Anti gay republicans caught being gay
Cynics, Hypocrites, and Nasty Boys: Senator Larry Craig and Gay Rights Caught in the Grotesque Frame
C. Wesley Buerkle, East Tennessee Declare University
Abstract
In 2007 US Senator Larry Craig plead remorseful to soliciting sex in an airport men’s room, a notable irony as he has a consistent record of voting against gay-rights. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart sought to punish Craig for homophobia by hoisting him with his own homophobic petard, using homosexuality as a punch line. Turning to Burke to untangle this rhetorical knot, we see The Daily Show providing a grotesque response to Craig’s troubles. As a transitional frame, the grotesque has received relatively little scholarly attention, due in part to the fact that this particular response to social and political strife does little to resolve the conflict at hand. As analysis shows, by punishing Craig as a grotesque figure while using a strategy of prejudice he, himself, would use (i.e., homophobia) the social and political struggle over gay-rights becomes mired in cynical mud rather than providing either defense for homosexual acceptance or potential for Craig’s personal redemption. By contrast, we
Bush campaign chief, former RNC chair: I'm gay
Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this final word about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private being, he wants to get an advocate for queer marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Identical Rights (AFER), the collective that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
"It's taken me 43 years to become comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the Recent York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and surpass person. It's something I wish I h
Secret gay life of married 'family values' lawmaker was not so secret
COLUMBUS, Ohio — As Wes Goodman built a political career around values including “committed natural marriage,” the 33-year-old Republican was secretly engaging in sexual encounters with men online, via cellphone and, on one significant occasion, in his declare office.
The office meeting was the closing straw that last week ended his political rise as a self-proclaimed Christian conservative, which had taken Goodman from congressional campaign worker to Capitol Hill aide to a seat in the Ohio House.
It also opened the floodgates on details of Goodman’s secret male lover life, which turned out not to have been a secret to several conservative groups, Residence Republicans or their campaign operation.
The nation’s leading anti-gay marriage organization, Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Ethics, was among the Christian conservative groups that knew of Goodman’s extramarital sexual contact with other men before his election last year, The Associated Compress has learned.
Board member Seth Morgan said the group discovered — after it had endorsed him in last year’s legislative primary — that Goodman had engaged
Robert Bauman
Episode Notes
In 1980, conservative congressman Robert Bauman was caught soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy. The scandal landed the married father of four on the front page of newspapers across the land. It spelled the cease of his political career—and the start of a years-long journey toward self-acceptance.
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Learn more about Robert Bauman in this brief congressional biography and this 2012 Washington Blade interview. Or have a watch at his autobiography, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Same-sex attracted Conservative, which was published in 1986; you can read a review here.
In the 1970s, Bauman was a rising star among conservative Republicans of the New Right. A 1976 New York Times article that Eric Marcus quotes from in the episode described Bauman as the “gadfly of the Dwelling, its most active nit-picker, its hairshirt, its foremost baiter of its most powerful members”; read the article in its entirety here. He was a founder of conservative groups i
Calls for Arrest of Openly-Gay GOP Convention Speaker Reveal Peril of Sodomy Laws Nationwide, ACLU Says
July 31, 2000 12:00 am
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, NY -- As one of the nation's largest conservative groups called for the arrest of an openly-gay Republican Congressman who is slated to speak tomorrow evening at the Republican national convention in Philadelphia, the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Queer Rights Project today said there can no longer be any doubt about the imminent peril posed by sodomy laws.
In recent days, the American Family Association began circulating an action watchful, titled "Arrest Mr. Kolbe." The watchful notes that Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) is scheduled to address the convention tomorrow night. It also notes that sodomy is illegal in Arizona.
"Time and time again when we file lawsuits challenging sodomy laws, conservative groups debate that these laws are not enforced and do not present any authentic danger -- but that they should remain on the books to dispatch a moral message," said Michael Adams, Associate Director of the ACLU Womxn loving womxn and Gay Rights Project.
"By issuing this callous alert, the right wing has demonstrated the very real dan