There are some of us who have now given up on joining political parties. We have to choose during an election which one is the most hypocritrical — the one whose members are so shamefully pandering to the worst instincts in their party’s base – and then (out of fear because they’re more extreme than the other) vote against it. The initial batch of Republican leaders who were so seemingly passionately clamoring for Bill Clinton’s impeachment over Monica Lewinsky turned contain several members of a Hypocrisy Choir. And now we have discovered the lead singer: Dennis Haster. A hypocrite in more ways than one. The Huffington Post:

During the 2004 elections, George W. Bush’s campaign, managed by a closeted gay man, pushed a series of anti-gay ballot initiatives across the country. The House of Representatives, led by a male speaker who allegedly sexually assaulted a male minor, moved a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage after beating back attempts to strengthen hate crimes legislation. And the White House, led in part by a vice president with a lesbian daughter, eagerly encouraged a conservative evangelical base hostile to gay rights.

Though only slightly over a decade ago, that election seems increasingly like the relic of a far-off era as the country moves closer toward acceptance of legalizing marriage equality nationwide. But it’s being revisited in light of recent revelations that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) may have sexually abused at least two male students during his time as a high school teacher and wrestling coach, and later lied to the FBI about the hush money he was paying one of them.

Hastert wasn’t a strident culture warrior during his time in Congress. But he was a vital cog in the anti-gay political machinery that the GOP deployed for political benefit. And now it appears his involvement carried the same elements of duplicity and deceit as that of other Republican operatives of that era.

“The hypocrisy is breathtaking in its depth,” said Elizabeth Birch, former president of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

And no one can claim that Hastert at Congress when some of these issues came forward.

As speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007, Hastert didn’t just go along and vote the party line on various bills; he decided which pieces of legislation made it to the floor for a vote. During his tenure, he was a clear foe of the LGBT community.

Toward the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton was trying to broaden the federal hate crimes statute to cover acts of violence motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity. Calls for such legislation had picked up steam after the horrific assault and killing of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man, in 1998. But Republicans, led by Hastert and other GOP leaders, repeatedly barred any such measure from passage.

“We’d like to see the Clinton-Gore administration focus more on the enforcement of the current laws we have, rather than try to create a partisan political bill that has little effect in the real world,” said Hastert spokesman Pete Jeffries in an April 26, 2000, article in The Washington Post.

That Hastert was allegedly hiding a sordid past wasn’t known at the time, though rumors were beginning to spread. Still, those who lobbied on the bill picked up odd clues that hold more meaning now.

There’s a LOT more in the Huffington Post report so go to the original link.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports, that some a curious thing about Hastert in office now makes sense:

After a relatively slow start to his career as a consultant and lobbyist, J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, became very busy in 2010. He was traveling to spots including Singapore and Montreal, meeting with clients about ventures as varied as futures trading and Formula One racing.

He also made an unusual request to one of his business associates: to find a financial adviser who could come up with a plan for an annuity that would generate a substantial cash payout each year. According to the associate, J. David John, the former speaker also asked that the adviser not be told of Mr. Hastert’s involvement.

The request came just a few weeks before Mr. Hastert, according to charges in a federal indictment, made his first payment to a man known as “Individual A” in what was to be a total of $3.5 million. The money, two people briefed on an F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Hastert said, was paid to prevent the man from publicly saying Mr. Hastert sexually abused him decades ago, when Mr. Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Ill.

“I did not think much about it at the time, but looking back at it, it does seem strange,” Mr. John said. “He just said he needed to generate some cash.”

In emails and other documents provided to The New York Times, accounts of the former speaker’s business dealings show a burst of activity to increase his wealth. But apparently unknown to his business associates, Mr. Hastert was not merely following the path of other former members of Congress who have tried to cash in. The indictment says he was seeking to prevent a hidden past from undoing his life.

Though Mr. Hastert had amassed several million dollars in assets while he served in Congress, much of his wealth was tied up in real estate, records show. Prosecutors charge that Mr. Hastert agreed to make large cash withdrawals for payments to Individual A. The indictment, announced on May 28, said he had made $1.7 million in payments out of the proposed total of $3.5 million.

And Jonathan Capehart, writing in the Washington Post, says Hastert’s hypocrisy has nothing to do with being gay or about gay rights.

In discussing the scandal engulfing former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who is due in court this week, one thing must be made absolutely clear. What he is alleged to have done to young boys has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or gay rights…

…The indictment against Hastert, revealed May 28, charges the Illinois Republican with lying to federal officials about why he had evaded bank regulations by making withdrawals of less than $10,000 between 2012 and 2014. That was after his numerous withdrawals of $50,000 in the previous two years raised red flags at his bank. Hastert, who was a high school teacher and wrestling coach until 1981, was trying to avoid discovery of $1.7 million of $3.5 million in hush money to a man he allegedly sexually abused when that man was a student. The FBI also talked to another individual who was not being paid by Hastert.

Then, on Friday, the sister of another alleged victim went public. Jolene Reinboldt told ABC News that when she asked her brother Stephen when his first same-sex experience was, “he looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert.’” Reinboldt’s brother died of AIDS in 1995. A classmate told NBC News on Friday that Reinboldt told him that he and Hastert “would do things sexually and it would sometimes start with a massage.” The revelation of a diving trip to the Bahamas that Hastert took with Reinboldt and other boys of an Explorers club he ran only adds to the sick feeling that the worst is yet to come.

Almost immediately after the news broke of Hastert’s indictment, folks looked to Congress for signs of hypocrisy. Former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, made an assertion during an appearance on Huffington Post Live last Monday that was flat-out inappropriate.

Capehart fleshes out a distinction:

What Hastert allegedly did has nothing to do with being gay or the push by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans to ensure that equal protection under the law applies to them. What he allegedly did — sexually abusing a number of underage boys — was criminal. The same goes for reality television star and conservative moralist Josh Duggar, who admitted sexually molesting young girls, including several of his sisters, when he was a teenager. His sexual orientation doesn’t factor into the scandal coverage because it is irrelevant.

LGBT Americans, especially teachers, have fought for decades to get folks to understand that LGBT adults do not pose an automatic danger to children. Some people still refuse to accept this. That’s why branding Hastert a hypocrite now because he opposed LGBT rights as speaker is a leap I refuse to take. Were Hastert discovered to have had a consensual same-sex relationship with an adult, Frank would have no argument from me on his hypocrisy slam. Had Hastert been nabbed by police for allegedly trying to engage in a same-sex encounter in an airport bathroom, for instance, Frank’s assertion would be solid. But Hastert wasn’t.

So there are definitely various aspects to this case that do require some nuance.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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