Bifferson, he's a good old guy, just like you. He stands up for traditional marriage values, and fights the terrorists. Not like his opponent, who gay-fucks dead babies while wearing a turban..." if you run on heterosexual "traditional" family values and you don't live by them, you can pretty much expect that its going to come out.

do i suspect maher has ulterior motives? of course. but in this day and age, how stupid do you have to be to run on anti-homosexual legislation...if you're a closeted homosexual? they know if jennifer aniston and vince vaughn had a fight on friday because the toppings on their pizza were fucked up, and they're not going to find out you've been shaft deep in your raquetball partner's ass? i don't think so. where's all this personal accountability and standing up for what you think is right crap i keep hearing every politician talk about? you want a private life? good, don't run for national political offices if you live a seriously hypocritical lifestyle. the homosexuality thing is just the big one right now because its the huge social pariah issue going down right now, but it could be the same thing if strom thurmond had been busted back in the day for impregnating a black chick when he was running on segregation. you think that wouldn't have been useful information to his constiuency?

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
if you run on heterosexual "traditional" family values and you don't live by them, you can pretty much expect that its going to come out.

Yeah, it's a reasonable expectation. That's not exactly a justification of the outing, though.

Quote:

do i suspect maher has ulterior motives? of course.
Me too. But I also suspect that he has no decent, sensible motives.

Quote:

you think that wouldn't have been useful information to his constiuency?
No, it's not actually useful.

pig 11-10-2006 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
No, it's not actually useful.

that's incomprehensible to me. you don't care if the things your elected officials tell you about themselves are true or not? makes no difference? no trust issues for you in this thing?

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 11:29 AM

In regards to their personal life? As long as it doesn't affect their political life?

No, I don't care.

pig 11-10-2006 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
In regards to their personal life? As long as it doesn't affect their political life?

No, I don't care.

yeah, but how do you think that's possible? you don't think it speaks to their judgement? their trustworthiness? you think i can be an "x" in my private life, and totally disassociate that with my public decisions? i can't, can you? i mean, that's why people try to tell the voters who they are, and what they stand for, etc.

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 11:43 AM

I don't understand - what's stopping you or me or anyone else from acting differently in different contexts? Even inconsistently?

Cynthetiq 11-10-2006 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
That's the difference between trained psychologists and laymen. I have all the information I need. Give me a few 1 hour sessions with these men, and I can prove it.

What are you channelling one of the other members here who makes similar claims?

Willravel 11-10-2006 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
In regards to their personal life? As long as it doesn't affect their political life?

No, I don't care.

What about religon? Religon is a personal thing. Do you think that effects political decisions? The thing is, it IS effecting their political decisions. Letent homosexuality leading to self loathing leading to decisions to punish other homosexuals is a prime example of letting somthing very personal become very political.

FoolThemAll 11-10-2006 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
What about religon? Religon is a personal thing. Do you think that effects political decisions? The thing is, it IS effecting their political decisions.

But not in any way that wasn't visible to the voters who elected them. You get what you vote for. The source of their aims isn't relevant.

Willravel 11-10-2006 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
But not in any way that wasn't visible to the voters who elected them. You get what you vote for. The source of their aims isn't relevant.

Republicans aren't likely to vote for homosexuals. They hid the truth from their bigoted voters. How can one "get what you vote for", when the politician is blatently misrepresenting himself? You can't. Poltiicans should be heald accountable for misleading voters.

JustJess 11-10-2006 01:13 PM

Holy shit.
I just changed my mind... I think.

These gay yet anti-gay platform guys are assholes, and hypocritical, and wrong. But they're just like the rest of the politicians. Why should they vote the way they believe... they should be voting the way their constituents believe (wrong to me or not). If I were a Representative, I'd be voting the way my constituents wanted me to for the most part. They are supporting a platform - you don't have to be straight to think gay marriage is wrong. Not that I think that's what they're doing so much as making sure they stay in power by any means necessary.

But in all honesty... there's nothing to say that a gay man has to love being gay and support all gay rights.

Are they wrong to lie? Absolutely. But it's not all that different from all the other lies. The only thing they really should be doing... is to vote and make policy in the way they promised during their campaign. And if they promised to vote against gay marriage etc, then they are upholding their word... as fucked up as that is.

I just don't want them to be right because I believe in equal rights for all (as equal as we can make 'em!).

hiredgun 11-10-2006 03:06 PM

While I'm glad this has sparked some discussion, I'd love to hear more about the newsmedia angle, which I thought was really the more interesting part of the story (as 'outings' in themselves are becoming a commonplace in our political landscape.)

I am disappointed by CNN's handling of the situation. I don't think the situation warranted censorship on the scale of rooting out copies of the video on the internet.

pig 11-10-2006 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
I don't understand - what's stopping you or me or anyone else from acting differently in different contexts? Even inconsistently?

i can understand inconsistency. i can understand lying about your private life. but i think when you do it, you're basically opening yourself up to being called on it. of course we act differently in different situations; i curse to myself constantly at work. i don't curse to my boss, much. but this is a question of fundamental character misrepresentation. i don't think you can compartmentalize fundamental aspects of who you are, and then think it doesn't affect the decisions you make.

when you're acting differently in different situations...do you think your overall behavior, and your awareness of the way you act in different situations, affects the way you act in each specific one? do you over-compensate? do you keep quiet about things?

as far as the argument put forth by jess, i agree that once in office, their vote should be affected by their constituency, but it has to also be tempered by their character and what they know to be right. i think a part of that representative is to act as a filter of his constituency. there are obvious examples, which i won't go into because its almost like godwining a thread, where the desires of a constituency are far from correct.

that aside, this is also based on the image they projected when being elected, and that they continue to project in office. if some guy was gay, or muslim, or had a purple tail growing out of his taint, i wouldn't care if they voted "anti-gay", or "anti-muslim," or "anti-purple-taint-tail." what i do think is relevant is the misrepresentation. if the gay, muslim, purple taint tailed guy said, "i'm a gay muslim with a purple taint tail, but i promise to vote the will of my district," i wouldn't have as many problems with it. however, i also think we elect our representatives to be leaders, not just followers. no?

FoolThemAll 11-11-2006 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
Republicans aren't likely to vote for homosexuals. They hid the truth from their bigoted voters. How can one "get what you vote for", when the politician is blatently misrepresenting himself? You can't. Poltiicans should be heald accountable for misleading voters.

They are getting what they vote for, whether they see it that way or not.

Or is there a material difference between a heterosexual who supports anti-gay legislation and a closet case who does the same? Politically speaking?

I don't see one.

Thus, I don't see any value in the outing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
i can understand inconsistency. i can understand lying about your private life. but i think when you do it, you're basically opening yourself up to being called on it.

Closet cases who make themselves public figures, hypocrites or not, open themselves up to outings. That doesn't justify it in either case. Pointing out hypocrisy is only useful when you're trying to coax the hypocrite into improving himself - and that's pretty clearly not the aim of people like Maher.

Quote:

but this is a question of fundamental character misrepresentation.
Fundamental how? What does this mean?

Quote:

what i do think is relevant is the misrepresentation.
But it's not political misrepresentation. It's not relevant to his status as a politician.

Even if fundamentalist Christians are convinced it is.

He's still doing the job he was hired to do.

Willravel 11-11-2006 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
They are getting what they vote for, whether they see it that way or not.

Or is there a material difference between a heterosexual who supports anti-gay legislation and a closet case who does the same? Politically speaking?

I don't see one.

Thus, I don't see any value in the outing.

Politically speaking? If someone is a hypocrite, they are a hypocrite...politically speaking or otherwise. If you knew that your rep was willing to sell his or her soul, and your vote, at the drop of a hat, would you really vote for him/her? The bottom line is trustworthyness. The bottom line is a wolf wearing sheep's clothing is leading the heard. It's dangerous, and revealing the wolf is a good thing. Maher should be commended, not insulted.

FoolThemAll 11-11-2006 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
Politically speaking? If someone is a hypocrite, they are a hypocrite...politically speaking or otherwise.

Nah. If one's hypocrisy doesn't effect political promises made, then it's simply not political.

Quote:

If you knew that your rep was willing to sell his or her soul, and your vote, at the drop of a hat, would you really vote for him/her? The bottom line is trustworthyness.
And as far as carrying out the wishes of their constituents, they appear to be completely trustworthy.

Quote:

The bottom line is a wolf wearing sheep's clothing is leading the heard. It's dangerous
But not any more dangerous than an actual sheep, in this case. Or - to get out of that imagery of yours that I just screwed up - a closet anti-gay is no more dangerous than a hetero anti-gay.

Quote:

and revealing the wolf is a good thing. Maher should be commended, not insulted.
No, it's pointless and petty. Like Maher. He accomplishes nothing positive with these outings. The wolf in sheep's clothing will just be replaced by another of his kind or by - gasp! - a straight homophobe.

pig 11-11-2006 06:44 PM

foolthemall,

how do you feel about someone lying on their resume?

ratbastid 11-11-2006 08:14 PM

Set aside the whole "is it right or wrong" thing for a second. A closeted anti-gay politician is an easy target for a politically-motivated take-down, and it's just bad politics to be that vulnerable to attack. If your political tent is pitched on such shifty sand, I think you deserve what you have coming to you.

I feel the same way about politicians who are on the take, collecting lobbyist handouts or money from business or organized crime. In that case, it might actually be illegal, too, but my point is, it's just a bad idea to have a public and political life that's predicated on such a vulnerable position.

Rekna 11-11-2006 10:32 PM

I watched Real Time Friday night, i guess he decided not to out the gay republicans.

Gilda 11-11-2006 11:39 PM

Hmmm. If you can sue someone for saying you're gay, does that mean I can sue people for implying that I'm straight? I teach a class in GLBT lit; I might lose some of my street cred, so to speak.

Intense1 11-12-2006 12:17 AM

It all goes back to this: liberals say that they believe that everyone has the right to live as they wish, but not when it comes to those who are not yet ready to out themselves, especially if they are republicans. Gay republicans are in jeopardy of being outted if they do not believe in the gay marriage agenda - and there are many.

Many gays do not support the whole "gay marriage" agenda - check out Tammy Bruce, for an example http://www.tammybruce.com/.

Liberals want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda....

alansmithee 11-12-2006 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
Let's say that a Republican leader is pushing legislation that brings more christianity into government....then he's outed as a Muslim.

It's not the fact that these people are gay, it's the fact that they are hypocrites.

What might be best for the country is not always what is best for the individual. Maybe these "hypocrites" are merely putting what they believe to be the country's best interests ahead of their own personal interests.

Lizra 11-12-2006 06:00 AM

Imo, closeting yourself is not good. Being gay is nothing to be ashamed of. If people make you feel that your homosexuality is wrong, then you should show them that it isn't....by being upfront, honest, and unapoligetic about it. In the end, honesty is the best policy.....not for furthering political/power mongering agendas perhaps....but for a healthy world.....yes.
I think Maher is all right. Hypocrites go home.

ratbastid 11-12-2006 06:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilda
Hmmm. If you can sue someone for saying you're gay, does that mean I can sue people for implying that I'm straight? I teach a class in GLBT lit; I might lose some of my street cred, so to speak.

That'd be EXCELLENT. I'd love to see that happen!

pig 11-12-2006 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Intense1
It all goes back to this: liberals say that they believe that everyone has the right to live as they wish, but not when it comes to those who are not yet ready to out themselves, especially if they are republicans. Gay republicans are in jeopardy of being outted if they do not believe in the gay marriage agenda - and there are many.

Many gays do not support the whole "gay marriage" agenda - check out Tammy Bruce, for an example http://www.tammybruce.com/.

Liberals want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda....

Hey, at least that's not a broad generalization or anything. I mean, you realize that in light of the abortion debate, or, I don't know...ummm wiretapping without a warrant, etc - that one could also make an (in my opinion) rather asinine comment about the boogey-man "conservatives" that "want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda...." and it would have about as much merit.

Once again, its not about their position. Of course there are gay people who aren't in favor of gay marriage. This is about honest and hypocracy in terms of the position they adopt, and how they represent themselves. The "homosexual" aspect, in my opinion at least, isn't really *that* crucial. I'd have the same opinion if someone was a staunch supporter of the Drug War and MADD, and it turned out they were a heavy drug user who routinely drove drunk.

In fact, I find the sensationalist hype surrounding these disclosures to be an interesting reminder of how homophobic we are as a society. In the above example of the drugs / DUI - the reaction would be nowhere near this severe. Of course, the fact that you can successfully run for office on the "traditional marriage" slogan is a pretty strong indicator of our social homophobia in the first place.

host 11-12-2006 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alansmithee
What might be best for the country is not always what is best for the individual. Maybe these "hypocrites" are merely putting what they believe to be the country's best interests ahead of their own personal interests.

....so, you think that you can just slip back in here....after 9 months' absence and start posting again?

Welcome back, alansmithee !

I don't think that you are correct... in simply dismissing this "self loathing" phenomena as altruistic. It has much to do with religiously influenced, dysfunction driven delusion, or possibly vice versa. More and more, I am struck by my observation that, with all of their talk of "discernment"....Ted Haggard's flock of faithful, and indeed, the larger collective of evangelicists have an unimpressive "track record" when it comes to picking spiritual and political leaders, dontcha think? Could one reason be that it is so difficult to distinguish their spiritual leaders from their political leaders?
Quote:

http://www.therevealer.org/archives/timely_002694.php
Haggard's Downfall
02 November 2006

By Jeff Sharlet

I was relaxing this afternoon, watching an episode of Big Love, the HBO series starring Bill Paxton as a Mormon hiding his polygamous life, when I heard from from "The Peter Boyles Show" in Denver: "Your buddy Ted Haggard's in a shit storm."

The "buddy" part was ironic -- since I wrote about Ted Haggard and his church, New Life, in the May, 2005 issue of Harper's ("Soldiers of Christ,") Ted has been decidedly less than friendly. I always wondered why. Although my article was critical, it led to a surge of more mild-mannered media for Ted, one of the most powerful but least-known evangelical bigs in America. Barbara Walters asking him about heaven, Tom Brokaw doing his "on the other hand" routine.

But too much attention can be a bad thing. Details are still coming in, but it seems a gay man in Denver named Mike Jones was watching TV recently when he saw one of his regular sex partners, whom he knew only as "Art," on the tube: Ted, welcome to celebrity.

I just talked to Jones on the phone. He's not vindictive, nor particularly political; he's voted for Republicans and Democrats. He struggled with his decision, out of compassion for a man in the closet. <b>He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who's been around long enough to know how Ted's politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That's about as good a motive for outing someone as I've ever heard.</b> This afternoon, Ted announced that he was temporarily stepping down from his positions of authority......

.....It's been big news at the state's major paper, The Denver Post, as well. That's because the story is bigger than Ted; statewide, he's one of the key forces behind two new anti-gay amendements. Nationwide, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, he sets the political tone for the Christian conservative movement at an administrative level broader than the influence of better-known figures such as Jerry Falwell.

If the story is true, Ted's a hypocrite of the worst kind; then again, he's also another victim of the very closet over which he publicly stands guard, as are all the New Life church members he's led into it. That story may not make the mainstream media. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Ted's downfall will be reported with any more nuance than that of Mark Foley's political collapse. Sex, it seems, blinds the press to politics.

I'm re-posting my original Harper's piece below not because I think I got the story right -- if Jones' story is true, I missed it by a mile -- but because I hope it'll help the journalists now on the job get the story right by not making the mistake I did. The downfall of Ted Haggard is not just another tale of hypocrisy, it's a parable of the paradoxes at the heart of American fundamentalism. <b>I wrote about the role of sex in Ted's theology, but removed it from the final edit of the story (some of it I refashioned into a short essay on Christian Right's men's sex books for <a href="http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/">Nerve)</a>. I made the mistake of viewing Ted's sex and his religion of free market economics as separate spheres.</b> The truth, I suspect, is that they're intimately bound in a worldview of "order," one to which it turns out even Ted cannot conform........

<b>Soldiers of Christ: Insider America's Most Powerful Megachurch

The following is the first half of "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," a feature by Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet in the May, 2005 issue of Harper's.</b>

....... At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine. Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will make its headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Some believers call the city the Wheaton of the West, in honor of Wheaton, Illinois, once the headquarters of a more genteel Christian conservatism; others call Colorado Springs the “evangelical Vatican,” a phrase that says much both about the city and about the easeful orthodoxy with which the movement now views itself. Certainly the gathering there has no parallel in history, not in Lynchburg, Virginia, nor Tulsa, nor Pasadena, nor Orlando, nor any other city that has aspired to be the capital of evangelical America. Evangelical activist groups (“parachurch” ministries, in the parlance) in Colorado Springs number in the hundreds, though a precise count is hard to specify. Groups migrate there and multiply. They produce missionary guides, “family resources,” school curricula, financial advice, athletic training programs, Bibles for every occasion. The city is home to Young Life, to the Navigators, to Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the ministries is Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, whose radio programs (the most extensive in the world, religious or secular), magazines, videos, and books reach more than 200 million people worldwide.

The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal. Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face. He doesn’t strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. “Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”— New Life’s high-tech, twentyfour- hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President’s office the following afternoon. “It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn’t there.

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life. It is by no means the largest megachurch, nor is Ted the best-known man of God: Saddleback Church, in southern California, counts 80,000 on its rolls, and its pastor, Rick Warren, has sold 20 million copies of his book The Purpose-Driven Life. But Warren’s success has come at the price of passion; his doctrine, though conservative, is bland and his politics too obscured by his self-help message to be potent. Although other churches boast more eminent memberships than Pastor Ted’s—near D.C., for example, McLean Bible Church and The Falls Church (an Episcopal church that is, like many “mainline” churches today, now evangelical in all but name) minister to the powerful— such churches are not, like New Life, crucibles for the ideas that inspire the movement, ideas that are forged in the middle of the country and make their way to Washington only over time. Evangelicalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional movement; and what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.

New Life began with a prophecy. In November 1984 a missionary friend of Pastor Ted’s, respected for his gifts of discernment, made him pull over on a bend of Highway 83 as they were driving, somewhat aimlessly, in the open spaces north of the city. Pastor Ted—then twentyeight, given to fasting and oddly pragmatic visions (he believes he foresaw Internet prayer networks before the Internet existed)—had been wondering why God had called him from near Baton Rouge, where he had been associate pastor of a megachurch, to this bleak city, then known as a “pastor’s graveyard.” The missionary got out of the car and squinted. He crouched down as if sniffing the ground. “This,” said the missionary, “this will be your church. Build here.”

So Pastor Ted did. First, he started a church in his basement. The pulpit was three five-gallon buckets stacked one atop the other, and the pews were lawn chairs. A man who lived in a trailer came round if he remembered it was Sunday and played guitar. Another man got the Spirit and filled a fivegallon garden sprayer with cooking oil and began anointing nearby intersections, then streets and buildings all over town. Pastor Ted told his flock to focus their prayers on houses with FOR SALE signs so that more Christians would come and join him. Once Pastor Ted and another missionary accidentally set off an alarm and hid together in a field while the police investigated. It was for a good cause, Pastor Ted would say; they were praying for the building to be taken off the market so it could someday be purchased for a future ministry. (It was.)

He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.

One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.”

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city.

Population boomed, crime dipped; Pastor Ted believes to this day that New Life helped chase the bad out of town. He thinks like that, a piston: less bad means more good. Church is good, and his church grew, so fast there were times when no one knew how many members to claim. So they stopped talking about “members.” There was just New Life. “Are you New Life?” a person might ask. New Life moved into some corporate office space. Soon they bought the land that had been prophesied, thirty-five acres, and began to build what Pastor Ted promised would be a new Jerusalem. .......
Quote:

http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/
<b>Sex as a Weapon<br>
Decoding the Literature of the Christian Men's Movement</b>
by Jeff Sharlet

A discussion of the Christian men's movement — Iron John for fundamentalists, Promise Keepers to the tenth power — is best begun with some mean-spirited fun. Not because there is anything laughable about loving Jesus or thinking about gender, but because the language with which conservative evangelical men combine these two passions, at conferences and in "cell groups" and in books with titles such as You, The Warrior Leader; The Barbarian Way and Fight on Your Knees often seems as if it's been lifted directly from Beavis & Butt-Head, absent the adolescent giggles. The movement itself is deadly earnest, and worse, a threat — legally, emotionally, sometimes physically — to all those who can't or won't conform to its perversely precise dream of a nation of sexually self-regulating spiritual warriors. I’ll get to that. But first, some yuks.
Take, for example, God's Gift to Women (the title of a manliness guide for young men), male "headship" of the American family. Women can't get enough of good headship, but a man must be careful; a woman's hunger for his headship may lead him to abuse its potency through the sin of anger. A few years ago, I learned in an evangelical magazine what to do in such a situation: push your anger down and store it inside your heart, where Jesus will work it over it until it is ready to be "released," transformed into "white-hot brother love."
Christian men love some brothers more than others. Most loved of all, besides J.C., may be the Scottish warrior William Wallace, basis for the film Braveheart. In Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul — still a hardcover bestseller four years after publication — John Eldredge writes of a present given to him by his wife: "Stasi slipped out of the room with the words, ‘Close your eyes . . . I have a surprise for you.'" When she tells him to look, Eldredge finds "a Scottish broadsword exactly like the one used by William Wallace. I had been looking for one for several months."
Apparently, Braveheart isn't just for lovers. In God's Gift To Women: Discovering the Lost Greatness of Masculinity, Eric Ludy writes of his youthful "introduction to ultimate manhood" in the form of Wallace, "one of history's most provocative men." Ludy, who opens his book by recounting a recurring nightmare of being "ushered in front of a mob of scrutinizing females" who find him inadequate, describes the image of William Wallace, riding to battle, that won him over: "His countenance was calm but intense. His sword was drawn. His cheeks were suffused with blood." Ludy asks himself, "Who is this man? And how can I get what he has?" (italics Ludy's).
Such questions have a double meaning that's obvious to the Christian men Ludy writes for, and it has nothing to do with Braveheart's broadsword: It's about Jesus. But the fact that so much of the language used to discuss Christ is homoerotic is no coincidence. The first miracle of Jesus to believers is that his appeal crossed so many boundaries of the ancient world. Rich
What's sad about books like God's Gift to Women is that they translate sexuality into codes of combat, and clichéd ones at that.
and poor, Jew and gentile, men and women — every kind of person loved him, and what's more, desired him. Theologians of far greater subtlety than Eldredge and Lundy suggest that while Christ was biologically male, his gender is harder to fix, since he held a literally erotic power over followers of all persuasions. For that matter, "eros," as a concept of any nuance in Western culture, owes its endurance to the Christians who for 2,000 years have been dreaming about God and how to know him, completely, fully, in spirit and in flesh.
What's sad about books like God's Gift to Women and Wild At Heart is that they attempt to contain the mystery of that question in metaphors that translate its inherent sexuality into codes of combat, and clichéd ones at that. The "enemy," of course, is Satan, but his names are legion: pornography, homosexuality, feminism, humanism, the monolithic foe Christian conservatives call, simply, "the culture." In a chapter dedicated to "military maneuvers," Lundy spells out his personal, three-point "battle strategy": "1. An identified point of attack [a personal vice to eradicate]. 2. A POW targeted for rescue [a non-Christian acquaintance to convert]. 3. A constant readiness to fight and fight hard."
Eldredge, one of the most influential gurus of the Christian men's movement, takes an even more aggressive tone. "A boy wants to attack something," he writes with approval, "and so does a man." Such hostility is not a sin to overcome, but the heart of headship, "a man's heart, his passions, his true nature, which he has been given by God."
Nonetheless, writers such as Eldredge and Lundy shy away from intellectual conflict. Even as they preach a metaphorically violent, domineering, and paternalistic vision of manliness, they dodge the natural question of that what happens when such men venture from their sacred hearths into the world. Not so Dr. James Dobson, one of a handful of the evangelical kingmakers to whom George W. Bush paid court before announcing his bid for the presidency in 2000. Dobson is most-recently known in the secular world for his charge that Spongebob Squarepants had been recruited as an agent of the "homosexual agenda," but for the millions who tune into his radio shows or read his books or subscribe to one of the publications produced by his organization, Focus on the Family, Dobson has long served as a source for wisdom that embodies the feminist adage that the personal is political.
Not that Dobson acknowledges a debt to feminism; indeed, he sees it as a threat to Christianity. The problem, as he outlines it in Straight Talk to Men, a Dobson "classic" originally published as Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, is that men, in a righteous attempt to resolve the problems of sexism, have ceded too much power to women. As a result, he insists, women are engaging in a parody of male headship and most men lack the guts — and the sensitivity — to stand up to them. "Everything we do is influenced by our gender assignment," he writes. "Any confusion… in the relationship between the sexes… must be seen as threatening to the stability of society itself." Dobson, unlike other Christian manliness gurus, gets specific about the consequences, illustrated in this new edition of Straight Talk through an
"Homosexuals" is kind of a code within the Christian men's movement.
imaginary dialogue between a group of "yesterday's husbands and fathers" (from 1870) who've been transported into the present to talk to a representative of "the culture."
The culture's spokesman paints a lurid portrait of today's world, in which boys typically look at pornography depicting women "hanging from trees, and being murdered with knives, guns, ropes, etc."; in which "it its legal for a father… to have a homosexual experience with his son"; in which women are called to combat in a time of war, because men are not up to the job. "I miss John Wayne," laments Dobson.
The focus here is, as always, not on women, but on men, Jesus and John Wayne on the one hand, those whom C.S. Lewis — who privately enjoyed being dominated by his wife — called "men without chests." That is, "homosexuals."
I place "homosexuals" in quotes to suggest that the very term itself — so often referred to with code such as Lewis' — is itself a kind of code within the Christian men's movement. Lesbians, as one might imagine, are not popular among evangelicals; but then, they are not really imaginable. In the theology of "Jesus plus nothing," there is no room for anything that is not man-God (or God-man, if you're particular about such things), and that includes female sexuality. Many of the man-manuals advise loving attention to wives and speak of the joys of married, heterosexual sex as a bulwark against the culture (which is queer by definition, since it is not Christ-centered, a peculiar oxymoron at the heart of the faith), but they also teach a "sensitivity" that is called to stand in for the sins of their cavemen fathers. In an interview with New Man, a Christian magazine, John Hagee, a popular pastor who is the author of What Every Man Wants in a Woman, explains what, in turn, every woman wants in a man (which is odd, since Hagee's wife, Diana, is the author of a book of that name, and would have presumably been the more logical explicator): "nonsexual affection."
Well, sure. That this is news to anyone is hard to believe. But more shocking is Hagee's announcement that nearly every woman he's counseled over the years has told him that "It's really no big deal if I never have sex again with my husband." This makes sense only if one accepts the division of identity increasingly popular in evangelicaldom: young men are knights and young women are virginal maidens, and even after marriage that formula, in a sense, continues: Men must get dirty in battle, women must stay pure at home. Sex is for the fellas.
Some fellas respond to that "spiritual reality" by seeking out other fellas; guys, the thinking goes, are always up for a good time. The oversexed female as public enemy has been replaced by the oversexed male; and in the worst case scenario, he is gay. Or perhaps it is, for the Christian right, the best case scenario — as the 2004 election proved in the eleven states where conservative activists put anti-gay rights laws up for popular voting, rhetorical gay bashing has proven one of the most effective organizing tools in recent American political history.
Of course, if you ask Dobson why homosexuality looms so large in the evangelical mind, he'll tell you it's because godless humanists planted it there by way of subversive signals in our television programming. Ask Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National
"The gay man" is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom.
Association of Evangelicals, and good cop to Dobson's bad cop at the top of the evangelical world, and he'll offer a more nuanced answer. Like most fundamentalists, Haggard believes that sexual sin is among the worst; he also knows it is the most common. Evangelicals, he'll say, aren't more obsessed with sexuality these days; rather, homosexuals are, somehow, more homosexual. The official line is that gay marriage marks a tipping point (Haggard, like many evangelicals, is a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's book of that name) into wholesale hedonism. The unofficial line, among leaders such as Haggard and Dobson is that it's a fight their side has already lost.
But the specter of gay marriage still serves a function. Christian conservatives take pains to distance themselves from the sexism of their forefathers. Every Christian man-guide emphasizes the claim that women play just as important a role in the maintenance of what evangelicals view as society's all-important unit, the family, and it's more than dishwashing, suckling, and sex (though what else they are to do is not often discussed). Women must submit to their husbands, but their husbands in turn must commit to "serving" their wives. The phrase that comes to mind is "separate but equal."
But with Christian womanhood restored and redeemed, a crucial character in the Christian conservative morality play has gone missing: the seductress. It is no longer acceptable to speak of loose women and harlots, since sexual promiscuity in a woman is the fault of the man who has failed to exercise his "headship" over her. It is his effeminacy, not hers, that is to blame. And who lures him into this spiritual castration? The gay man.
Christian conservatives loathe all forms of homo- and bisexuality, of course, but it is the gay man (singular; he's an archetype) who looms largest in their books and sermons and blogs and cell group meetings. Not, for the most part, as a figure of evil, but one to be almost envied. "The gay man" is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom. He takes what he wants and loves whom he will and his life, in the imagination of Christian men's groups, is an endless succession of orgasms, interrupted only by jocular episodes of male bonhomie. The gay man promises a guilt-free existence, the garden before Eve. He is thought to exist in the purest state of "manhood," which is boyhood, before there were girls.
Most Christian conservatives are deadly earnest in their proclamations of love for the sinner, even as they hate the sin. Indeed, that love is at the heart of books like Wild at Heart, and Jim George's A Man After God's Own Heart, and Every Man's Battle, a self-help manual for giving up masturbation which was co-authored by a couple of buddies. They love the gay man because he is a siren, and his song is alluring; and because they believe that the siren is nonetheless stranded at sea, singing in desperation from a slippery perch on a jagged outcrop of stone. The gay man, they imagine, is calling to them; and they believe they are calling back — as if all of human sexuality was a grand and tragic game of Marco Polo.

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
foolthemall,

how do you feel about someone lying on their resume?

Bad. Bad bad bad. But you typically don't put irrelevancies like orientation on your resume. Or, for that matter, irrelevancies like "I've been faithful to my wife" or "I go to church every Sunday".

host 11-12-2006 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Intense1
It all goes back to this: liberals say that they believe that everyone has the right to live as they wish, but not when it comes to those who are not yet ready to out themselves, especially if they are republicans. Gay republicans are in jeopardy of being outted if they do not believe in the gay marriage agenda - and there are many.

Many gays do not support the whole "gay marriage" agenda - check out Tammy Bruce, for an example http://www.tammybruce.com/.

Liberals want to give people privacy, all right. Until it cuts across their own agenda....

Tammy Bruce= fringe and flawed.......

Last night, my wife and I watched this:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/lastlettershome/

Two of the fathers of dead US soldiers were so shattered that they did not speak in front of the camera....they left it to their wives to try to put their loss into words. One mother said that she knew her son's (killed in Iraq) saliva was on the lip of the envelope flap of his "last letter home", and knowing that gave her a feeling of contact with him.

Several "next of kin" said that, when the military chaplain and two soldiers in dressed in "class "A"s, appeared at their door to "inform them", they reasoned that, if they did not let them in the house, their soldier would not be dead.
My wife has not heard anything from her deployed son in the last 14 days.

Watching "Last Letters Home", last night, I tried to imagine how we would cope with "a knock on the door".....it something that I hadn't thought of, before. None of the dozen changing, "reasons" that president Bush has "communicated", to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq, or continued US and NATO "presence", in Afghanistan, is IMO, worth one drop of blood of any American soldier, nor one tear of a grieving loved one.

If Tammy Bruce is "so sure", she should enlist in the military herself, and spare another soldier, a fourth "rotation" into "service" in Iraq. I find her role as propagandist chearleader for a war criminal POTUS, an affront to what most of us now know.
<b>Just read my "sig" at the bottom of this post.....</b>

www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
PRESIDENT BUSH – Overall Job Rating in recent national polls
...........................................Approve....Disapprove

Newsweek 11/9-10/06 31%.......63%

Quote:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti.../8/24514.shtml
The Death of Right and Wrong

Tammy Bruce
Tuesday, April 8, 2003

I have been fascinated watching the meltdown of today’s Leftists as they lose their collective mind over the war to liberate the Iraqi people. I was wondering how long it would take for the left to publicly expose their betrayal of principles they have touted for so long.

This war is made, through and through, of the stuff the caring, compassionate, “I’m-for-the-Underdog” Superhero for the Victimized and Disenfranchised Left wing of American politics has always claimed as its realm. Finally, through their own actions, the lie of the morally superior Left has been exposed.

On its face, the condemnation by the Left Elite of a war that represents the classical liberal principle of freeing and empowering people, ending violence and tyranny, seems inexplicable. But it’s not.

As I explain in my new book, “The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values” (Crown Forum, April 22, 2003), today’s supposed protectors of individual liberty are no longer able to act on principle or on doing the right thing because, for them, there is no right thing. The scourge of moral relativism rules the day for the Left Elite and commands the rejection of the most basic notions of right and wrong, good and evil.

Ranging from maniacal street protests to vile anti-America diatribes on award shows and news programs by celebrities, Leftists still protest a war which even they know will be ridding the world of a barbaric regime which oppresses, tortures and murders its own people. Women and children, the heralded domain of the feminist establishment, have never been safe from Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical reign, and have experienced the most horrific of lives – which included rape rooms and other torture chambers.

It has been nothing short of obscene to listen to the rantings of Leftists claiming the war should stop to “save Iraqi babies.” In fact, it is only this war that will finally save those babies.

How dare American feminists in particular oppose this action. They didn’t even have the moral footing to voice support for Operation Iraqi Freedom when Hussein’s thugs began using children and pregnant women as human shields for soldiers and as hostages in homicide car bombings.

It is in his nature to defile and destroy life. We’re now finding out it is in the nature of the Feminist and Gay Elite to not care as they bow to the God of Moral Relativism.

That’s why the war to liberate Iraq, and the reasoning behind it, is such a threat to the Left – specifically because it highlights a moral standard of decency, a standard which is universal and cuts across religious and political grounds. It reminds Americans and everyone else of the value of acting on what’s right and just.

And judgment! That, of all actions, is the greatest sin in the bacchanalian world of the Left. In their moral void, anything which exemplifies virtue and values must be condemned. This is why – even at the expense of the lives of innocent people in Iraq and the frames of minds of our soldiers – they so selfishly condemn and still work to stop the liberation of Iraq.

It is also why, I predict, the Left in this country will work to stall, demean and politically sabotage the postwar rebuilding effort. While that also doesn’t make much sense for the ‘compassionate’ arm of American politics, we know now that it’s not about what’s right – it’s about them, and their reliance on the death of right and wrong.

In the effort to secure a culture the Left wrongly thinks needs to be void of values for their lifestyles to thrive, the Iraqi people are to be sacrificed. Because it would inconvenience the Left to no end should personal responsibility and values come back into vogue.

When you consider the recent track record of the Left when it comes to important social issues, their rejection of action that will save lives and make the world a better place doesn’t seem so out of character. In “The Death of Right and Wrong,” I describe the world as defined by the leaders of the Left Elite, where:

* Murdering your children isn’t murder if you’re a woman – it’s postpartum depression.

* Sex addiction, compulsion and promiscuity aren’t problems if you’re gay – they’re part of an “alternate lifestyle.”

* Murdering a police office isn’t murder if you’re black – it’s a “heroic” act.

* Vandalizing, degrading or mocking the symbols of a religion is only a hate crime if the object is Islam or Judaism. If the target is Christianity, it’s “art.”

* Murdering 3,000 American civilians isn’t terrorism if the murderers are Muslims – it’s the Freedom Fighter’s heroic last act against an oppressor.

I detail these examples and so many more which exemplify how the Left is driven by an agenda to change Americans’ fundamental values and to make discerning right from wrong the new blasphemy.

It is an agenda intended to indoctrinate you into the same corrupt moral relativism which rules their world – a Looking Glass world which also absurdly insists freeing the Iraqi people is to be condemned. Where Americans are to sit and do nothing as others suffer. Because you are not to come to judgment. You are to understand that there is no good and no evil. Where the inner child of the depraved and murderous, like Saddam Hussein, is to be ‘understood’ and negotiated with.

For far too long, the cynical malignant narcissists who control Left-wing special interest groups have worked to convince their constituencies that values are dangerous. It’s time we put a stop to that lie.

The war to liberate Iraq has been a terrific first step in reminding the world that America, once again, has the courage to act on what’s right. Whether Leftists here at home and around the globe like it or not.

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid
Set aside the whole "is it right or wrong" thing for a second. A closeted anti-gay politician is an easy target for a politically-motivated take-down, and it's just bad politics to be that vulnerable to attack. If your political tent is pitched on such shifty sand, I think you deserve what you have coming to you.

Bad politics, yes. A justification for outers, no. Expected != justified. You've got a leap here to explain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
Imo, closeting yourself is not good.

I think Maher is all right. Hypocrites go home.

Nope, not good. Also not your business, nor Maher's.

You've got to have a good reason to invade one's privacy and divulge the details to the world. There is simply no good reason here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
I'd have the same opinion if someone was a staunch supporter of the Drug War and MADD, and it turned out they were a heavy drug user who routinely drove drunk.

Why? It wouldn't change the fact that they're doing good - or bad - politically.

'Course, drunk driving is a danger to other people. 'Course, if you believe in the drug laws (I don't), there's another good reason to 'out' him. And if you want to get him into rehab, that might maybe be a a third good reason to threaten him with a very public outing. Though I don't know how effective that'd be and a private discussion might be just as or more fruitful. Your comparison breaks down on at least two of these points.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host's article
He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who's been around long enough to know how Ted's politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That's about as good a motive for outing someone as I've ever heard.

Sure, about as good a motive as I've ever heard, too. Which is to say, a pretty poor motive. A man's privacy gets violated and no good actually comes of it. Only the shallowest of the fence-sitters are actually going to think, "Hm... one of those traditional marriage advocates is a hypocrite... this proves that the cause is bunk!" People like Haggard simply get like-minded replacements. There's no real progress made.

seretogis 11-12-2006 10:12 AM

Tammy Bruce is a neo-con apologist.

As far as homosexuals being against gay-marriage legislation, I can understand that position completely. It is not necessarily hypocrisy. The solution to dealing with same-sex marriage is not to add yet another law, but to change or remove current law which restricts and defines marriage -- a social institution. If the word "marriage" is so precious that it couldn't possibly be associated with filthy filthy homosexuals, take it away from everyone and replace it with "civil union." Straight, gay, and other couples could then all get the same "civil union license/registration" and then perform whatever religious, spiritual, or personal ceremonies they'd like on their own to complete their "marriage."

Halx 11-12-2006 10:34 AM

This thread got interesting when Jess added that last bit. However, I have to step in and say one thing.

If you want to run for office, run under your own values. If all you are is some puppet, bending your own values to meet the expectations of your constituents, then you are.. well.. nothing special. What is the definition of a politician? Someone who presents themselves to be society's most obediant bitch?

If I am voting someone ahead of myself (which means, to me, giving someone OTHER THAN MYSELF a vote of confidence to do the right thing) then I am voting for them based on what their decisions WOULD BE if they had to wing it. Now, who do you want for a leader; someone who is not true to themselves, or someone with a real drive and passion for the policies they enforce?

This is what is ridiculous about politics. There are no leaders, only slimy businessmen sucking on the teat of public opinion.

Moskie 11-12-2006 11:36 AM

I'm confilcted on this one.

On one hand, I don't think it should be neccesary for a politician's sexual orientation to be public information. Much in the same way I wouldn't want any of their sexual habits to be made public. They're American citizens with a right to privacy.

But if current politics demand that homosexuality be a political issue, then this information is relevant. So... not sure.

But, while we're at it, can we out congresspeople who are closet agnostics/atheists? I'm sick of politicians claiming they love the Jesus, when you know they're lying through their teeth to get the votes. I mean, why not?

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halx
If you want to run for office, run under your own values..

But who's to say that the people in question aren't doing this? Perhaps their true values include a negative view of homosexual activity and it's their personal life, not their political life, in which they are failing to live up to those values?

Not to mention, there's also seretogis' scenario as a possibility. And really, I'm thinking there's quite a few possibilities besides these two.

And at any rate, even if there is hypocrisy, what is the practical difference to a voter in getting a straight anti-gay rep versus getting a closeted anti-gay rep? Besides the opportunity for petty humiliation of the closeted one, I mean.

Lizra 11-12-2006 11:51 AM

I want politicians to be honest. Just as atheists should not have to make apologies for their beliefs, neither should gays. Honesty is the first quality I am looking for in a political representative. I would not vote for a hypocrite. The closet is a place to hide.....I want my politicians to be strong enough to not hide.
Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll



Nope, not good. Also not your business, nor Maher's.

You've got to have a good reason to invade one's privacy and divulge the details to the world. There is simply no good reason here.




FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
I want politicians to be honest. Just as atheists should not have to make apologies for their beliefs, neither should gays. Honesty is the first quality I am looking for in a political representative. I would not vote for a hypocrite. The closet is a place to hide.....I want my politicians to be strong enough to not hide.

In this case, I guess the bottom line is that I don't see your desire for this particular kind of honesty as being valuable enough to outweigh the hurt/damage caused by a public outing.

Unless you can show me how you're concretely harmed by a politician keeping their orientation private.

Lizra 11-12-2006 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie

But, while we're at it, can we out congresspeople who are closet agnostics/atheists? I'm sick of politicians claiming they love the Jesus, when you know they're lying through their teeth to get the votes. I mean, why not?

Yes! :thumbsup: I am sick of people being ashamed to admit they actually don't believe in heaven and hell etc.:| Great idea! I'm tired of the song and dance on these issues. Bah! ;) Down with cultural bullyism.

Moskie 11-12-2006 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
But who's to say that the people in question aren't doing this? Perhaps their true values include a negative view of homosexual activity and it's their personal life, not their political life, in which they are failing to live up to those values?

Not to mention, there's also seretogis' scenario as a possibility. And really, I'm thinking there's quite a few possibilities besides these two.

And at any rate, even if there is hypocrisy, what is the practical difference to a voter in getting a straight anti-gay rep versus getting a closeted anti-gay rep? Besides the opportunity for petty humiliation of the closeted one, I mean.

I think we're skirting the issue here, though. Whether this information about a politician personally sways YOU, or should sway any one particular voter is one thing. But whether it should be available information that can sway voters, in general, is another. I think it's the latter idea that deserves the most discussion...

Lizra 11-12-2006 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
In this case, I guess the bottom line is that I don't see your desire for this particular kind of honesty as being valuable enough to outweigh the hurt/damage caused by a public outing.

Unless you can show me how you're concretely harmed by a politician keeping their orientation private.

I guess I want to get to the place where outing does not cause hurt or damage. It will take time....but it needs to be done. The era of J Edgar Hoover is over! Homosexuals have been around forever, and always will be. We need to get over it, accept it, and get on with other issues. I don't think it should be such a big deal.....if people quit hiding in closets, it probably wouldn't be. :love:

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie
But whether it should be available information that can sway voters, in general, is another.

Yeah, that's the question. And my answer is that the costs outweigh the benefits - because I don't see any benefits, even for those who would be swayed. There's nothing concrete in the alleged benefits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
I guess I want to get to the place where outing does not cause hurt or damage.

This would be a great place to be. Unfortunately, as you acknowledge, we aren't there yet.

Lizra 11-12-2006 12:37 PM

The benefit would be knowing that the person you are voting for is not a political hypocrite....that they have the basic character to stand by their own personal convictions/actions, and not just say whatever they think it will take to get "their side" to win, and in power. Imo...our political landscape is too much about spin and power, and not enough about real debate on the important issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll



This would be a great place to be. Unfortunately, as you acknowledge, we aren't there yet.

We will never get there by hiding in a closet though. :| So...it appears Maher has the right idea, to me.

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
The benefit would be knowing that the person you are voting for is not a political hypocrite....that they have the basic character to stand by their own personal convictions/actions, and not just say whatever they think it will take to get "their side" to win, and in power.

But two things about that:

1. How does this knowledge benefit you?

2. How does this knowledge tell you that their political choices are wholly motivated by an unprincipled thirst for power? And like I asked before, how do you know that their personal life - as opposed to their political life - isn't the part of their life that contrasts with their principles?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
We will never get there by hiding in a closet though. :| So...it appears Maher has the right idea, to me.

I'm not seeing how involuntary outing helps the process of getting to that place... and I am seeing how it could hurt the outed. Lose-lose, as I see it.

Lizra 11-12-2006 01:06 PM

That knowlege benefits me by helping me decide who is the best person to hold an office. I need truth to make good decisions. I would not want to vote for someone who is living a lie....This issue of accepting homosexuality as ahealthy and normal variation in our society is important and needs to be taken seriously. Double talk is not helpful.

Hiding and lying makes this issue seem less real/important than it truely is....imo.

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
That knowlege benefits me by helping me decide who is the best person to hold an office. I need truth to make good decisions. I would not want to vote for someone who is living a lie....This issue of accepting homosexuality as ahealthy and normal variation in our society is important and needs to be taken seriously. Double talk is not helpful.

We're talking about typically anti-gay closet cases here, so they're not going to help the idea of homosexuality as a healthy, normal thing either way, whether hetero or closeted.

How does knowing about a particular case of living a lie actually improve the quality of your decision? How is straight/anti-gay better than double-life/anti-gay, given equal political stances and actions?

host 11-12-2006 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
We're talking about typically anti-gay closet cases here, so they're not going to help the idea of homosexuality as a healthy, normal thing either way, whether hetero or closeted.

How does knowing about a particular case of living a lie actually improve the quality of your decision? How is straight/anti-gay better than double-life/anti-gay, given equal political stances and actions?

Reading your efforts here, I wonder if even you know, how much of your opinion is shaped by the financing of Richard Mellon Scaife, via AIM, continued today by
L. Brent Bozell III, protege of Reed Irvine?
Quote:

http://www.aim.org/publications/medi...2001/04/6.html
HORRIBLE COVERAGE OF A HORRIBLE MURDER

By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
April 6, 2001

.....The Washington Times reported that the only network to report on the Dirkhising trial was the Fox News Channel. The Shepard case made front page news and the cover of Time. Politicians and Hollywood types joined forces to demand new hate crime laws to cover homosexuals.

The media deny there is a double standard. A spokesman for ABC News called it "a local crime story that does not raise the kind of issues that would warrant our coverage." Time's Jonathan Gregg has said: "The reason the Dirkhising story received so little play is because it offered no lessons. Shepard's murder touches on...intolerance and the pressure to conform, the use of violence as a means of confronting one's demons. Jesse Dirkhising's death gives us nothing except the depravity of two sick men."

Wrong! The Dirkhising case <b>shows that sadism and child abuse is an important part of the gay lifestyle. That is the dirty secret homosexuals refuse to publicize. They have enormous influence within the media.</b> A homosexual New York Times reporter has said that three-quarters of the people who decide what's on the front page of the New York Times are barely-closeted homosexuals.
Quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1283764/posts
NYT Obit: Reed Irvine, 82, the Founder of a Media Criticism Group, Dies (The Times plays catch-up)
New York Times ^ | November 19, 2004 | MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

.....He was moved to found AIM by his disgust at the coverage, primarily by television, of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, where he felt that the networks were unduly sympathetic to antiwar protestors.

Within a decade of the group's beginning, AIM and Mr. Irvine had succeeded in forcing attention on themselves and their agenda. He appeared on many television panel discussions. He questioned editorial decisions at annual stockholder meetings of major newspapers and journals. He demanded and sometimes received the right of rebuttal on television documentaries. He was invited to present his complaints at regular meetings with senior executives of news media companies, including The New York Times.

Mr. Irvine's own weekly column was syndicated to some 100 papers. He and his organization attacked not only the editorial emphasis, or play, given to particular stories but also the choice of reporters and newscasters, whom they accused of conflicts of interest or ideological bias.

Mr. Irvine's initial strategy relied on writing letters to editors, but when this yielded no response, he began buying advertising space for his rejected letters. He also bought shares in news media companies to be able to voice complaints at their annual meetings.

The organization reached the peak of its influence during the Reagan administration, when its paid membership reached 40,000 and its budget was $1.5 million.

In those years, AIM was powerful enough to help shape nationwide television programming. One of its most visible successes came in 1985, when PBS broadcast "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story," an hourlong documentary produced by AIM. The documentary was a rebuttal to PBS's 1983 series "Vietnam: A Television History," which AIM attacked as being overly sympathetic to the North Vietnamese. .......
Quote:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/rec...cipientID=1374
<b>Grants to Accuracy in Media, Inc.</b>

Click date for grant details. (click the link above)

12-31-2005 300,000 General operating support Sarah Scaife Foundation
12-31-2004 425,000 General operating support Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2004 12,500 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
12-31-2003 425,000 General operating and program support Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2003 10,000 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
1-1-2002 250,000 No comment provided Sarah Scaife Foundation
1-1-2002 10,000 General support F.M. Kirby Foundation
1-1-2001 335,000 No purpose given. Sarah Scaife Foundation

Moskie 11-12-2006 01:45 PM

You're probably talking to the wrong people here, FTA. The real people that you should be having this conversation with are the constituents these congressmen represent. They're probably for gay marriage amendments, being Republican. How do you predict they will react to learning their representatives are gay? My guess is that the congressmen's popularity would take a hit. Assuming that were to happen, that would show the information is, definitively, relevant.

Most of the left you're talking to here would probably *gain* respect for congressmen that come out of the closet. So maybe our perspectives don't reflect the real issue here....

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie
How do you predict they will react to learning their representatives are gay? My guess is that the congressmen's popularity would take a hit. Assuming that were to happen, that would show the information is, definitively, relevant.

Anti-gay marriage constituents considering homosexuality relevant doesn't make it relevant. Perhaps you're right about me asking the wrong people, but I wouldn't merely ask anti-gay marriage constituents whether they considered it relevant. I would ask them why it's relevant. I would ask them to justify their interest in exposing this particular aspect of a politician's private life.

Host, I don't understand your aim in posting those articles. What's your point?

loquitur 11-12-2006 04:06 PM

Everyone has things about themselves that they don't advertise and would rathen not be made public. Some of them are trivial, some are important, and each of us would probably differ as to which is which. But in the final analysis, each person gets to define what makes him/herself be who s/he is, and how important to his/her self-definition any single particular aspect is.

To put it another way: we each choose the face we present to the world. For example, I'm not naturally charming and not naturally extroverted. But to be successful in my line of work I have to learn to be charming and somewhat extroverted. it's not really me; I'm much more of a bookish and cerebral type than a glad-hander. My wife knows this, and some of my close friends, but I have no particular desire or need to have these aspects of my personality become common knowledge.

I mention this not because I think that sexual preference is on a par with personality type - clearly it's a different kind of personal characteristic - but rather to make the point that each of us chooses how s/he presents him/herself to the world. And the choice of how to do that is uniquely each of ours; it's as much a part of who we are as the choice of clothing or the part of our hair.

If I like to look at porn, I don't tell that to my business colleagues. If I wipe my ass with my left hand instead of my right, I don't mention it in polite company. If I prefer having sex with my wife doggie style, I don't need other people to know about it.

What's more, I might even think (to take a hypothetical example) that it's not a good thing that I like to look at porn. I might have any number of negative characteristics that I am not proud of and prefer to suppress. That doesn't mean anyone has the right to go tell everyone else that I like to look at porn, or that I bite my nails in private, or that I like to scratch my ass. Even if I do those things, I don't have to be proud of them and - this is crucial - I may still think they are wrong. maybe I'd advocate restricting access to porn in order to help me save myself from urges to look at it. Or, even if they are not wrong, they are none of anyone's business. (no, I don't urge restrictions of this type - I'm libertarian through and through - but I'm giving these examples for purpose of argument).

Sexual activity of all kinds, including sexual preferences, are precisely like any other kind of activity or trait. It's up to the owner to decide what becomes public and what does not. No one else has the right to interfere with anyone's life or personality or self-definition that way. It's a very intrusive, very personal violation. And for what? To demonstrate that someone is a "hypocrite?" Actually, no - because it takes a few assumptions to get to the conclusion that the person is a hypocrite. Yes, <i>you</i> might think the person is a hypocrite, but that doesn't mean s/he is - it could simply mean that s/he is wrestling with something, or indulged a curiosity, or what have you. You simply don't know how the behavior you happen to focus on fits into that person's life. It could be that the person "knows" what s/he is doing is wrong, and wants outside restrictions in order to help him/her stay away from it, and to remove temptations.

In short, you have no way to know what the person's motivation is, and no real basis for painting them as hypocrites - all you know is that s/he prefers to keep some aspect of life private. Be very careful about this sort of "outing" - there may one day be something <i>you</i> prefer to keep private, that someone else might think has to be exposed, for reasons of their own that you might not share - it might not even be sexual in nature. What goes around comes around.

Finally, there is apparently an assumption among the supporters of "outing" that all Republicans or republican supporters or voters hate gays or advocate restrictions on gays. To begin with, simply as an empirical matter, I doubt most people especially care about what other people do; they simply want to be left alone. You can't simply assume that a Republican voter hates gays. I have voted Republican at times in the past, and I would venture to say I have more gay people in my home on a regular basis than most; my occasional choice of a Republican candidate had zero to do with gays - what it had to do with is regulation, taxes and national security. That's what happens in a two party system: yo'ure left with the choice of which party's candidates match more of the preferences you have at a particular moment than the other party's. There is no such thing as a candidate who matches me in all opinions, which means I'm always compromising. I would guess most gay Republicans do too. To suggest, as the "outers" do, that a free-market libertarian who happens to be gay should have to vote for a welfare state democrat in order to be able to maintain his privacy is totalitarianism - i.e., you have to do things the way the "outer" thinks you should do them, or else suffer the consequences. Bah.

In the final analysis, people are entitled to respect. ALL people.

Lizra 11-12-2006 04:20 PM

Well....I could repeat myself, again, about how it is important to me that "public people" asking other people to vote for them.... to represent them when making laws that affect us all be honest about who they are and what they do....but I won't bore you all again. ;) :cool:

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 05:30 PM

loquitur...

Thanks for stating so eloquently in a single post what I was aiming to say in 20 or 30 clumsy smaller posts. :)

host 11-12-2006 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Anti-gay marriage constituents considering homosexuality relevant doesn't make it relevant. Perhaps you're right about me asking the wrong people, but I wouldn't merely ask anti-gay marriage constituents whether they considered it relevant. I would ask them why it's relevant. I would ask them to justify their interest in exposing this particular aspect of a politician's private life.

Host, I don't understand your aim in posting those articles. What's your point?

My point is that I suspect that you, and certainly closeted gay republicans who
attain high profile, elected office, or, as in Ken Mehlman's case, prominent republican party office, are influenced by the 35 years campaign against the news media (AKA "working press") that features, as a cornerstone, the demonization of homosexuals. The Scaife financed apparatus cited in my last post, spearheaded first, by the late Reed Irvine, founder of AIM, and then by his protege, www.mrc.org 's Bozell, has had a great deal of influence over the media's coverage of homosexuals and gay rights issues.

The purpose is to mobilize the christian right to support an ultra-conservative agenda, and to tar the major press outlets, and their reporting, as tainted by liberal bias to the point that the information that they distribute is wholly unreliable....hence the "need" for alternative "news"....that has pushed out, for many conservatives, the "news" that the rest of us, receive, digest, and arm ourselves with as one of several components of information that helps us navigate in the "reality based" environment that we function in.

The vacuum created after the news gathering apparatus is pushed aside, is filled by approved aim.org , and mrc.org "organs"....Limbaugh, Drudge, townhall.com, NRO, powerline blog, and to an extent, by foxnews and washington times ....of course, Scaife's Pittsburgh "newspaper" is there to provide "approved" news, too.

This movement created distortion....consider Rep. David Dreier, and his life mate and house mate, and chief of staff, Brad W. Smith....this is the legislative work these two have supported:
Quote:

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-outing/1322/

....... Raw Story has provided some fascinating details about Smith. It appears that he is the highest-paid chief of staff to any House committee chair. Smith’s $156,600 salary is just $400 less than that of White House chief of staff Andy Card and Bush political commissar Karl Rove. By comparison, the chief of staff to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee makes $126,000, while the chief of staff to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee makes just $100,696. New Jersey Democratic Governor Jim McGreevey was recently forced to resign when it was about to become public that he had put his boyfriend on the public payroll at a salary slightly less than the one which Dreier pays Smith.

Neither Dreier, Smith, nor the congressman’s press secretary would return several telephone calls and detailed voice mails seeking comment. A staff member on Monday hung up the phone when I called back........

........Frank threatened to out a number of gay-baiting Republican fellow congressmen, the rule insists that outing is only acceptable when a person uses their power or notoriety to hurt gay people.

Dreier clearly meets that standard, for his voting record is strewn with anti-gay positions. To cite just a few: He opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have banned discrimination against gay people in hiring; voted for the gay-bashing Defense of Marriage Act; voted for banning adoption by gay and lesbian couples in the District of Columbia (3,000 miles away from Dreier’s district); voted to allow federally funded charities to discriminate against gays in employment, even where local laws prohibit such bias; and voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Dreier is not just a political homophobe but a heartless AIDS-phobe as well, voting against the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program designed to give shelter to the impoverished sick, and against funding for the federal ADAP program that furnishes the poor with the AIDS meds they need to stay alive.

Dreier can probably survive outing in his district and be re-elected, and it won’t hurt him much with Arnold and his cronies either. But Dreier’s days as a key member of the ultra-homophobic Hastert-DeLay House GOP leadership may be numbered.......
....and here is Bozell, in 1992:

Quote:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Pol...ophy/HL380.cfm

..........That is where the third element of the equation, media watchdog organizations, comes into play. The godfather of the movement is, of course, Reed Irvine and his Accuracy in Media organization. Formed in 1969, AIM was for years virtually the only group which dedicated itself exclusively to the fight against the liberal press. In the '70s others began producing credible studies documenting the liberal tilt within the press. To counter the growing evidence, the press cynically fell back to another line of defense: Our coverage of Topic X may have been biased, but this does not scientifically prove we are personally biased.

Media Bias Exposed
This argument collapsed in 1982 when Drs. Robert and Linda Lichter and Stanley Rothman published "Media and Business Elites," a survey to determine the personal persuasions of the press itself, and the evidence clearly demonstrated just how leftist the national media were: <b>From 1964 to 1976, the media had voted for the Democratic candidate at least 81 percent of the time; 90 percent favored abortion; 76 percent found nothing wrong with homosexuality; only 47 percent believed adultery was wrong; 50 percent had no religious affiliation. Rather than admit their biases, reporters retreated to their final line of defense: OK, the media may be biased, but I'm not.</b> With that in mind, the Media Research Center was launched to restore political balance in the media by exposing and neutralizing the liberal agenda within the so-called objective press.

The cornerstone of the MRC is its research capabilities. Today the MRC has the most sophisticated research operation ever assembled, more advanced than any university or media organization. Researchers tape, analyze and input into a computerized database summaries of every single network news show, including virtually all ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and PBS news broadcasts, weekly news shows, political talk shows, and special reports.

The MRC research capabilities are virtually boundless. ..........

..........David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote the masterful series on the media's promotion of the pro-choice movement, spent considerable time at our offices conducting research for his piece. Indeed, I will go so far as to warrant that 90 percent of the stories in both the electronic and print media which deal with the political bias in the industry have their origins in the Media Research Center.

The Future is Bright
Why should conservatives be optimistic about the media? Because our future is bright, but only if we take advantage of it............

......<b>Imagine, if you will, a future wherein the media willfully support the foreign policy objectives of the United States.</b> A time when the left can no longer rely on the media to promote its socialist agenda to the public. A time when someone, somewhere in the media can be counted on to extol the virtues of morality without qualifications. When Betty Friedan no longer qualifies for "Person of the Week" honors. When Ronald Reagan is cited not as the "Man of the Year," but the "Man of the Century."......
FoolThemAll, <b>I deliberately take the opposite POV of Richard Mellon Scaife and his late puppet Reed Irvine, and his living puppet, L. Brent Bozell III, nephew of William F. Buckley. It is the only way that I can keep their disinformation from infecting my POV. I think that their 35 year old "psy-op" is clouding your thinking, just as I think it has kept republican gays closeted.</b> I think it is a pox on the land. It's influence is everywhere, and it is the antithesis of what I believe, free thinking people in a republic where the press is challenged to act as the "fourth estate", should be exposing themselves to.

I think that you are not keeping away from this narrowcasting, and a symptom of the effect of it's influence on you, is the basis for your posts on this thread. <b>I know that my opinion has not been salted by the influence of Scaife's money and ideology.</b> I would learn to enjoy gay sex if it was a way to keep Scaife's psy-ops out of my brain!

FoolThemAll 11-12-2006 06:25 PM

Host...

This is the first I've heard of the name Scaife, though I've heard of similar views before.

I don't agree with his demonizations of homosexuals, and I don't see what it has to do with my views on this topic. You're going to have to be more clear in the link between the two.

ratbastid 11-12-2006 07:07 PM

loquitur: thanks for your post. I'm still not sure I agree with you 100% (in particular, I think that personal responsibility changes when you have a public public life) but I can certainly see the reason and logic--and especially the compassion--on that side of the fence now. That's the sort of post we need more of in Tilted Politics. Great work.

flstf 11-12-2006 08:26 PM

Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.:)

host 11-12-2006 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flstf
Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.:)

See posts of FoolThemAll and flstf ......their posts do not reflect the opposite POV of L Brent Bozell III and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Read recent Bozell column, appearing in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper and website, both owned by Scaife. Bozell's www.mrc.org receives much of it's funding from Scaife controlled trusts. Bozell was protege of Scaife funded homophobe, the late Reed Irvine, founder of <a href="http://www.aim.org/static/20_0_7_0_C">AIM</a>:
Quote:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_474925.html
Dems' mocking 'outrage'

By L. Brent Bozell III

Sunday, October 15, 2006

After more than 100 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC about the Mark Foley Internet-messaging scandal, it wouldn't be hard for the average Joe to conclude the Democrats are now the Party of Moral Values.

Democrats are demanding that Republicans return the monies Foley gave their campaigns. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader who would very much like Denny Hastert's job, is predictably fanning the flames. "We want to know," she thunders, "why the Republicans chose to protect Mark Foley's political career rather than protect the children who were in our charge."

To which I want to thunder back: Is there a muzzle large enough to fit a mouth such as Nancy Pelosi's?

Unwind that sound bite. Since when have the Democrats really been the party to protect children from the sexual advances of adults? Let's get to the point: Since when have Democrats like Pelosi cared, really cared, about men seeking out boys for sex?

There's an organized lobby for this perversion: the National Man-Boy Love Association. In 1997, NAMBLA made national headlines when a 10-year-old Massachusetts boy named Jeffrey Curley was abducted by two men, choked on a gasoline-soaked rag when he wouldn't consent to sex, was murdered and then sexually assaulted.

Curley's parents sued NAMBLA, since one of the killers said he was discouraged from following his fiendish desires until the organization encouraged him. The Curleys' lawyer explained how the group instructed perverts on how to lure children into sex, citing a NAMBLA publication he calls "The Rape and Escape Manual." Its actual title is "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships."

What does this have to do with the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi? The ever-prescient Mark Levin connected the dots on his radio program. NAMBLA easily found lawyers to defend them against the parents of the murdered boy -- the American Civil Liberties Union. Democrats like Pelosi are demanding that every Republican return any dirty Foley contributions they received, but do you think a single one of them has ever returned a dime generated for their coffers by the ACLU?

The American Spectator reported that in a 2001 "gay pride" parade in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi was just three spots in the parade from radical gay advocate Harry Hay, who avidly spoke in favor of sex with teens and fiercely advocated for NAMBLA's inclusion in gay-pride parades. Did Pelosi ever protest NAMBLA's presence in parades?

But go back to Pelosi's sound bite, because there's something there that's even more jarring: Since when do ultraliberals like San Fran Nan believe that a 17-year-old is a "child," anyway?

Consider the most sacred of sacred rights of liberals, abortion. When a teenage girl desires an abortion (or two, or three), do abortion-enabling liberals like Nancy Pelosi defend her as a "child"? Kansas pro-life attorney general Phill Kline fought last year to press abortion clinics to give him medical records of underage girls who sought abortions as part of an investigation into sexual abuse of minors. Liberals such as Planned Parenthood fought for what they called the privacy of "women's medical records."

And if liberal Democrats think sex between adults and children is gravely wrong, why are they accepting massive donations from Hollywood? One odd twist in the news networks' shock-and-awe Foley bombing is that their entertainment network cousins relish the very same activity, for fun and laughter, on their sex-drenched dramas.

ABC News broke open the Foley case. ABC Entertainment distributes "Desperate Housewives." During the last May sweeps, they pushed this plot: Bree, the red-headed Desperate Housewife, started seeing a man who was not only a drunk, but a sex addict. Bree's children then started trying to seduce him, and ultimately their mother came home to find her gay teenage son, Andrew, in the bedroom with her new beau. For ABC, this was all a delicious plot twist, a naughty giggle. No one was outraged. No Democrat returned contributions from Disney.

No, liberal Democrats in Congress are not the standard-bearers for "child protection" when it comes to sex. And neither are the news networks that suddenly are outraged -- outraged, we say! -- about Mark Foley's behavior.

ABC, CBS and NBC provided exactly zero coverage of the Curley v. NAMBLA suit. (But they did briefly cover NAMBLA -- when allegations about it floated into the Catholic priest abuse scandal of monstrous Father Paul Shanley in Boston in 2002.) What of Planned Parenthood's re-labeling of children as adults to ensure the privacy of their abortions? ABC, CBS and NBC didn't cover that controversy, either. Outrage over the glorification of man-boy sex in entertainment? Not a peep.

None of this is meant to minimize what is rightful outrage over Foley's scummy behavior, and the actions (or inactions) of anyone covering them up. It is simply to demonstrate that some have a right to be outraged. And some don't.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center.
<b>see host's posts.....host endeavors to post the opposite POV of whatever Scaife and Bozell are marketing. host is certain that Scaife funded propaganda and psy-ops are persuading him of the opposite of whatever Scaife and Bozell want host to think "he knows". host wants Scaife's efforts to influence his opinion to be more than a waste of money, and host wants to alert people who may not have noticed, to consider what Scaife and Bozell are doing to them.</b>

Lizra 11-13-2006 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flstf
Maher is on to something here and should probably expand his research into polititians sexual lives. He should interview ex-spouses and lovers and get all the sordid details to publish. You know, stuff like, "he says he's for family values but wanted me to perform perferted acts in bed".

Them Maher can list these sexual preferences for us to pass judgement on. We must find out as much as possible about these people we entrust our votes to. If nothing else it should make for more entertaining negative ads the next election cycle.:)

Good idea! :p Maybe we will get (a little) less manipulative bullshit and more substance from the politicians....start calling them out when they are full of crap. I'm tired of having so much time and money wasted by lies and decption. Put em on notice Maher......:thumbsup: ;)

FoolThemAll 11-13-2006 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
See posts of FoolThemAll and flstf ......their posts do not reflect the opposite POV of L Brent Bozell III and Richard Mellon Scaife.

I take it that, somewhere in those articles you posted, these people had something to say on the topic of outing closeted homosexuals. Perhaps their opinion coincided with mine.

Uh... so?

Is it your contention that, because Bozell and Scaife are wrong in their demonization of homosexuals, they couldn't be right about anything else?

I'm still struggling to figure out what the hell your point is, host. Could you please be more clear in showing the relevance of your posts to the topic at hand?

loquitur 11-13-2006 05:12 PM

thanks, Ratbastid. In my dotage I have learned that most people are flawed and that each person is unique and worthy of respect on his/her own terms, rather than trying to impose my terms on them.

I'm glad some people found my words persuasive. For those who didn't, well, we'll just agree to disagree.

Intense1 11-14-2006 09:52 PM

After reading all the posts and trying my best to think through all the issues, I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask:

1. Is it absolutely essential that the voters know all about the candidates they are faced with at the polls?

2. If an elected official proves to have values or habits different from what they claimed in their campaign, should they be ousted? (or even outted?)

These are a couple of things I've been wondering in reading all of your very deep thoughts, and I was just wondering.....

Cynthetiq 11-15-2006 09:13 AM

so just who did Bill Maher out that friday night? or was it just more Geraldo's Vaults of Al Capone?

Moskie 11-15-2006 09:38 AM

Nobody.

The topic seems to have been intentionally avoided, as the discussion veered elsewhere. But, after his comments on Larry King were edited out in other time zones, Maher made no mention of the promise on his show Friday. I did not see it myself, but here's an article:

http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=66&id=11516
no, i don't read gaywired.com. i got it off of google. i swear.

Strange, indeed.

Cynthetiq 11-15-2006 09:41 AM

Quote:

Even more troubling for Bill Maher fans is why the HBO host of Real Time With Bill Maher failed to follow up on his promise on Larry King Live to "name" more gay Republicans in positions of power on his Friday night show. Not only did Maher fail to do so, but he avoided any mention at all of his appearance on Larry King or the censoring of his interview with him by CNN - prompting fans to wonder if he too had fallen sway to pressure from the RNC or possibly from higher-ups at HBO not to make good on his word. No statement by Maher about the incident has been forthcoming.


I see... all talk and no cock... what little respect i had for him has totally evaporated. He now falls into the pot of "shit stirrer" or as we like to call on internet forums, trolls.

Lizra 11-15-2006 09:55 AM

Bummer...I wanted some outings.....;) Maybe he couldn't find any!? :p

Moskie 11-15-2006 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I see... all talk and no cock... what little respect i had for him has totally evaporated. He now falls into the pot of "shit stirrer" or as we like to call on internet forums, trolls.

I don't know... Bill Maher *is* a shit stirrer, and it would have stirred more shit if he were to out some congressmen on air. He might even know he's wrong, and I bet he'd still do it. So why didn't he?

host 11-15-2006 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lizra
Bummer...I wanted some outings.....;) Maybe he couldn't find any!? :p

They're described, right here:
http://www.proudofwhoweare.org/
Quote:

Both anti-gay Republican party and anti-gay evangelical movement appear to have been led by closeted gay men.

From today’s headlines it seems quite possible that closeted gay men have been holding the top jobs in both the anti-gay Republican party and the anti-gay national evangelical Christian movement......
go figure....who-da thunk it?

FoolThemAll 11-15-2006 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
*snip*

Gave up on the thread jack, host?

pig 11-17-2006 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Bad. Bad bad bad. But you typically don't put irrelevancies like orientation on your resume. Or, for that matter, irrelevancies like "I've been faithful to my wife" or "I go to church every Sunday".

I think that the questions of character, honesty, and integrity - not only with respect to the issues but also how the politician relates to those issues - that politicians run on in their campaigns is a crucial aspect of what motivates citizens to vote for them. Therefore, I disagree that these are irrelevancies when they are dealing with legislation and social climates directly affected by their positions on the issues. Therefore, I think that these statements are tantamount to a resume in terms of issues in the public eye. That is the reason that they run on these issues during their campaigns, etc.

Are you essentially saying that its ok for someone to misrepresent themselves on some issues, but not others? Where do you draw the line, and who gets to decide where the line is?

Quote:

Originally Posted by FTA
'Course, drunk driving is a danger to other people. 'Course, if you believe in the drug laws (I don't), there's another good reason to 'out' him. And if you want to get him into rehab, that might maybe be a a third good reason to threaten him with a very public outing. Though I don't know how effective that'd be and a private discussion might be just as or more fruitful. Your comparison breaks down on at least two of these points.

Those are your points, not mine. My stance on this has nothing to do with my particular leanings on the issues of drugs or sex, but simply on honesty and transparency on the behalf of our politicians with respect to their positions on issues.


Quote:

Originally Posted by seretogis
If the word "marriage" is so precious that it couldn't possibly be associated with filthy filthy homosexuals, take it away from everyone and replace it with "civil union." Straight, gay, and other couples could then all get the same "civil union license/registration" and then perform whatever religious, spiritual, or personal ceremonies they'd like on their own to complete their "marriage."

exactly.

FoolThemAll 11-18-2006 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
I think that the questions of character, honesty, and integrity - not only with respect to the issues but also how the politician relates to those issues - that politicians run on in their campaigns is a crucial aspect of what motivates citizens to vote for them. Therefore, I disagree that these are irrelevancies when they are dealing with legislation and social climates directly affected by their positions on the issues. Therefore, I think that these statements are tantamount to a resume in terms of issues in the public eye. That is the reason that they run on these issues during their campaigns, etc.

Are you essentially saying that its ok for someone to misrepresent themselves on some issues, but not others? Where do you draw the line, and who gets to decide where the line is?

It makes the most sense - to me, anyway - to draw the line where the misrepresentation is not material to political claims or political actions.

A lie about the politician's sex life - provided that it's all legal - is about as material to his political life as a lie about his parenting skills. Even if the voters think otherwise. Because you don't need to be a faithful husband or a good father in order to be an excellent politician. Even if the voters think otherwise.

If people like Maher or Haggard's outer have the ability to out someone without invading their privacy unlawfully - Haggard certainly opened a few doors himself with his adultery and drug use - then, sure, they're legally in the clear. But they'll not receive one iota of praise from me. They're still pretty scummy. No, they'll be the recipients of something else entirely...

http://wikiality.com/images/thumb/20...39;s_Scorn.JPG

pig 11-18-2006 06:34 PM

FTA: First, please answer the first part. If you think that lying on a resume is wrong, then we agree. Do you feel that the way that a politican represents himself in his/her campaign is similar to a resume in the public eye?

Second:

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
It makes the most sense - to me, anyway - to draw the line where the misrepresentation is not material to political claims or political actions.

And where would that be? How is hypocracy in someone personal life not going to affect their public decisions? If nothing else, they are ripe for blackmail. At best, they have pyschological issues that will certainly affect their public/political stance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FTA
A lie about the politician's sex life - provided that it's all legal - is about as material to his political life as a lie about his parenting skills. Even if the voters think otherwise.

Unless they are pursuing legislation that affects/restricts/immorlizes aspects of American citizen's sex lives, when they themselves partake in that lifestyle. I fail to see how it's not relevant. However, I can see we're not going to agree here, so let's scrap sex lives for a bit.

Where do you fall on the bigger picture. Is there any private action a person could take, where they pursue a diametically opposed public political agenda, where you would feel there private hypocracy was relevant?

Xera 11-18-2006 08:11 PM

Yikes, what an issue.

I personally don't care if my elected representatives like to have sex with stuffed barney dolls, so long as they vote the way they say will. It seems to me that outing a person that isn't ready to be outed is a type of sexual harrassment.

Are our politicians not covered by sexual harrassment laws? Does our right to know what our politicians do and say extend to the point that they have absolutely no rights in this department?

Telluride 11-18-2006 09:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel
They haven't come to terms with their sexuality if they can't stand up for themselves. Not coming to terms with, and more importantly striking out at other because you haven't come to terms with latent homosexuality is a textbook sign of severe depression disorder.

Does this mean that white people who support affirmative action haven't come to terms with their racial identity?

FoolThemAll 11-19-2006 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
FTA: First, please answer the first part. If you think that lying on a resume is wrong, then we agree. Do you feel that the way that a politican represents himself in his/her campaign is similar to a resume in the public eye?

Lying on a resume is wrong. But putting questions about one's sex life on a resume would be the greater wrong, in my view. (

Quote:

How is hypocracy in someone personal life not going to affect their public decisions?
I could see how it might, but not at all how it must. People are perfectly capable of behaving differently in different contexts.

Quote:

If nothing else, they are ripe for blackmail.
So are the closeted ones who don't make sexual orientation an issue. Should we out them as well?

Quote:

At best, they have pyschological issues that will certainly affect their public/political stance.
Ugh... it's perfectly possible that this is the case, but you can look back on my exchange with willravel to see why I won't take it for granted.

Quote:

Where do you fall on the bigger picture. Is there any private action a person could take, where they pursue a diametically opposed public political agenda, where you would feel there private hypocracy was relevant?
Sure. Unlawful actions, for one.

But I'm guessing you mean in the realm of the lawful. Well... any inactions from which the politician falsely claimed to gain relevant experience. It's pushing it, but the whole swiftboat thing if true might maybe fit here as an example (though, to be honest, I didn't care much about it). But as a contrived-yet-better made-up example, a politician that pushed his ability to pass the bar exam all on his own, despite his actual use of twelve Ivy League-bred tutors, should probably be exposed. He's making the claim that he can handle a big load and citing a fictional account as a basis. That's fair game, it throws a relevant claim into doubt. Unless, of course, he backed it up just as well with a couple of true episodes... then I'd tend to regard it as irrelevant once again. More later, if you want... though that was rambling enough, methinks.

Show me the effect of the private hypocrisy on the politics. "How does it not effect it?" doesn't cut it.

pig 11-19-2006 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Lying on a resume is wrong. But putting questions about one's sex life on a resume would be the greater wrong, in my view.

Ok, what if I lied about something irrelevant to my job on my resume. What if I said "pigglet was aboard the 1969 Apollo mission that went to the moon. he speaks swahili on alternate saturdays. beat bobby fisher in best of five chess match in central park. honorary member of the Royal Order of the Noble Otter - Grand Poobah." None of that is germane to my job one way or the other. What if I "elected" to put things like "family man, father of 10, Church Alderman and Sunday school teacher" and it turned out I was a single guy with no kids, and hadn't been to Church in ages? You think my boss might not point that out to me, and other people in the company, and possibly clients I work with? It goes to character - and my boss is thinking "I've got some crazy fucking pigglet working for me. Shit, is this grounds to fire? Can I get rid of this nutcase before he fucks something serious up? Who makes up this crap on their resume?"

Part of it goes to character, honesty and integrity.


Quote:

I could see how it might, but not at all how it must. People are perfectly capable of behaving differently in different contexts...
So are the closeted ones who don't make sexual orientation an issue. Should we out them as well?
I think they're taking a huge chance with their political office, and I don't really feel comfortable knowing that people could be so easily manipulated by something so stupid as who they like to fuck. Similar as to the above, I think that the rule is that we do expose people for their public lies about their private lives, particularly if its relevant to what they do for a living. You say its not relevant, I'll address that below.

The point is, we make an exception on sexual orientation, because people are so sensitive to it. Which is fine, and normally - no - I don't think we should out people. But, if they choose to make it an issue, then it comes on the table. It is standard fare to investigate the lies and hypocracy in our public figures, not only in cases like sexual orientation. Remember Gary Hart? Fucking a female model - but he still got in big time trouble. How about that Clinton guy. Seems like people got all up in arms about that shit - Monica had boobies. This shit happens all the time. You're essentially advocating that we withhold some information, in terms of sexual orientation, because of the sensitive nature. Fine. But if the public figure makes issues of sexual orientation critical to his public political persona, I say he loses that privelage of having his private life protected.

Quote:

But I'm guessing you mean in the realm of the lawful. Well... any inactions from which the politician falsely claimed to gain relevant experience. ..the whole swiftboat thing if true might maybe fit here as an example ...But as a contrived-yet-better made-up example, a politician that pushed his ability to pass the bar exam all on his own, despite his actual use of twelve Ivy League-bred tutors, should probably be exposed..... That's fair game, it throws a relevant claim into doubt. Unless, of course, he backed it up just as well with a couple of true episodes... then I'd tend to regard it as irrelevant once again...
What if he claimed to gain relevance for his social/political agenda from his God-fearing straight wife-missionary-style fucking with four kids a white house and a picket fence existence, where he was advocating a social agenda in lieu of actual "political" issues (taxes, national defense, insurance, social security reform, etc)? That's what these guys do. They run on social agendas. Do I think that's bullshit? Yes. Yes I do. But they choose to run for election based on this horseshit - and live by the sword, die by the sword I say. He's claiming he represents their social agenda imagery, through and through. He's a real go getter, and man's man that all the ladies love. He's commited to his wife, he works hard to put his kids through college. He goes to the hardware store and he knows where they keep the spark plugs. He wants to keep America the way its been for at least 50 years for some of the people, some of the time.

Turns out, its not true. Well, he chose to run on it, he gets the shaft when its pointed out to be blantantly false. For many cases, even though I dislike the blantant lying to get elected, in the case of homosexuality its particularly bad. Why?

Quote:

Originally Posted by FTA
Show me the effect of the private hypocrisy on the politics. "How does it not effect it?" doesn't cut it.

I mean, how could sexual orientation be relevant to a politicians career? Hmmm...There is no federal law preventing workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 33 states it is currently legal to discriminate on this basis. As I said, these guys help create and sustain a pervassive environment that is discriminatory towards gay people. If that's your magic issue, twisted as it is, then you'd better at least live by your own statements.

How does hyprocracy affect public positions and politics? I was looking for a study on the subject, but can't find one at present. Essentially, if you are advocating positions that you don't actually believe in - it seems to me that you're always having to imagine contexts under which your arguments make sense. You clearly don't believe them yourself, because you act in ways that are contrary to your stated beliefs. So you have no choice to but to adopt a fantasy position, and then argue based on what you imagine the merits of it to be. Regardless of whether you *think* you undestand your "constituents" desires (presumable who elected you to keep the gays down...just a little bit), it seems to me that there is an inherent schism between your belief system and your constituents. They elect you because the majority of them think you fundamentally represent them. That's what they want. Not just a mouthpiece, but a person who shares their beliefs on a fundamental level. You don't. What if a question comes on a complex piece of legislation, and you have to pretend as though you understand where your consituents would draw the line in discriminatory practices. Would a person who really thinks that homosexuality is sin and evil, through and through, tend to believe that you love the sinner, hate the sin...or would they stone the bastards? To a certain extent these questions are always going to go through the mind of an elected official - but in this case, they don't have firm fundamental ground to make their own interpretations. To me, it makes them less useful, less predictable, and more easily influenced by what the think public perception might be.

Lizra 11-19-2006 10:49 AM

Pigglet! :love: Thank you for taking the time to put your excellent thoughts on this subject into words! I get too hurried/cranky to be arsed with such debate....but it is much more meaningful when someone takes the time to articulate. :thumbsup:

host 11-19-2006 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Gave up on the thread jack, host?

Background:
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1100-2001May8">American Psychiatric Association: "Since 1973, when the association reversed its position that homosexuality was a mental disorder, all major medical groups have advised against attempts to persuade gay men and lesbians to seek treatment, noting that such attempts can be psychologically damaging. But some religious groups have waged a campaign over the past three years to convert gays to heterosexuality through counseling."</a>

The two sides to the argument on this thread are illustrated in the following examples:

One party's political platform seeks to exclude homosexuals from marriage and military service, and the other party's platform "support[s] the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of the nation."

A congresswomen of one party openly states that she was <i>"The first openly gay person to be elected to Congress as a nonincumbent, Tammy Baldwin is a forceful supporter of civil rights and an advocate for those in our society whose voices, too often, are not heard."</i>

The party chairman, the V-POTUS and a congressman and his COS, all members of the other party, have worked for and voted for legislation that intentionally exludes homosexuals and/or denies rights to them that are enjoyed by the "rest of us", even as these officials themselves, deny, mislead, cover up, or refuse to answer whether or not they, themselves, or an immediate family member, are homosexual. In the case of the VPOTUS, he attempted to use the sexual orientation of his daughter, to attract the "homosexual vote", even as he, himself, relegated his daughter and her personal relationship with another woman, to a lesser status than that of his married daughter, and while his own background included votes against homosexual interests when he was a congressman, and while he supported his party's current, anti-homosexual rights platform provisions.

IMO, <b>to argue in favor of supporting the status of closeted anti-gay, gay republican elected and party officials, is to advocate for the continued hypocrisy and dysfunction of self-loathing folks who are overwhelmed by their own amibition, and who lack a sense of an obligation to be open about who they are, with the folks who they serve. To support the closeted hypocrisy of Mehlman, Cheney, Dreier, and Brad Smith, I would assume that one would also support the spectacle of a closeted gay presidential candidate who, when asked about his family situation, simply replied, as Mehlman and Dreier have, that such an inquiry is inappropriate or irrelevant. Aren't "we, the people" entitled to know the living arrangements and the family circumstances of all who represent us or run major political parties, especially of parties that "embrace family values", and pledge to exclude homosexuals, just as we would expect to know those details, of our president or someone running for that office? </b>

Quote:

http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Dem...vil_Rights.htm

Keep marriage at state level; no federal gay marriage ban
We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. We repudiate President Bush's divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a "Federal Marriage Amendment." Our goal is to bring Americans together, not drive them apart.
Source: The Democratic Platform for America, p.36 Jul 10, 2004

We support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to end workplace discrimination against gay men and lesbians. We support the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of the nation. We will fight for full funding of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other civil rights enforcement agencies.
Source: Democratic National Platform Aug 15, 2000
Quote:

http://www.wiscnews.com/pdr/archives.../04/106030.php

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Tammy Baldwin - Democrat

By the Daily Register Staff

Running for: U.S. House of Representatives, 2nd District

Age: 44

Residence: Madison

Current Occupation: 2nd District Representative, U.S. House of Representatives

Education: Madison West High School, B.A. Smith College, Northampton, Mass., J.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison

Former Political Experience: Dane County Board of Supervisors, Madison City Council, Wisconsin State Assembly, and the U.S. House of Representatives

Family: Lives with partner Lauren Azar in Madison
Quote:

http://www.tammybaldwin.com/Biograph...3/Default.aspx
In November 1998, Tammy Baldwin was elected to Congress to represent Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District, becoming the first woman from Wisconsin to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was re-elected in 2000, 2002 and 2004......

........The first openly gay person to be elected to Congress as a nonincumbent, Tammy Baldwin is a forceful supporter of civil rights and an advocate for those in our society whose voices, too often, are not heard.
Quote:

http://www.ontheissues.org/2004_GOP_Platform.htm

Civil Rights

States should not recognize gay marriage from other states.
Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Homosexuality is incompatible with military service.
Quote:

http://www.gaypeopleschronicle.com/s...ch/0325054.htm

March 25, 2005

GOP national chair avoids question about his sexuality

by Eric Resnick

Akron--<b>“[You] have asked a question people shouldn’t have to answer,” said Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman to a reporter asking if he is gay.</b>
Mehlman was interviewed after he spoke to the Summit County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner March 19 at Quaker Station.

“I’m here to say thank you,” Mehlman told the gathering, “because Summit County increased its votes for George W. Bush from 2000 to 2004 more than any other county.”

Mehlman managed the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and, according to the campaign’s Ohio co-chair, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, directed Ohio anti-gay activists to mount the campaign to put the Issue 1 marriage ban amendment on the ballot.

Internet bloggers have pointed out that if Mehlman, 38, unmarried and never with female companionship, is gay, he is a hypocrite.

Activist and blogger John Arovosis says Mehlman should be outed if he is gay because <b>“Mehlman has already said publicly that the gay issue is fair game for politics. If it is fair game, then the same rules apply to him.”</b>....

Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/...7/31/mary.html

<b>Why Nothing About Mary?</b>
cover image John Cloud

August 1, 2000
Web posted at: 9:05 p.m. EDT (0105 GMT)

Richard and Lynne Cheney have two daughters. And <b>last week Bush-Cheney campaign spokespeople were happy to inform reporters that daughter Elizabeth, 34, is married and has three children. When reporters asked about Mary Cheney's personal life, however, they were told the campaign wouldn't discuss it.</b>

Last week Mary Cheney, 31, stayed in Wyoming after her dad's debut rally. She was away from the suburban Denver home she shares with her girlfriend Heather and away from the constantly ringing phone. She was torn over how to handle press inquiries about her homosexuality. "I love my father," she told an acquaintance. "I don't want to be a distraction."

While friends say her relationship with her father is obviously strong, her relationship to his campaign is more muddled. Bush officials said the Governor invited her on the campaign trail, and Lynne Cheney told TIME both her daughters would accept. But Mary Cheney got the feeling that the campaign wanted to say as little about her as possible, according to a friend.

"She's encouraging people to call the campaign, because that will force them to come up with some answers," said Mike Smith, a Denver gay activist who has known Cheney for three years. <b>But coming up with those answers would be interpreted as putting Mary's relationship on an equal footing with her sister's.</b> That would be a major departure for a party that has traditionally supported the right of employers to fire gay people.

<b>Mary Cheney isn't a gay activist. But until May, she worked for Coors Brewing Co. as liaison to the gay community, and she gave buckets of the brewer's money to gay causes. ("She was one of our secret weapons in terms of donations," an activist said.) She traveled the country defending the company at meetings of gay radicals who oppose the G.O.P. politics of the Coors family. "Coors has come a long way," she told a gay paper in 1998. "It's a company that really listened to us."</b>

But have her parents? Will Bush? For months, the Governor waffled on whether he would hire someone like Mary--an openly gay person--in his administration before saying sexuality wasn't a factor for him. <b>As a Congressman in the '80s, her dad routinely voted for antigay bills.</b> But he has never smeared gays in personal terms, and contrary to her reputation as a culture warrior, Lynne Cheney hasn't either. When Mary came out to her in the early '90s, Lynne quietly asked gay Republican friends for advice.

The Cheneys made clear last week that they love their daughter. And Mary Cheney seemed eager to get back to the Colorado outdoors (she loves to golf) and start business school. For now, she's keeping quiet about Dad's politics. "It must be very tough for her to feel that second-class status implied by his positions," says Dee Mosbacher, the lesbian daughter of Robert Mosbacher, Commerce Secretary under Bush's father. "I've come a long way with my own father, but it takes a lot of discussion."
Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../31/ip.00.html
GOP Convention Opens With Optimism About Party's Prospects
Aired July 31, 2000 - 5:00 p.m. ET

Even Lynne Cheney seemed reluctant to comment on her daughter's sexual orientation.

LYNNE CHENEY, DICK CHENEY'S WIFE: <b>Mary has never declared such a thing.</b>

I would like to say that I'm appalled at the media interest in one of my daughters. BIRCH: I think so far, you've seen the Bush campaign, and to some extent, her parents, hide behind these notions of privacy......
Quote:

http://www.larryflynt.com/notebook.php?id=88
Congressman David Dreier: Gay & Ashamed

.....Apparently the evangelical group failed to notice that Dreier’s roommate and constant companion is none other than Brad W. Smith, his appropriately entitled chief of staff.

Smith must be worth his weight in gold, as Dreier is paying his major domo the highest salary he legally can: $156,600 a year. That’s just $400 less than White House heavyweights Karl Rove and Andy Card.

This rankles John Byrne, editor of RawStory.com, who recently began to investigate Dreier’s secret life after learning that gay activist Michael Rogers was already hammering the issue of the congressman’s sexuality on BlogActive.com. “Brad Smith is paid both from the Rules Committee and from Dreier’s office, which is not unheard of,” Byrne points out. “It’s allowed, but the [staff for] Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Appropriations Committee—those people are only paid from the congressmen’s office.”

Brad Smith currently collects $106,000 from the Rules Committee on top of his $50,600 office earnings. “His salary from Dreier’s office went down when he joined the Rules Committee,” Byrne continues, but remained locked in at $156,600. “There’s a rule that says that if you’re going to pay people from the committee, it shouldn’t be as an expense of your own office—like you shouldn’t be using committee funds to pay for someone who you’re paying for basically anyway.”
Dreier and Smith have shown a taste for jet-setting together as well. During the past three years they have traveled to at least 25 countries together on the taxpayers’ dime, spending 45 days abroad in locales that traditionally attract frolicking lovers: Italy and Spain, as well as a few destinations off the beaten path, including Sri Lanka, Micronesia and Iceland.

“It’s common knowledge up on the Hill that David Dreier is just a big, huge fag,” said Randy Economy, campaign manager for Dr. Janice Nelson-Hayes, the congressman’s Democratic opponent in 1998 and 2000. Economy (who is openly gay) indicated that, despite compelling evidence of Dreier’s carefully guarded sexual orientation, candidate Nelson-Hayes passed on making it an issue in her last campaign.

“There were issues out there and evidence that this living situation occurred and the payment that he was making to his chief of staff,” Nelson-Hayes declared. “We just decided that we weren’t going to go into that because we didn’t know how many other members of Congress had loved ones, family members, spouses, significant others working in their offices.”

A longtime Democratic adviser with numerous campaigns under his belt, Economy said Dreier’s gay life is valid for discussion, since public policy that affects millions of people is at stake. “I know the pain that people go through in this process here,” Economy said. “But [Dreier] has got to deal with this stuff because now he is [advocating] positions against the community and against himself, and it’s not right. His lover is benefiting from it; therefore he’s benefiting from it, and that’s just not fair and possibly not legal.”......

.....Now 52, David Timothy Dreier himself has remained hunkered down, floating vague nondenial denials through unnamed surrogates on various Web sites. Attending the Republican National Convention in New York City, Dreier was confronted on satellite radio and asked if he was heterosexual. Apparently flustered, the legislator said he wasn’t there to “talk about that.”

Dreier never has been “there” to talk about it, even as homosexuals have been fired, smeared and even murdered for simply being gay.
And that’s the shame of it all.

SCREWIN’ ’EM: DAVID DREIER’S IN-CLOSET VOTING RECORD

2004: Voted for the Marriage Protection Act. 2001: Supported legislation allowing federally funded charities to discriminate against gays and lesbians, despite local laws. 1999: Opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (as he had in 1996 and ’97). 1998: Voted to prohibit gays and lesbians in the District of Columbia from adopting children (D.C. is 3,000 miles from Dreier’s own district); opposed restoration of funding to the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program. 1997: Opposed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act; opposed increases in state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs. 1996: Voted for the Defense of Marriage Act; opposed the Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program.
Quote:

http://www.nypress.com/17/37/news&columns/signorile.cfm
OUT IN THE GARDEN
Republicans run for cover when the gay journo approaches.

By Michelangelo Signorile

.....Then there was California Congressman David Dreier, who was on Arnold Schwarzenegger's transition team and who came to the convention to pump up his boy Arnie. Dreier, in his 50s and unmarried, sat down with me for an interview and proceeded to give a rim job to the Gropenator until <b>I steered the conversation over to Dreier's support of the Marriage Protection Act. It's a heinous piece of legislation that the House passed which would prevent people from challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, a law legal experts said would be unconstitutional. Dreier, starting to sweat just a little bit, pointed out that he is against the Federal Marriage Amendment, even as he tried to explain why he voted for another piece of antigay legislation.</b> When I asked Dreier, who is in the middle of his own re-election campaign, about his sexual orientation and the long-held rumors about him, <b>he twice refused to clarify whether he was heterosexual or not......</b>

roachboy 11-19-2006 11:12 AM

the problem i have with maher's proposed tactic is that, in the end, it presupposes and relies upon ambient homophobia. while i understand the hypocrisy arguments made above, i think they explain the internal workings of the tactic and not the assumed effects of using it. what maher would do, effectively, would not only rely upon homophobia but would legitimate and reinforce it.

it seems to me well past time to dispense with the illusion that being gay in itself corresponds to a particular politics--the population of people who happen to be gay is widely distributed politically, and sexual preference need not translate into any particular set of broader views toward the world. the assumption in the 80s, say, seemed to be that there was a single coherent response to the fact of exclusion/marginalizaton rooted in homophobia, and that this single coherent response necessarily positioned everyone in a context of political opposition.
i think this was and is naive--wishful thinking.
it seems obvious to me that folk can experience problems in positioning/self-positioning at one level and integrate that experience into a whole range of wider political worldviews, which can and often are explicitly reactionary. while i would imagine that the probabilities of a reactionary political viewpoint being built around such experience (at one level or another) are different from those which obtain in a population not so affected, it nonetheless seems to me that there is nothing particularly surprising to find gay people who are extremely conservative and others who are not.
if that is true, is there anything in itself hypocritical about being gay and conservative at the same time?
i am not so sure.
i think the discussion about this should be much more wide-ranging than it has beens so far in this thread, and arriving at a judgment about it seems to me complicated.
and if anything like that is true, then this loops back onto the problem that i have with maher actually following through on his threat to out conservatives who are gay.

and believe me, i have no sympathy at any level for the right.
i find the contemporary american right to be dangerous on any number of levels, and damaging the right through tight argumentation is a worthwhile political project.
i am just not sure that what maher is proposing is anything like that.

pig 11-19-2006 11:32 AM

roach,

I don't think there's anything surprising about gay people being conservative, or bdsm types being conservative, or gun owners being liberal. Afterall, I'm pretty much liberal (in the context of where I see American political spectrums...probably not so liberal on a real political scale) and I've got five guns in my house and used to sleep with a loaded shotgun behind my bed. I can easily understand a gay person endorsing the "conservative" ticket, and I can understand a gay person who doens't believe in gay marriage. It takes all types. To me, its about the honesty concerning the political stances and the hypocritical public depiction of their realdeal Holyfield private personas, not about the actual political positions they adopt. If a gay guy wants to adopt an anit-gay-marriage position, great. He can argue it from that standpoint. I just don't understand adopting a position, as a voter, that advocates having my representatives lie to me about their backgrounds and personal de-facto politics, when they put themselves in the public light. There's a lot more at stake in this game than just gay marriage, you know?

edit: i can understand your position that maher's tactics perpetuate, or rely on, the present homophobia in our society...but how else could it be done? He obviously wanted to beef up ratings, but I don't see how that's substantially different than any other talking head.

roachboy 11-19-2006 11:41 AM

Quote:

i can understand your position that maher's tactics perpetuate, or rely on, the present homophobia in our society...but how else could it be done? He obviously wanted to beef up ratings, but I don't see how that's substantially different than any other talking head.
i dont know.
i am deeply ambivalent about this.
were i in a situation like maher's, i dont know that i would go there at all.
the ratings boost thing seems to me an external criterion that would function as an outside pressure to go with a questionable tactic.

i understand your main arguments, pigglet, and agree with them up to the point of implementation. at that point, you have to travel outside the logic of the tactic itself, and that is where things get dicey in my view.
because i dont really see how maher could possibly proceed on these lines in a way that does not function in a manner wholly at odds with what i take the tactic to be about.

it looks to me like a loose/loose scenario.

pig 11-19-2006 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy
i dont know.
i am deeply ambivalent about this....at that point, you have to travel outside the logic of the tactic itself, and that is where things get dicey in my view.
because i dont really see how maher could possibly proceed on these lines in a way that does not function in a manner wholly at odds with what i take the tactic to be about.

it looks to me like a loose/loose scenario.

yep, because its easy to get into the Salem Witchtrials. I suppose if someone comes forward with incontrovertible evidence - particularly someone politically non-partisan - there might be reasonable ways to approach the subject. In the particular case cited in this thread, or in the thread on that Craig guy out in the midWest, a lack of evidence is rather a problem. I would think an actual journalistic approach would be about the only way I could see it working out in an intellectually satisfying manner.

host 11-19-2006 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
yep, because its easy to get into the Salem Witchtrials. I suppose if someone comes forward with incontrovertible evidence - particularly someone politically non-partisan - there might be reasonable ways to approach the subject. In the particular case cited in this thread, or in the thread on that Craig guy out in the midWest, a lack of evidence is rather a problem. I would think an actual journalistic approach would be about the only way I could see it working out in an intellectually satisfying manner.

Two things.....

Maher plays to a subscription audience....on HBO. He enjoys a regular following, and gets plenty of play via internet blogs with his weekly "new rules" segment, and via the diverse and interesting slate of guests who appear on his weekly "panel". His audience is what it is.....between Tivo and multiple scheduled slots, there is plenty of opportunity to catch a viewing of his show....I doubt that he was motivated by ratings.

In the examples of Mehlman, and Dreier....what "evidence" are you looking for,
pigglet? The "norm" for political luminaries is illustrated in my example of Tammy Baldwin. An "open" political person simply supplies a line in a web bio or in a press kit that says that they are married with two children, blah, blah, blah.....or live with a long time signifigant other, or are recuperating from a recent termination of a long term realtionship.....or....reside with a partner....
the point is.....the "norm" is to reference that segment of one's life.

I can't think of a better example than to compare the detailed disclosure of a presidential candidate's home life.....the public expects nothing less.....on one extreme end of the spectrum.....vs. the "silence" of Mehlman, RNC chairman, or of Dreier....the chairman of the house rules committee and one of the most frequently televised republican congressional caucus spokespersons, during the early phases of Tom Delay's implosion...because he was genial, photogenic, and perceived as untainted by Delay's impropriey.

Doesn't it follow, that the "silence" of Mehlman and of Dreier, combined with scuttlebutt that always surfaces, combined with their high visibility, speaking for a party with an anti-gay platform, and advocating anti-gay legislation, that they at least be asked, even by a press as uncurious as ours is....if rumors about their non-heterosexual "leanings" were true, or not?

Both answered vaguely and without a vigorous, or even a reflexive assertion of their heterosexuality.....hence.....it seems obvious that they brought the speculation by folks like Maher....on themselves......all they would have had to do to avoid it, is what Tammy Baldwin did.....she did it at the start of her first campaign for congress......but Dreier and Mehlman could have offered disclosure or clarification about their dating or living arrangements, anytime before political opponents, press, or Maher, brought up the accusation......and they could have done it before they worked for, and/or voted for legislation that discriminated against homosexuals. Discrimination as basic as the "pocketbook issue" of whether gay partners hold the right to receive benfits afforded to married or unmarried partners by employers, government, or within the legal framework of joint ownership and inheritance.

Anonymous hypocrits who do not have the power to legislate other peoples' rights away, certainly should retain the right of privacy, challenged only by evidence that would stand up in civil court,,,,,,and they do.....via proection against libel. Mehlman and Dreier enjoy, IMO, a much lower threshhold of privacy protection or respect, or "evidence".....the moment they chose to be aggressors against the rights and reputations of all open and closeted anonymous homosexuals.

FoolThemAll 11-19-2006 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigglet
Ok, what if I lied about something irrelevant to my job on my resume. What if I said "pigglet was aboard the 1969 Apollo mission that went to the moon. he speaks swahili on alternate saturdays. beat bobby fisher in best of five chess match in central park. honorary member of the Royal Order of the Noble Otter - Grand Poobah." None of that is germane to my job one way or the other.

Taken together, though, it is germane. Because it probably indicates that you're a habitual liar in various contexts. Not to mention, a bit of a nut.

Lying about sexual orientation isn't equivalent.

Quote:

It is standard fare to investigate the lies and hypocracy in our public figures, not only in cases like sexual orientation. Remember Gary Hart? Fucking a female model - but he still got in big time trouble. How about that Clinton guy. Seems like people got all up in arms about that shit - Monica had boobies. This shit happens all the time.
And I can't claim that I ignored this shit when it came out, but I would if I could go back and do it over. Though I wonder if one could find a few key differences between, say, the Mehlman situation and the Clinton situation. Just a hunch.

Quote:

You're essentially advocating that we withhold some information, in terms of sexual orientation, because of the sensitive nature. Fine. But if the public figure makes issues of sexual orientation critical to his public political persona, I say he loses that privelage of having his private life protected.
No, he loses the privilege much sooner than that. He loses the privilege when he makes the facts of his private life accessible to people other than trespassers. But there remains no positive value in the outing until it bears practical relevance to something public. Hypocrisy doesn't automatically have practical relevance. If the lie's irrelevant, so's the fact of the lie.

Quote:

What if he claimed to gain relevance for his social/political agenda from his God-fearing straight wife-missionary-style fucking with four kids a white house and a picket fence existence, where he was advocating a social agenda in lieu of actual "political" issues (taxes, national defense, insurance, social security reform, etc)? That's what these guys do. They run on social agendas. Do I think that's bullshit? Yes. Yes I do. But they choose to run for election based on this horseshit - and live by the sword, die by the sword I say.
I don't understand how a social agenda isn't an 'actual' political issue. But to address the other point here... no, I don't agree with "live by the sword, die by the sword" when it means that you're punishing politicians for not adhering to a bad consistency. The primary/relevant wrongdoing isn't in the masked private life, it's in the unhidden political life.

Quote:

He's claiming he represents their social agenda imagery, through and through.
But in every relevant way, he does.

Quote:

I mean, how could sexual orientation be relevant to a politicians career? Hmmm...There is no federal law preventing workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 33 states it is currently legal to discriminate on this basis. As I said, these guys help create and sustain a pervassive environment that is discriminatory towards gay people. If that's your magic issue, twisted as it is, then you'd better at least live by your own statements.
See, this is it right here: I don't see a point in pressuring them to adhere to a bad moral/law/code. I don't think that correcting hypocrisy is necessarily a good thing. It all depends on which way it's corrected.

In the case of outing an anti-gay politician, there's the possible good of getting him to change his anti-gay ways, but if that were the object then there'd be no point in a public outing.

Quote:

Regardless of whether you *think* you undestand your "constituents" desires (presumable who elected you to keep the gays down...just a little bit), it seems to me that there is an inherent schism between your belief system and your constituents.
But this schism doesn't actually make any visible difference in what you get.

Quote:

What if a question comes on a complex piece of legislation, and you have to pretend as though you understand where your consituents would draw the line in discriminatory practices.
Who says you don't understand? You don't have to share a perspective in order to understand it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
IMO, <b>to argue in favor of supporting the status of closeted anti-gay, gay republican elected and party officials, is to advocate for the continued hypocrisy and dysfunction of self-loathing folks who are overwhelmed by their own amibition, and who lack a sense of an obligation to be open about who they are, with the folks who they serve.

Because they have no such obligation. It isn't their constituents' business.

And again, those blanket assumptions of hypocrisy and/or dysfunction and/or self-loathing. I see no reason to take the truth of these accusations for granted. Perhaps you're limiting your comments to those who are actually hypocritical, but even then, I won't assume dysfunction or self-loathing. I doubt it's so black and white.

Quote:

To support the closeted hypocrisy of Mehlman, Cheney, Dreier, and Brad Smith, I would assume that one would also support the spectacle of a closeted gay presidential candidate who, when asked about his family situation, simply replied, as Mehlman and Dreier have, that such an inquiry is inappropriate or irrelevant.
Sure.

Quote:

Aren't "we, the people" entitled to know the living arrangements and the family circumstances of all who represent us or run major political parties, especially of parties that "embrace family values", and pledge to exclude homosexuals, just as we would expect to know those details, of our president or someone running for that office? </b>
No.

Ourcrazymodern? 11-19-2006 10:51 PM

What you are is scary if you hate it. Otherwise it's delightful. ILYA!

pig 11-20-2006 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Taken together, though, it is germane. Because it probably indicates that you're a habitual liar in various contexts. Not to mention, a bit of a nut.

Lying about sexual orientation isn't equivalent.

Why not? Showing a pattern of habitually lying in some cases is bad, but in others is ok? Aside from sexual orientation, what else can you habitually lie about and be ok?

Quote:

And I can't claim that I ignored this shit when it came out, but I would if I could go back and do it over. Though I wonder if one could find a few key differences between, say, the Mehlman situation and the Clinton situation. Just a hunch.
Let's see...Clinton committed perjury? Ah yes, 'tis true. The best commentary I've heard on that is from Eddie Izzard - essentially, that you should have degrees of perjury, just like you do for murder. Lying about something like whether the holocaust happened (or, I would say reasons for going to war...) are perjury in the first degree, lying about some girl you were shagging is like perjury 9. I'm glad Clinton got called on that shit - it was completely unethical. I just don't think impeachment was really prudent. But the important thing is - he lied, and he got called. About who he was fucking. Completely relevant, in my opinion. I'm not saying these politicians should be flayed, only that they sit around and blantantly lie, and then act surprised when someone says "Say friend, you sir - are full of shit." It just so happens the lie in the case is something people are really, really sensitive to.

Quote:

I don't understand how a social agenda isn't an 'actual' political issue. But to address the other point here... no, I don't agree with "live by the sword, die by the sword" when it means that you're punishing politicians for not adhering to a bad consistency. The primary/relevant wrongdoing isn't in the masked private life, it's in the unhidden political life.
For social agendas vs. political agendas: what I mean is that I wish all the social planning shit would be left out of it, and just let people make up their own minds about things that are directly harmful to other citizens. I would have to agree that these social agendas are political issues...I wish they weren't, and I don't consider them to be the issues we should have to be concerned with.

So, in the end, that divergence in the "live by the sword, die by the sword" thing is going to be what separates you and I on this issue. The rest of it is just interesting for discussion.
Quote:

But in every relevant way, he does.
I'm going to have to go ahead, and sort of disagree with you right there. So, it's not relevant that he, um, actually doesn't? Me confused. Sounds like you're ok with politics being a dramatic play put on for the crowds, while the people behind the scenes make actual "decisions?"

Quote:

See, this is it right here: I don't see a point in pressuring them to adhere to a bad moral/law/code. I don't think that correcting hypocrisy is necessarily a good thing. It all depends on which way it's corrected.
No one is forcing anyone to adhere to a bad moral code, in my opinion you've got it backwards. Either espouse the moral code you actually live by, or don't run for office claiming you do. No is forcing this guy to be a politician. It seems to me that you're taking the stance that this is the only job this guy could have, and so he just has to further this agenda, and hell be damned if he lives a life diametrically opposed to it. I mean, as long as he says he doesn't, that's ok, right?

Quick question for an analogy: do you feel that a cheating spouse should be called out for cheating, even if he/she appears to love his/her wife/husband and acts accordingly? If functional fit is all that is important to you, is it only important to you in the case of politics, or do you live by functional fit across the board?

Quote:

But this schism doesn't actually make any visible difference in what you get.
I would think that it would, for the reasons I outline above. Frankly, that's not a chance I'm willing to take, nor do I think I should have to. I don't think there's a conclusive experiment that can be performed for this case. I don't want the people I vote into office lying to me about the issues they chose to run on, and that they enact legislation on, period. I don't personally give a rats ass if its about who they fuck, or what school they went to, what they intend to do while in office. I don't really see where this is that difficult.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
In the examples of Mehlman, and Dreier....what "evidence" are you looking for, pigglet?

As I said, I'd settle for journalistic approaches, with sources. Frankly, I don't really like the idea of these guys being put in front of a microphone and asked probative questions about their sex lives. I can think of several reasons someone wouldn't want to get into that in public. However, if Jeff Gannon shows up and testifies that he was in a Mehlman/Dreier sandwich last weekend, I think he has the right to make it public if he wants to, and I can understand how there could be some public interest in knowing that key anti-gay-legislation Republicans are in fact, gay. That's all I'm saying.

loquitur 11-20-2006 11:21 AM

I'm very troubled by the idea some people here seem to have, that they are the ones who get to decide what kinds of facts about other people get made public. Everyone has their own zone of privacy they want to maintain, and it can be about a number of subjects, sexual or otherwise. As I posted before, those sorts of decisions are very intimate, and very personal to each individual. For others to decide for reasons of their own to invade that is highly offensive to our common humanity.

The hypocrisy argument doesn't fly. If someone is running for office on some sort of platform that is less pro-gay than someone here would like, the question to ask is whether, if elected, s/he would promote the policies s/he advocates in the campaign. If s/he does, then s/he has been totally honest and has delivered precisely what s/he said s/he would - that's honesty. What's more, if that person secretly is engaged in some form of gay sex, then what that person is doing is advocating restrictions on him/herself - in other words, that person is arguably in the best position to make judgments on these things because any laws s/he may enact will affect him/her directly. If we want lawmakers to have a sense of responsibility about what they're doing, how can this possibly be bad?

In the final analysis, the outers have made a judgment that their own views of the world and of how things should be done are so important and so superior to everyone else's that they have the right to determine how other people present themselves to the world, and to interfere with other people's personal decisionmaking. To begin with, that is egotistical and arrogant in the extreme - no one appointed the outer to be anyone else's guardian. For another thing, by taking for yourself the license to do that, you have empowered those who disagree with YOU the right to do the same thing to you, and publish YOUR secrets and things you'd rather other people not know. (I know you think you're immune because you're not running for office - but you've opened your mouth and publicly fingered other people, right? so that makes you fair game - those who can't stand the heat should stay out of the kitchen). And finally, you simply don't know for certain how someone else lives or how certain aspects of their personality fit into their lives, or what decisions they may have made or when they made them. Deciding to "out" someone inherently assumes a whole lot about the person being outed that may or may not be true. And that's especially regrettable in those cases where the person being "outed" has a wife and kids, who are going to suffer from the outing - these are totally innocent people who are going to have some serious difficulties for no reason other than some person has a political agenda.

Sorry, I believe in respecting other people. I respect them if they're gay, I respect them if they're not, and I respect their choices about what to tell other people about their private lives. I'm not so arrogant as to think that my own views are automatically binding on other people.

host 11-20-2006 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur
I'm very troubled by the idea some people here seem to have, that they are the ones who get to decide what kinds of facts about other people get made public. Everyone has their own zone of privacy they want to maintain, and it can be about a number of subjects, sexual or otherwise. As I posted before, those sorts of decisions are very intimate, and very personal to each individual. For others to decide for reasons of their own to invade that is highly offensive to our common humanity......

I'm much more troubled by the ones who get to decide....for all of the rest of us....who keeps the right to marry or to form legal unions, the right to insurance benefits, to inheritance, to be hired or fired, based solely on sexual orientation;

....the ones who get to decide these things....to make them law....when their public ambition triumphs over who they are....and they vote as the person who they pretend to be. I want to know the people who legislate away my rights and the rights of my friends. I want to know who they are, and why they are doing that. I want to know if they are doing it for money, if they are of "sound mind" when they vote, if they are secure in who they are.

We live in a society that demands drug and alcohol testing of people trying to qualify for some of the lowest paid and least responsible employment "opportunities".....yet we witness a signifigant number of posted opinions from folks who defend the "right" of closeted gay elected officials to vote away the civil rights of all other gay residents of the U.S.


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 04:17 PM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360