Blogactive.com

Most of you have heard of it: http://www.blogactive.com/, a site run by gay Democrat Michael Rogers, who is on a crusade to "out" gay Republicans, proving yet again that with gay liberals around, we have no need for homophobes.

There is a precedent. On September 22, 1975, a Viet Nam veteran named Oliver Sipple saved President Ford from an attempted assassination in San Francisco. Two days later, the newspapers "outed" him as a homosexual. Reporters harassed his mother until she feared to leave her home, and his relationship with his parents was permanently ruptured. Sipple sued the newspaper, but after a five-year court battle it was ruled that when Sipple saved the President's life, he became a "public figure" and thus forfeited his right to privacy. He died at the age of 48, a semi-employed 300-lb. alcoholic with a pacemaker, in a tiny apartment papered with clippings about his rescuing the President, with the letter of thanks from the White House framed and prominently displayed.

The above is to illustrate the kind of havoc that can be wreaked on innocent lives when the privacy of individuals is violated. In 1980, conservative Republican Congressman Bob Bauman, married with four children, was outed and forced to resign. His political career and his family were both destroyed. He wrote a biography shortly afterwards, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, in which he mentioned that when he went to gay bars before his "outing", he frequently saw other elected officials (of both parties) there. He could have ruined a lot of lives by naming names and no doubt taken many enemies down with him, but he didn't. That's what I call class.

Being gay is still difficult. People have a right to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to come out of the closet. Even in this corrupt age of tell-all biographies and exposés about things we never wanted to know about in the first place, when the expression "All the news that's fit to print" is obsolete, there is still such a thing as privacy. Andrew Sullivan had one of his moments of lucidity when criticizing Rogers's intimidation tactics; he said, "I mean, hypocrites have human rights, too."

The April 2005 issue of GQ carries an article about Michael Rogers and blogactive.com. (Female visitors to this site are advised that the photos of Jessica Alba are well worth the magazine's purchase price.) Apparently Rogers' outing crusade began when he heard a voice on a gay personal ad phoneline that sounded like that of Republican Congressman Ed Schrock. Rogers posted his suspicions on the Net, and less than two weeks later Schrock announced that he would not seek reelection. He has not commented either way about Rogers' allegations.

Ed Schrock supported the Federal Marriage Amendment and opposed Clinton's efforts to admit gays to the military, which Clinton, if you don't recall, failed to follow through on. So one could argue that in Schrock's case, having his apparent preferences exposed has an element of justice. But most of Rogers' victims are not elected officials and have not supported antigay measures. He's gone after the staffers of various Republican politicians, fund-raisers, and members of political action committees - people we normally would never hear of. Rogers isn't going after closeted gay Republican elected officials who support antigay legislation; he's going after closeted gay Republicans, period.

It doesn't seem to be working, though. The GQ article points out, "With the exception of Senator Inhofe parsing between his personal and committee staffs, no one has said anything to distance himself or herself from a gay staffer Rogers has targeted."

On the other hand, when he outed RNC national field director Dan Gurley, by his own account Gurley was given no trouble at the RNC, but his email box was flooded with vituperative hate mail from the left after Rogers posted his email address. Liberals never do miss a chance to show gay Republicans (or black Republicans, or Hispanic Republicans) just how tolerant and compassionate they are.

Rogers has attempted to out RNC chair candidate Ken Mehlman, who has steadfastly refused to answer any questions about his sexuality, though friends have said that he is heterosexual. His friend Steve Schmidt, Bush campaign official, says, "What Mike Rogers is doing to people is despicable. And Ken understands that his answering that question at the insistence of Mike Rogers legitimizes the question and compels every 22-year-old staff assistant on Capitol Hill to answer the question should Mike Rogers turn his sights on them." Good for you, Ken. Keep mum.

The gay conservative blogger GayPatriot posted a satirical protest about Rogers' activities. According to Christian Grantham's blog, Rogers actually called GayPatriot's employer and harassed him about the blog post. Not only is no gay Republican safe, apparently, also no one who works with or is in any way associated with a gay Republican safe. According to Grantham: "Rogers also said he asked GayPatriot to remove the post and replace it with a post about non-violence or he would launch a national boycott of GayPatriot's corporate employer and pursue any and all avenues necessary to protect himself." Here Rogers shows his true colors: he wants the power to dictate what others may say and what they must say on pain of loss of livelihood. Poor Rogers; I guess it's frustrating for him not to have a Soviet Union to defect to. Unfortunately, Rogers' intimidation tactics worked; GayPatriot has stopped blogging.

The Crusade to Out Gay Republicans Continues

THE OUTING by David Reinhard

The List is a roster of gay Republican congressional staffers that has circulated around Washington, D.C., since former Rep. Mark Foley's exit. It includes chiefs of staff, press secretaries and communications directors who work for GOP lawmakers such as Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum and Henry Hyde. List recipients include the social-conservative arm of the vast right-wing conspiracy: the Christian Coalition, the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family and so on.
But, lo, members of the religious right are not the ones outing gay GOP staffers or poking into the private lives of people working for Republicans. If they were, The List would be a major issue right now.
No, according to The Nation magazine's David Corn, "copies of The List . . . have been sent by gay politicos to a variety of social conservative groups." That's right, the gay politicos who are supposedly concerned about the privacy rights of gays, who are opposed to job discrimination, who are sensitive to the plight of gays and lesbians. These non-Republican gays are ready to heave their gay brothers and sisters, and their principles, under a bus for partisan advantage.

Well, I could've told you that.

The Coming Gay Republican Purge

Gay Republicans are love

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