March 08, 2008
John McCain's closet case
Posted by: Chris
I was hopeful in a syndicated column a couple of weeks ago that the replacement of George Bush and Karl Rove at the GOP helm by John McCain might result in a general election with fewer electoral scapegoats, with immigrants neutralized as an issue and gays less likely to be used as a wedge issue. I'm still cautiously optimistic, though McCain has been less than forceful in distancing himself from the outrageous rhetoric of some of his prominent supporters.
Some news today tempered my optimism even more. It appears that Rove and his longtime No. 2, Bush-Cheney '04 campaign manager Ken Mehlman, have now begun advising the McCain campaign in an unofficial capacity.
Mehlman, who has been coy to the point of refusing to respond to rumors that he is gay, was along with Rove the leading architects of the cynical wedge strategy that used state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage to bring social conservatives out to vote in November 2004.
Those of you who were regular readers of the Washington Blade when I was editor know that Ken and I were law school classmates (at the same time Obama himself was studying there), and Ken and I went on to co-found with a larger group an organization of young Republicans called Square One.
Despite a lot of unfounded speculation to the contrary, I have no direct knowledge about whether Ken is gay, and we lost touch years ago, around the same time I came out as a young lawyer working in a D.C. law firm. But I did watch with dismay the strategy employed by the Bush camp, apparently at Rove and Mehlman's direction, that played to bigotry and sacrificed the civil rights of gay Americans as a cheap ploy for votes in Ohio and a few other key electoral states.
I've seen no evidence that either Rove or Mehlman has undergone a Lee Atwater conversion or even mellowed out much. So seeing them with John McCain's ear does not bode well for the general election that awaits. Especially considering that McCain already has on board Bush's 04 media strategist Mark McKinnon, and Steve Schmidt, Bush's "attack dog" in that election.
February 24, 2008
A closeted veep for McCain?
Posted by: Chris
With John McCain pretty much wrapping up to GOP nomination, speculation moves to whom he might select as his running mate. This from yesterday's New York Times:
Quite a few of the names being bandied about are those of politicians in their 40s and 50s, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, 47; Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, 51, whose well-timed endorsement helped Mr. McCain win the crucial swing-state’s primary; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, 47; and Rob Portman, 52, a former Ohio congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Well you can strike one name off that list: Charlie Crist. The briefly-married, longtime bachelor governor of Florida has too many lingering questions about whether he's gay -- from a fellow politician's recollection of a personal admission from Crist years earlier, to (unproven) stories about a young male activist being seduced at a party.
Expect McCain to stay as far away as possible from that kind of sideshow.
January 22, 2008
Economic Panic: Good or Bad for Gays?
Posted by: Kevin
This morning, there is a palpable sense of panic across all the world's financial markets. It can't be ignored by anyone. Certainly, if you're an investor, a homeowner or you own a business, it's likely you're already hurting. But from a purely political sense, is the economic crisis good or bad for gay issues in this election season? Does it factor in at all?
Strangely enough, at first glance seems that economic downturns have been good for gays in recent election campaigns, while booming economic times have been largely bad.
It's conventional wisdom that when people are worried about their jobs or their pocketbooks, they don't really want to hear about homosexuals, abortions or the ACLU. Blaming gays or abortionists for the loss of one's job just doesn't wash, but someone who comes across as the one who cares the most about your job loss will get room to be nice to other people, even the gays. In boom times, when the average voter is content and fairly disinterested in voting, both sides tend to throw cultural bombs to turn out their bases in a zero-sum game. That's when the pitchforks tend to come out for us.
The 1992 presidential campaign was seminal for gay rights as a national campaign issue, at least where gays were at once condemned and courted. The U.S. economy was lurching into a recession as the primaries began that year, which launched the populist campaign of Pat Buchanan through his crushing defeat of incumbent President George H.W. Bush in New Hampshire. Polling showed that Buchanan's harsh, angry economic message pitched to those most harmed by the economic downturn helped fuel his victory there, and built a national sense of resentment against Bush. However, when that message expanded into lurid far right cultural attacks on gays, 'feminists', immigrants and pro-choice voters, it ran out of steam with the general public. The momentum of Buchanan's insurgency culminated at the horrendously anti-gay 1992 Republican National Convention, which the GOP never recovered from.
As the economy worsened, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot seized the middle ground and captured the public's concern with economic visions for change. Clinton ultimately connected with the middle on their economic fears ("it's the economy, stupid"), which gave him room to make an unprecedented play for gays, making a list of promises unheard of by a leading presidential candidate in history. By all accounts, Clinton won that election on the basis of earning the trust of a nation worried about its wallet. The gays, in political terms, won along with him.
From March 2000 to October 2002, the dot-com crash shook the world economy. It didn't have the same impact on average Americans the way the '92 recession did (or the current mortgage meltdown has), but it hit dynamic tech sectors very hard and raised fears about the long-term solvency of Social Security as the baby boom generation began to age. There was a budget surplus and plenty of room for the nation to maneuver. In the end, both sides were faced with making the argument as to who was better at making those maneuvers against the looming end to good economic times.
It boiled down to "who do you trust?" and "who is the better leader?", factors that see-sawed all year between the two. And it devolved into a war over the favor of independent voters. This meant both Al Gore and George W. Bush had to blur and bland-out anything that independents would view as "sharp edges."
Gore boldly chose conservative (then-) Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Bush, the "compassionate conservative", took hits nationally for going too far to the right in South Carolina in his struggle to eliminate insurgent Senator John McCain; weeks later, Bush met with gay Republicans and said he was "a better person" for it. Both parties had openly gay speakers at their conventions in prime time (Elizabeth Birch for the Democrats, Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) for the GOP). Meanwhile, an anti-gay third-party campaign by a diminished Pat Buchanan fell completely flat.
Critics will argue that neither the 1992 or 2000 elections resulted in a sea-change of positive federal legislation for gay Americans. In fact, the Clinton presidency brought openly gay appointments, the first White House gay liaison (who was straight), pride day proclamations and favorable speeches, but it also brought "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Bush's presidency brought the first (two) openly gay national AIDS directors at the White House, a historic global program to fight HIV/AIDS, the first federal anti-gay hate crimes prosecution case (which was later dropped for lack of evidence), as well as its own smaller list of gay appointees. But Bush's presidency also launched the Federal Marriage Amendment to the top of the agenda, creating a cataclysmic split with gay Republicans and setting off an ugly campaign of "outing" closeted gays that (so far has) ended the political careers of two Members of Congress and soon a U.S. Senator. Both presidents also lost majorities in Congress they enjoyed early in their terms.
So what might the current economic crisis do for gays? Follow the jump for more…
December 16, 2007
The outing double standard
Posted by: Chris
The news that Jodie Foster publicly thanked her "beautiful Cydney" at a Los Angeles women's banquet has apparently pushed the magic button that allows the mainstream media to finally acknowledge that the two-time Oscar winner is gay.
In a typical report, CNN's Kiki King discussed the development by saying, almost in passing, "of course she's been with Cydney Bernard for over 14 years now."
"Of course"? If Foster's long-term relationship was so obvious to the mainstream press, why did it take 14 years to report it, and only after Foster herself acknowledged it?
Here is the double standard on outing. When it comes to heterosexual celebrities, the entertainment media can't get enough, reporting every salacious detail they can get their hands on. And when closeted celebrities are caught in scandals, they'll jump in with gusto. But gay celebrities in happy, well-adjusted relationships -- whether Ellen or Rosie or Jodie (why are they all lesbians?) -- the public is told nothing about until the celebrity says OK. Even if the gay star shows up escorted in public by her partner at event after event.
The same type of double standard holds sway with closeted politicians as well, with those accused of shenanigans investigated without any regard to privacy. But it's hands off on those with long-term relationships until they come out. Mark Foley is an example of both standards.
The alternative I have advocated for years is "equality." Apply the same rules to gay and straight celebrities, and the same rules to gay and straight politicians. Ask about their personal lives, as they would otherwise, and report their answers, whether they lie, equivocate or refuse to answer. Then report the public facts that fit or contradict what they've said.
Digging deeper into their private lives is a judgment call, just as it is with straight politicians, that inevitably involves balancing the newsworthiness of the information versus how much personal privacy must be invaded to get it. It's unthinkable that a heterosexual Hollywood celebrity of Jodie Foster would have a 14-year-relationship that went completely unreported. It's way past time that it be unthinkable for gay celebrities, too.
December 07, 2007
Sex scandal from hypo to reality
Posted by: Chris
Well that didn't take long.
Coincidentally the very same week that an aide for a Democratic senator was busted for allegedly arranging a three-way with a 13-year-old male, a former aide to a Republican senator pleaded guilty to charges he met a 14-year-old on a gay hookup site and had sex with him, and on separate occasions a 12-year-old.
The liberal O.C. Weekly, which has doggedly reported Nielson's now longer alleged sexploits, has the details:
In open court, a somber Nielsen, who has extensive personal ties to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Orange County Republican Party boss Scott Baugh, gave Superior Court Judge David Thompson signed guilty pleas acknowledging two felonies: committing lewd acts on a 12-year-old Virginia boy and 14-year-old Orange County boy. In exchange, Nielsen, 37, received a three-year prison sentence.
Rohrabacher is a classic Orange County Republican, very conservative on social issues like Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is now serving time for bribery and about whom gay rumors have surfaced. Rohrabacher's gay rights record is atrocious, including two votes for a federal marriage amendment and consistent scores in the teens or 0 on Human Rights Campaign report cards.
But Nielsen's nefarious dealings with the two teens occured after his employment with Rohrabacher, who is not alleged to know anything at all about it when they worked together. He did write a law school recommendation for Nielsen, though that was also before the molestation charges were first filed.
There are all sorts of parallels here to the arrest this week on child exploitation charges of Mike McHaney, a scheduler for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and a former scheduler for Joe Solmonese at the Human Rights Campaign. I suggested that:
[Leftie] bloggers traffic in a double standard that says sexual misconduct is blogworthy only if it suggests hypocrisy; that is, only if it's committed by conservatives or those who work for them. Or, in the case of those bloggers who attempt to out conservatives and their staffers, no mis-conduct is required at all -- simply alleged gay sexual conduct, or even gay affiliation, such as showing up at gay parties or bars.
Of course I understand that hypocrisy is newsworthy and blogworthy, but if sexual misconduct says something about the credibility of conservatives, why doesn't it say anything about the credibility of liberals when it happens to one of their own? If McHaney worked for Trent Lott, for example, we'd be told that the scandal reflects on the legitimacy of Lott's position on gay rights and moral values.
So let's see how the leftie blogosphere has reacted to his story. For the most part, the gay blogs only started in on Nielsen after the plea agreement, but every indication that is only because the California case hadn't made it to their east coast radar. And with the obvious parallels to McHaney they could be expecgted to soft-pedal their glee over Nielsen. For example, Pam's House Blend reported on McHaney and Nielsen both this week, and thankfully resists the urge to visit the sexual sins of either staffer on his political boss.
But back in California…
The Liberal O.C. blog said this in November 2006, when Nielsen was on trial for the first time:
"Rohrabacher recommends a child molester": Nielsen worked for Rohrabacher, and met the first child (that we know of) that he raped while working in Rohrabacher’s D.C. office. That ties Rohrabacher to Nielsen. Rohrabacher also wrote a letter of recommendation in 1997 that helped Nielsen get into USC Law School. That also ties Rohrabacher to Nielsen. No matter how you cut it.
Similarly, the blog Republican of the Week chimed in just this week:
Republican activist and former aide to Orange County, Calif. congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, pleaded guilty to child molestation and in a plea deal will go to prison for three years. … Nielsen's defense included accusing "the liberal media" of being out to get him. When he was first arrested in 2003, he claimed he didn't know the boy was 14 years old. Rohrabacher claims he doesn't remember Nielsen but he wrote a recommendation for the child molester in his office to get into law school.
Raw Story, the liberal online newspaper with ties to gay outing activist-blogger Mike Rogers, also reported Nielsen's plea, and only in the last graph of the story informed its readers for the first time about Mike McHaney, the Maria Cantwell aide arrested last week. Rogers, who has outed low-level staffers on Capitol Hill and in the White House for being gay, despite a complete absence of sexual misconduct, has said nothing about McHaney on his blog.
And the aforementioned O.C. Weekly reported on the Nielsen story no fewer than eight times, even bringing to light the Virginia teen whose account eventually forced Nielsen to cop a plea. Kudos for that, although my point here is that there's no question in my mind that those sort of resources would never have been thrown after Nielsen if his ties were to liberal Democrats.
Of course the conduct here -- alleged as to McHaney and admitted to by Nielsen -- is perverted, immoral, exploitative and criminal. The evidence does not suggest either is strictly a pedophile, but instead it appears they are both gay men who betrayed the trust of teenagers in ways that are unconscionable to the vast majority of us.
Their political connections, liberal and conservative, aren't particularly relevant to their sexual misconduct. But the point is that's true for both of them, even though McHaney's boss has a good gay rights record and Nielsen's ex-boss has an atrocious gay rights record. The big "H" of hypocrisy does not trump all.
December 05, 2007
Blogging H-free sex scandals
Posted by: Chris
An interesting debate is shaping up over how or whether gay media and bloggers will cover the arrest of gay Senate aide Mike McHaney (pictured here from his Friendster profile) for allegedly showing up for a three-way involving a 13-year-old male. I have argued that sex scandals like McHaney's illustrate the illogic and, at least, the over-emphasis on "hypocrisy" as the only factor in whether a sex scandal is newsworthy or blogworthy.
I wrote:
There can be little doubt that if McHaney were an aide to, say, Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott or some other anti-gay Republican, the blogosphere would be having a field day with the arrest. But as it turns out, McHaney works for gay-friendly Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat.
The logic here is what fascinates me. It would be hypocritical for the aide to an anti-gay Republican to be busted as a sexual predator, but it's not hypocritical for the aide of a pro-gay Democrat. What does that say about pro-gay Democrats exactly? That we expect this sort of behavior from them and their staff? Or is that so long as you don't legislate morality, your own immorality and that of your staff doesn't "stick" on you?
Matt over at The Malcontent points out the one-sidedness:
Say what you want about Larry Craig, but no one is calling him a pederast.
And herein lies one of the chief problems with the leftists who decide whom they choose to out based on their political party: While they busy themselves with Republican closet cases and politicians who aren’t in favor with HRC, they tend to lose sight of equally bad or worse behavior in their own midst.
Now comes a response from Joe.My.God, who has been among the first and most extensive with coverage of gay sex scandals involving anyone right of center politically. Joe passed on the McHaney scandal entirely at first, then posted about it in response to my report that McHaney previously worked as Joe Solmonese's scheduler at HRC. Even still, Joe posted mainly to explain why he thinks the scandal still isn't blogworthy:
Sex crimes, gay and straight, occur every day. Does the gay blogosphere have a moral imperative to cover the crimes of relative nobodies, just because they work for politicians, especially when the perpetrators have no known anti-gay track record? I don't think so.
I've exhaustively covered the stories of major hypocrites like Ted Haggard and Larry Craig, and dangled unproven theories such as the recent Trent Lott hooker nonsense. But I've also left other unpleasant stories about Democrats and Republicans alone, for the reasons mentioned above.
By Malcontent's standards (and probably Chris Crain's), my hands are not clean. There may indeed be some "meat" to the McHaney story, that remains to be seen, and Crain is absolutely correct that we need to call out our own, even if it damages the movement. I just don't agree that we've been doing that bad of a job.
Joe's thoughtful post touches on the two central problems I have with how left-leaning gay bloggers handle the sex lives of those involved in politics (or, in Haggard's case, religion).
First, this exaggerated focus on the importance of hypocrisy as the only newsworthy or blogworthy angle to the sexual conduct of those in politics leads to all sorts of horrible intrusions into personal privacy. Gay bloggers on the left routinely traffic in rumor and unconfirmed innuendo involving the alleged intimate details of the sex lives of those they "report" on, whether or not misconduct or a crime is involved.
Second, these bloggers traffic in a double standard that says sexual misconduct is blogworthy only if it suggests hypocrisy; that is, only if it's committed by conservatives or those who work for them. Or, in the case of those bloggers who attempt to out conservatives and their staffers, no mis-conduct is required at all -- simply alleged gay sexual conduct, or even gay affiliation, such as showing up at gay parties or bars.
Of course I understand that hypocrisy is newsworthy and blogworthy, but if sexual misconduct says something about the credibility of conservatives, why doesn't it say anything about the credibility of liberals when it happens to one of their own?
If McHaney worked for Trent Lott, for example, we'd be told that the scandal reflects on the legitimacy of Lott's position on gay rights and moral values. Why doesn't the same hold true for McHaney's boss, gay-friendly Democrat Maria Cantwell? Is liberalism associated with a culture of permissiveness in which a Senate staffer could spend work time setting up a three-way with a 13-year-old? Or in which someone with a history of sexual impropriety could be shipped around among a top gay rights group, two Democratic presidential campaigns and a U.S. senator without anyone raising a red flag?
I don't necessarily think so, certainly about the permissiveness theory, but my point is it's one-sided and unbalanced -- and dare I say it? hypocritical -- to only make political judgments about the sex scandals of those you disagree with.
August 31, 2007
Make the punishment fit the scandal
Posted by: Chris
As news broke today that Larry Craig is expected to resign tomorrow, I've thought better of my post a couple of days ago when I said in passing that I agreed with the calls for him to leave the Senate.
The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has been among those to remind us that GOP calls for Craig to resign are in sharp contrast to the standing ovation received by Louisiana Sen. David Vitter after it emerged that his phone number was in the records of the so-called "D.C. Madam." Matt Foreman, the head of the Task Force highlighted the disparate treatment of the two senators this way:
Let’s see — one Republican senator is involved in soliciting sex from a man and the Republican leadership calls for a Senate investigation and yanks the rug from underneath him. Another Republican senator admits to soliciting the services of a female prostitute and there’s not only no investigation but the senator is greeted with a standing ovation by his Republican peers. What explains the starkly different responses? I’d say rank and homophobic hypocrisy.
It's a fair point and it's also noteworthy that Foreman does not call on either Vitter or Craig to resign. He's pointing out that the Republicans treated Craig's admission of guilt very differently than Vitters, based on homophobia, hypocrisy and, I would add, empathy. Member of the Republican congressional caucus, who allegedly delivered that standing ovation in response to an emotional apology by Vitter, can imagine themselves in his position much more easily than Craig's.
But those who would like to see both Craig and Vitter gone should remember the scandal that enveloped Barney Frank, the prominent Massachusetts Democrat, who was caught up in his own scandal involving a (male) prostitute back in 1990, just a few years after he publicly acknowledged for the first time that he is gay.
Like Vitter, Frank admitted hiring a prostitute, in his case Stephen Gobie, whom the congressman then befriended and allowed to share his Washington, D.C., townhouse. Even more damaging, however, were the House Ethics Committee findings that Barney used his office to influence the dismissal of 33 D.C. parking tickets and inappropriately encouraged Virginia officials to act favorably in Gobie's probation on a felony charge.
The committee decision, adopted by the House, was to reprimand Barney, who resisted calls including from the editorial page of the Boston Globe, to resign. He has gone on to serve with distinction, becoming an important and influential on a range of issues, including Bill Clinton's impeachment, gay rights and banking regulation.
In an interesting historical footnote, Larry Craig was an Idaho congressman and member of the House Ethics Committee member at the time of the Frank/Gobie scandal, and voted for the more serious punishment of censure. Apparently he believed about Barney, as he would later say famously about Clinton, that "he's a nasty, naughty, bad boy."
There are a few differences, of course, among these scandals. Craig was the only one to plead guilty to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor, and he's the only one not to admit the accusations, thus showing a lack of remorse. I'm not sure either of those difference rise to the level of requiring his resignation, and certainly Barney's use of his office is not unlike Craig's attempt to intimidate his arresting officers by flashing his Senate business card and saying, "What do you think of that?"
Of course the scandals involving Vitter and Craig highlight a hypocrisy with their "family values" posturing and opposition to equality for lesbian and gay Americans. But if hypocrisy were grounds for resignation, we'd need a lot more resignations and on both sides of the aisle. I would much rather have Vitter and Craig serve out their terms, as reminders of GOP hypocrisy, both now and next year, when both are up for re-election.
August 30, 2007
Newsweek debate with Mike Signorile
Posted by: Chris
As promised, Newsweek has posted my debate with Michelangelo Signorile about the ethics and effectiveness of outing, in the light of the Larry Craig scandal. They headlined it "Legitimate Journalism or Witch Hunt?" I'll let you guess who took what side…
Take a look and let me know what you think…
More from mudville
Posted by: Chris
Sorry to have been out of pocket, gang, but I've been participating in an email debate with Mike Signorile about whether the Larry Craig scandal is proof it's OK for the media to join in the effort to "out" anti-gay politicians. The debate is for Newsweek.com and should be posted soon; I'll be sure to offer a link.
Thanks to all for the great comments to my original post on Larry Craig, made in the wee hours after I learned of the story. A few clarifications so we can further focus the discussion:
By challenging the legal sufficiency of the case against Craig I wasn't suggesting that I buy his unintentionally hilarious explanation about having "a wide stance" on the toilet and searching on the floor for fluttering toilet paper. Of course I believe he was there to cruise for sex, either to take place there or somewhere else. I've since been educated by a friend and by this post by Rex Wockner about how two men can have sex underneath the divider of a public toilet stall. (I had assumed the two men would at least have to join each other in a stall or use a "gloryhole." It all sounds like an awful lot of work to me. Haven't these folks heard of the Internet?)
My point was that Craig's arrest isn't exactly something worth celebrating, even if you still find it novel and gratifying that some anti-gay politicians are self-loathing closet cases.
Also, my criticism of the media wasn't about coverage of his arrest — that's clearly news, especially since he pleaded guilty. My concern is that since Craig had previously been a target of Mike Rogers' outing efforts, that the outing activists will play "I told you so" to justify their tactics.
It comes down to this: It's disturbing enough that the police would arrest someone (famous and anti-gay or not) after stalking out a public toilet and reading sinister intent into toe-tapping and hand-waving. But it's really cause for concern if a few blogger-activists can seduce real journalists into trying to beat the real police to the punch, to the point of passing photos around public toilets (as the Idaho Statesman did) hoping to corroborate years-old accusations. We have quite enough sex police out there, thank you very much. We don't need a bunch of reporters and bloggers acting like keystone sex cops as well.
When Dan Popkey of the Statesman interviewed me months ago in his Larry Craig investigation, he came across as a smart and thoughtful journalist on a very unpleasant assignment. And kudos to him and his editors that they didn't publish a story about their investigation until after news of Craig's airport arrest and guilty plea surfaced.
But I told Popkey then and I believe even more strongly now, that the investigation itself set an incredibly dangerous precedent, that public figures have no expectation of privacy concerning their sex lives. It's noteworthy that when the Statesman finally published the results of Popkey's investigation, they didn't even confine themselves to confirming accusations of toilet cruising.
When only one such accusation panned out at least enough to be included, Popkey dug further and unearthed a 13-year old claim that Craig "made eyes" at someone in a sporting goods store (seriously!), and an ancient accusation that he made a pass at someone in 1967 during college. It just goes to show that witch hunts — and that's what this was — almost inevitably take on a life of their own. (Just ask Bill Clinton and Ken Starr.)
None of this is intended to defend Craig from accusations of hypocrisy or quiet calls for his resignation. He's clearly guilty of the former and ought to do the latter. But the downside of this story is much worse than its upside — in its coarsening of the culture, its effect on media coverage, in discouraging good people from entering politics, and on the image of gay men and the gay rights movement generally. That's what I'm hoping we'll see.
For a complete news summary about the Larry Craig scandal, go to gaynewswatch.com/larrycraig
August 28, 2007
No joy in mudville
Posted by: Chris
And another one bites the dust. Another Republican, this one with a zero voting record on gay rights and HIV/AIDS, is caught up in a seedy gay sex scandal.
This time around it was years in coming. As you no doubt heard yesterday after Roll Coll broke the story, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig pled guilty to lewd conduct a month ago after he was arrested by an undercover officer in June in a public restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.
The gay and leftie blogosphere is, of course, gleeful, as is practically every gay person I've talked to in the early hours after the scandal broke. I understand the indignation that rises up each time we see one of these "family values" types go down in flames. I just don't understand why we don't see the contradictions in how we cheer on the politics of personal destruction, however self-inflicted.
Even in the early hours of the Larry Craig scandal, a few angles to this story give me pause. First and foremost, was Senator Craig really guilty of lewd conduct? I'm no defender of public sex or public lewdness, but so far as I can see he engaged in neither. According to the arrest report, an undercover police officer whose unhappy task it was to sit for long periods in an airport toilet stall noticed that a man later identified as Craig was peeking through the crack over a period of two minutes while "fidgeting" his hands. (Craig said later he was waiting for an empty stall; one of many points the officer disputes.)
Once Craig was seated in the stall next to the officer, the senator put his roller bag against the front door of the stall. "My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall," Sgt. Karsnia of the airport police wrote in his arrest report. I guess those who use the bathroom "for its intended use," as Karsnia puts it in the report, choose to store their luggage in some more convenient location within the stall…?
Craig then "tapped his foot," reported Karsnia, who "recognized this as a signal by those who wish to engage in lewd conduct." I'll leave it to you whether there might be one or two or 13 more innocent explanations for such behavior.
Finally, Craig's foot tapping crept over into Karsnia's stall and even made contact with Karsnia's foot. Craig then swiped his hand a few times under the stall divider, enough that Karsnia could see his fingers and even his gold wedding ring — a point Karsnia made sure to include in his report.
Based on this and this alone, Craig was arrested for lewd conduct. Now I'll admit to being much more naive than Sgt. Karsnia about the etiquette of toilet sex, but exactly how was this lewd? Strange? Yes. Annoying? Absolutely. Lewd? Explain that to me again.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Craig was somehow crudely indicating his sexual interest in Karsnia. The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Lawrence vs. Texas decision that sex between consenting adults is constitutionally protected. Many states have correctly concluded that, as a result, solicitation of sodomy or other forms of sex, even when the conversation takes place in public, is also constitutionally protected. If conduct is constitutionally protected, then we have a First Amendment right to discuss it.
That protection falls by the wayside, as well it should, if Craig was not just soliciting a private sex act in a public place but actually intended for the sex itself to take place in public. Nowhere does the arrest report explain to us how Sgt. Krasnia made that leap of logic based on Craig's foot-tapping and hand-swiping.
The arrest report does indicate that Craig was late for a flight, so it may well have been some odd form of quickie was what was on his mind. But it also reported that Craig identified himself as a regular commuter through the airport, so another explanation might be that he wanted to set up some later rendezvous.
Yes, I know that Craig pled guilty to the charge, and it's on that point where he most clearly hoisted himself on his own petard. He was so afraid of how things would look that he lacked the nerve to defend himself and his rights — just as over the course of his life he lacked the nerve to accept his sexual orientation (whether bisexual or homosexual) and defend the rights of those who share those orientations.
The saddest part of the Larry Craig scandal to me is that it will only encourage and energize those who troll the sex lives of politicians in search of juicy slime to spread — as if that somehow makes the case for our equality. As for me, I don't favor arguing I have a right to privacy in my choice of sexual partners by invading that right in others, even if they are our opponents, and even if they are hypocrites.
We should take no joy in the ruin of Larry Craig's marriage and reputation — even if it is well deserved and a long time in coming. The man has known for two years now he was under intense scrutiny for rumors that he's gay and has sex in public toilets. Not since Bill Clinton have we been treated to a public figure so compulsively unable to control the little head with the big one.
But you won't find me arguing that somehow Larry Craig's self-destruction is an argument for my own equality. I can think of about 533 more effective arguments we could make that don't require someone else's ruin or suggest we all share some general (im)moral equivalence. Gay Americans are entitled to equal treatment and protection against discrimination whether or not every member of Congress who voted against gay rights has an utterly umblemished sexual history.
If Larry Craig really does troll public toilets for sex, it doesn't prove his "family values" rhetoric is claptrap anymore than Bill Clinton's infidelity proved his support for gay rights was the product of his promiscuity. The case for gay rights is compelling enough on its own merits. Let's not jump in the mud and join in the muckraking.
August 20, 2007
Counting progress in celebrity funerals
Posted by: Chris
When Merv Griffin died this month, many mainstream media obituaries dared to report what largely went unsaid throughout his long career: the legendary entertainer and entrepreneur was a closeted homosexual.
That news probably came as a something of a shock to most Americans old enough to remember Griffin’s incarnations as a big band singer, or high-brow talk show host, or creator of “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune.” That’s because over the years, especially during the peak of his celebrity, media mention of Griffin’s personal life was limited to photos of him with gal pal Eva Gabor of “Green Acres” fame, with no hint she was really his “beard.”
The willingness of some media outlets to pry open Merv’s closet door, at least after his death, would seem to represent a new maturity in how our society deals with homosexuality as a natural fact of life, rather than the secret shame it was for so many in Griffin’s generation.
Until now, the mainstream media could be counted on to “straight-wash” the lives of gay public figures, whether they were fully closeted in life or not. When R&B crooner Luther Vandross died two summers ago, the public mourned a “lifelong bachelor,” and the media missed the chance to report the irony that a man who built his legend singing about love and lust dared not speak, or sing, about his own.
Ditto when feminist and intellectual Susan Sontag died from cancer in December 2004. Even though a proper search would have turned up some discussion by Sontag about her longtime relationship with photographer Annie Leibowitz, the media deferred to dig.
Filmmaker Ismail Merchant was partnered personally and professionally with James Ivory for more than four decades, and that unique collaboration would have been the central storyline of retrospectives on Merchant’s life if Ivory had been female. But mainstream press accounts of Merchant’s death two years ago stuck to the work relationship.
Unfortunately, the news about Griffin being gay wasn’t in the context of a loving, longtime partner now left behind, or even happiness in coming to terms with his sexual orientation, however late in life. Instead, the obituaries rehashed two tawdry lawsuits from 1991.
One was a multi-million dollar palimony claim brought by Brent Plott, a former secretary-driver-bodyguard-horse trainer who claimed Griffin dumped him after a long live-in relationship. The second was filed by “Dance Fever” host Denny Terrio, alleging sexual harassment by Griffin, who created the show.
Both lawsuits were dismissed, although why isn’t exactly clear. Since gay couples are rarely recognized legally, gay palimony suits rarely succeed, and the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t authorize same-sex sexual harassment suits of the type brought by Terrio until 1998, so it’s simplistic to interpret Griffin’s court wins as a complete vindication.
Whether or not the suits had merit, they did give the media a convenient way to raise rumors about Griffin’s homosexuality in retrospectives about his life. That’s playing fair, if not nice, since a hetero palimony or sexual harassment suit would no doubt receive attention in an obituary about a straight celebrity, too.
But in a larger sense, the coverage of Griffin’s life after his death represents a lingering double standard that plagues reports about gay public figures. No doubt out of sympathy, the mainstream press usually defers to celebrities and other public figures when it comes to reports about a closeted same-sex relationship.
So all too often, the public only learns about a public figure being gay when they’re caught up in scandal. Reports on Merchant and Sontag ignored their long-time lovers, but slap Merv Griffin with a palimony suit from his horse trainer and the press pack is finally ready to ask “the question.”
This double standard doesn’t just come to life in a public figure’s death, either. The media turned a blind eye for years to Mark Foley’s long-term relationship with a Florida physician, so the public learned the Florida congressman was gay from graphic IM chats he had with pages. Former Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe skated by the same way, until allegations from pages surfaced against him, too.
Singer George Michael lost a longtime lover to AIDS and even dedicated a CD to him, but the media left the subject of his homosexuality alone until he was arrested for offering sex to an undercover cop in a public toilet.
You get the picture.
Of course the other willing participants in the cover-up are the closeted celebrities themselves. Griffin was demonized by activists like Michelangelo Signorile for not coming out earlier. Ever the morally outraged gossip columnist, Signorile blasted Griffin for not clueing in his pals Ron and Nancy Reagan about AIDS, even though Signorile has no evidence he didn’t. For that sin, Griffin is apparently culpable for the horrific deaths of thousands.
Washington Post TV columnist Tom Shales rallied to Griffin’s defense, explaining away his closet saying the truth would have destroyed his career. That excuse might have worked in the ‘70s and maybe even the ‘80s, but Griffin and the world changed too much in the last 20 years for that dog to hunt. Just look at Lily Tomlin, for example. And shame on Shales for not fessing up to how questions of homosexuality and the closet are personal ones for him, too.
It takes two to tango, or in this case, perpetuate the double standard. Until the press is prepared to ask questions about happy romantic lives, it’s singularly unfair how they pounce on the scandals. And it’s even more revolting how leeches like Mark Foley or former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey wait until they’re wallowing in scandal to milk coming out for public sympathy.
Are you listening, Anderson Cooper? Jodie Foster? Ricky Martin? How many more celebrity scandals — or funerals — do we need to get this right?
April 05, 2007
'Wait for the celebrity' game
Posted by: Chris
To the "glass closet" examples of Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster, Rex Wockner adds the example of Lily Tomlin, who (finally) acknowledged she was gay in a late 2000 interview on cable access TV (of all places) and even then did so almost in passing. From an article Wockner wrote at the time about the interview:
Speaking to journalist Ann Northrop in late November, Tomlin said: "I'm not going to make a big national case of it which is what, really, everybody would like to do, or some people. But in most articles, most people refer to Jane [Wagner] as my partner or my life-partner or whatever. ... We've been around so long and been through so much and I always kind of took a lot of stuff for granted and I just never -- I also never wanted to be anybody's spokesperson or poster person. You know, I see what happens to too many people."
Tomlin has subsequently talked about being gay in a number of interviews, almost all in the gay press. For whatever reason, the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored the story — perhaps because Tomlin has been mostly out of the spotlight for a number of years now, save a few movie roles here and there.
But I do have to roll my eyes a bit when Tomlin, like Rosie O'Donnell would later, claims never to have been "in" the closet, asking rhetorically how she could then come out. O'Donnell even had the nerve to act surprised at all the fuss (most of which she had scripted), pointing out that she had been accompanied by her girlfriend to many public events.
Yes, but the media was playing the tacit game of "wait for the celebrity" to open the closet door before including their partner in coverage. I remember one particularly notorious gossip item in a New York tabloid that mentioned Rosie had been accompanied by "an attractive blonde" to a Knicks game. Only a few nerds out there realize that "blonde" with an "e" refers to women, while "blond" with no "e" refers to a man. Talk about subtlety!
Mostly, Tomlin and O'Donnell's own history belies their claim to have never been "in" the closet. No celebrity who so studiously avoids talking about being gay or having a same-sex partner for that many years, knowing the rules of the "wait for the celebrity" game, can then with a straight face claim to always have been "open."
It's not as if Tomlin has any difficulty expressing herself...
April 04, 2007
Out cracks the 'glass closet'
Posted by: Chris
Gay gossip maven Michael Musto penned the current cover story of Out magazine, on how celebrities like Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper have figured out a way to live gay lives fairly openly without the general public ever being the wiser.
The story is more interesting because of Out's ballsy cover illustration than in anything Musto wrote. After all the gay press, especially my alma mater the Washington Blade, has been writing about both Foster and Cooper, and their glass closets, for years.
But it's a bit of a hoot knowing that in bookstores across the U.S. and internationally, the magazine peering public will see too individuals holding masks of Foster and Cooper, over the headline "The Glass Closet."
I've stated and restated my view on "outing" for years: it's always fair for the media to ask "the question" of public figures and then let the person have their say. If they choose a non-answer, as Foster, Cooper, Clay Aiken, Ricky Martin, Sean Hayes and umpteen others have of late, then so be it. We all know that no bona fide heterosexual has ever refused to answer a question about their sexual orientation, so the non-answer is really an answer, after all.
There's almost never a justification for "going behind" the non-answer — or a claim of heterosexuality — in the case of entertainment celebrities. Only when public figures have actively worked against gay right does their sexual orientation become so newsworthy that it's worth delving some into their private lives. And even then, good editors are always balancing the newsworthiness on the one hand, and the degree of invasion into their personal life, on the other.
Musto does a good job of explaining how the "glass closet" phenomenon works, from the celebrity's rationale (some would say, rationalization) to the media's complicity. It's the latter that gets my goat far more than the former. The publishers of Out magazine — now Planet Out — certainly understand that rationalization, since the publication with the screaming-faggot name is delivered in a plain brown envelope that doesn't identify its contents.
I also like that Musto isn't afraid to point out the inevitable goofs when a glass-closeted celeb accidentally lets their little light shine from behind the bushel:
Keeping the glass up is a high-maintenance job, especially since many celebs are left to do it—or, more often, screw it up—alone. … That would explain the various slipups that happen when the luminaries take their own images by the balls. I was wildly amused some years ago when the terminally noncommittal Sean Hayes was asked by a newspaper interviewer what he likes in a partner and he blurted out that he’s “not into that gay ideal of musclemen.” This from the guy who refuses to label his sexuality. Whoopsy!
I have a similar story about Cooper, who angrily e-mailed me after the Blade reported, in matter of fact fashion, that Cooper had shown up for the GLAAD Media Awards in New York a few years back — before he was on CNN — and quipped from the stage that he hoped to find a boyfriend from the night's festivities. He can claim he's not out, but he said what he said and he didn't challenge the article's accuracy.
Clearly the celebrity treatment of homosexuality has trended along with society's acceptance of gay people. The days of Ellen (and even Rosie's) big coming out party already seem dated. The ho-hum reaction to T.R. Knight ("Grey's Anatomy"), Lance Bass (N Sync) and Neil Patrick Harris ("Doogie Howser, M.D.") isn't just due to their B-list status. As America cares less, so will celebrities.
And someday, both Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper will ride that wave, and no doubt receive courage awards from gay rights groups when they finally do so.
March 06, 2007
Gay escorts say the darn'dest things
Posted by: Chris
The blogosphere is all a-twitter with news that the handsome Latino Marine on all the news programs this week once worked in gay porn and advertised his services as an escort.
No, not that handsome Latino Marine, Edward Alva, who appeared at a press conference with Democratic Rep. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts calling for repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
I'm talking about that handsome Latino Marine, Matt Sanchez who did the "O'Reilly" "Hannity" rounds to complain about how some socialist students at Columbia University were mean to him for being a minority in the military.
Blogger Joe.My.God gives the blow by blow:
If you are familiar with Cpl. Matt Sanchez, you probably know him as the handsome 36-year old Columbia University junior and USMC reservist who recently made the rounds of right-wing talk shows like "O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity & Colmes," where he received praise for coming forward and complaining about his treatment at the hands of Columbia's "radical anti-military students" who called him names and mocked his military service. Sanchez was then feted at the CPAC conference where Ann Coulter made her "faggot" remark. Sanchez wrote an op-ed piece on the Columbia experience for the NY Post and began a blog and MySpace page chronicling his media exposure. …
Sanchez' face tinkled a few gay bells out there in fairyland, and [it turns out] Sanchez has had a lengthy career in gay porn, working under the names Rod Majors (NSFW) and Pierre LaBranche.
Sanchez hasn't denied anything, and since early posts by Joe and Tom Bacchus, blogger extraordinaire Andy Towle revealed that he actually went out on a few dates with Sanchez back in the late '80s. Since then, Sanchez has apparently given Joe a half-hour interview that left the liberal blogger impressed that the Columbia conservative is no "dumb bunny."
It will be interesting to see how the Sanchez story breaks. Liberals will scream "hypocrite!" which is their absolute favorite catch-all criticism. As applied to Sanchez, the charge seems particularly unfair. I'm not particularly sympathetic to his argument that Columbia should discipline his tormenters — if anything, there's your hypocrisy, since conservatives are supposed to be against campus speech regulations. But if you believe that gays should be able to serve in the military, and
that there's nothing wrong with adult entertainment, then it's Sanchez service in uniform, not his servicing out of uniform, that should matter.
Or maybe some liberals will argue, as they did with Jeff Gannon before, that somehow it's hypocritical to be gay, conservative and have a sex life. I'm not sure they realize what they're really arguing: that something about selling sex for money (whether on film or in person) should make you a leftie.
The real travesty here is that coverage of Sanchez will dwarf coverage of Alva, who was the first U.S. service member injured in Iraq — he lost part of his leg — and his story of service with fear that he would be outed and discharged.
For video of Sanchez (on "O'Reilly," alas, not from his early work), follow the jump:
November 27, 2006
Hi, I'm Anderson
Posted by: Chris
Even thousands of miles from the U.S., standing in an airport in Salvador, Brazil, poor Anderson Cooper can't cruise guys in private. From today's Page Six gossip report in the New York Post:
Anderson Cooper was friendly at a Brazilian airport on Friday. "Hi, I'm Anderson," he said to the "attractive" man standing next to him at the flight connection monitors in the Salvador terminal, a spy told the Post's Braden Keil. The 25ish fellow was wearing a tight T-shirt, cut-off shorts and an earring. According to our witness, the unshaven, solo-traveling CNN star chatted for 20 minutes with the stranger before the fellow had to say goodbye and board his flight to Rio.
Anderson Cooper is among the highest profile openly closeted celebrities — by that I mean, he is unwilling to identify his sexual orientation. (Something, by the way, no straight man in history has been unwilling to do.) He is joined in those illustrious ranks by Sean Hayes (queeny "Jack" from "Will & Grace"), Ricky Martin, Clay Aiken and former New York Mayor Ed Koch. Talk about strange bedfellows.
But unlike those others, Anderson has at least strongly hinted that he's gay, albeit long before he was lead anchor at CNN. Back in the late '90s, Anderson showed up at a black-tie dinner for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in New York. Before making a presentation, he joked with the audience that he was at the event "hoping to find a date."
Looks like all these years later, despite rumors of another Latino boyfriend, he's still doing the same.