A Sad State of Affairs
You’re out!
Homosexual ‘activist’ Mike Rogers seems to consider it to be perfectly fine and ethically correct to ‘out’ a Senator (without any proof except for some anonymous sources).
Mike Rogers, who calls himself “the nation’s leading gay activist blogger” has just finished a nationally-broadcast interview on the Ed Schultz Radio Show in which he alleges that Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig has engaged in same-sex sexual activity.Senator Craig’s office flatly rejected the claims. “The Senator says this story is absolutely ridiculous – almost laughable,” said press secretary Sid Smith. “It has no basis in fact.â€?
Rogers said he has talked to three men unknown to each other who all reported in detail their sexual encounters with Craig over the last four years. The men were of legal age, Rogers said. (Audio of Rogers on the Ed Schultz show is available here.)
Rogers says that digging into the private lives of politicians who support anti-gay legislation is legitimate. Because Craig supported and voted for the Defense of Marriage act, it is politically relevant to reveal these claims, Rogers said. In a letter to Craig, he wrote: “What these citizens are not being told is that some of the politicians who want their help are or have staff who are part of the so-called ‘homosexual lifestyle.’”
The irony.
What a sad little man Mike Rogers is. It is disgusting that: one – this could actually play a role in politics and, two – that Rogers thinks he has the right to ‘out’ someone he believes to be a homosexual.
That American politics has dropped to this. I am too Dutch to even consider this somewhat normal or acceptable. This is none of Mike Roger’s business. And his excuse is a pathetic one. It seems that according to Rogers every homosexual should be in favor of gay marriage. As far as I can tell, homosexuality or heterosexuality, Mikeyboy, are not religions, nor are they political ideologies.
Concluding, the only real sad person in this entire episode is not Sen. Craig. It is Mike Rogers who proves himself to be suffering from a complete lack of moral values.
Dan Riehl has some fascinating information about money and all that.
88 Responses to “A Sad State of Affairs”
Yep. For all the whining from liberals about Republicans failing to live up to family values (of which we Republicans are genuinely and seriously disappointed in our representatives for right now and our reps actually have a lot to worry about because of that disappointment), the Dems have just demonstrated that they hold their own hypocrisies. They whined for years about tactics like the supposed “swiftboating” of John Kerry and were angry that conservatives made a huge deal of a private sexual matter in the Clinton case (though Clinton compounded what would have been a relatively trivial matter by committing perjury). Now they employ even dirtier tactics and call it perfectly acceptable. Unlike the way most Republicans feel about their leaders right now, it appears many, if not most, rank-and-file Democrats are not disgusted by this sort of behavior.
Bombs away.
I have never heard of Mike Rogers. I have read James Dobson on homosexuality however. I would encourage anyone interested to read his advice to parents on how to raise a son to avoid him “turning out gay.” Dobson is trained as a psychologist and writes with the assumed authority of doctorally trained social scientist (although the references he used in the article I read included mostly quoting himself from previous interviews in magazines and an opinion paper from a psychoanalytic journal dated 1964). He basically advises that boys who are too close to their mothers end up being gay and the father should break the boy’s “dependency” on his mother during the preschool years in order to raise a straight man. The implications are of course, parents are to “blame” for a child’s sexual orientation and the worse outcome a parent could imagine is a gay child. The gay issue has been a gold mine for Republicans in motivating voters, raising money, and most of all, finding a scapegoat for all that ails America. Various GOP campaigns and pundits have made abhorrent accusations in order to smear their opponents, both Democrat (Ann Richards was accused of being lesbian) and GOP (McCain’s black “love child” in the SC 2000 primary). While Clinton was in office, he supposedly was involved in killing Vince Foster. It is only a matter of time before a candidate is accused of cannibilism, but perhaps a google search would prove me wrong.
It seems any politician in America should be prepared to have their private lives dissected and viewed by the public, and having outright lies told about them. The media seems much happier reporting on smear campaigns than on something such as candidates debating issues, I mean, really, that boring stuff is for PBS, right?
Lynx is right. As long as a represenative of the people represents the people, why on earth would his personal thoughts be relevent. Also, wouldnt this blatent disreguard for Craig’s own personal lifestyle just prove that hes impartial when it comes to the people he represents? I find that a great thing in a politician and something all politicans should strive for. I applaud Craig for being able to remain impartial in the face of his own personal lifestyle choice (if true ofcourse). I think Mike Rogers using this information for a political weapon is crap. Just because republicans used the weapon doesnt mean democrats should. Thats just sinking to a whole new level of disgustful action.
I mean statistically (and im not going to bother to give links look it up for yourself) people with higher levels of education, bascially those who have recieved a college degree which includes a broad base of knowledge, happen to think in more liberal political ways. This is not to say they are democrat, but simply the actual meaning of liberal. They see individual freedom as the ultimate goal of any governemnt institution. These people tend to be democrat simply because democrats associate themselves as liberal. So why would all these educated men and women stoop to the same levels of their enemy.
If Craig is gay, then we should applaud a politician for beign impartial to the demands of his constituants.
If Craig is “out” because of this nonsense then i have lost faith in the political system, oh wait i already have.
always the student,
randal
To my fellow conservatives: let the Democrats do their worst. Don’t complain. Just let them shoot their wad now. Let them sink as low as they can get – and they can’t get too much lower. They’ll have nothing left to complain about when the digging for dirt and the release of information at inopportune times for their own representatives begins.
In the meantime, Republicans should seriously discuss what is acceptable and unacceptable dirt to gather on opponents. I consider exposing the fact that someone is gay, or watches porn, or other personal sexual practices unacceptable for public exposure. Stuff like that just doesn’t belong in the public arena. Let the Dems be below any standards, we shouldn’t sink to their level. They’re in the gutter already. Likewise, if information presents a risk to the public, such as the information regarding Foley, it is unacceptable to hold off on releasing such information for electoral purposes. Otherwise, it is fair game from here on out.
Finally, we need to be vigilant about our own representatives. We need to do a better job vetting them for possible misconduct and not hesitate to deal with serious abuses early on. Lets improve our standards even if the Dems have none.
CS: And my point about they lies is that yes, the right was upset by the lying and the left wasn’t (a generalization of course)…
I did NOT support him lying, he should not have lied, the second he said it I didn’t believe him. Two weeks later he had to admit he lied.
Tommy: I guess, by that standard, you can’t “get all mad” when it is the Dems turn to be scandalized at an inopportune time in the future also…
When the Dems put their foot into their mouth, no I won’t get mad as they’ll deserve it.
MvdG: I am very happy that there are actually people here who are defending Mike Roger’s actions. I find it fascinating to see that people can fall so low in political discourse.
I’m not supporting what he did. As I said, it is school yard bully politics and our political system should be above this.
Actually, I’m laughing at all the conservatives who have for years turned a blind eye, or activily agreed, to the same crap coming from the talking-heads of the right. What Rogers did is not any worse than what Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc have either said or allowed to be said.
Really, would you like to show me some statistics regarding that?
This sounds vaguely like the Red State/Blue State IQ hoax liberals peddled during the last election.
Also, blue states are generally more inegalitarian in income distribution than are red states.
The fact that liberals tend to conveniently overlook is that they get the large bulk of mostly poorly educated non-white voters. But then, white liberals often take the votes of the minorities they otherwise largely ignore for granted.
If Dobson’s theory were correct, there would be very few heterosexual Jewish men.
Elrod,
If Allen didn’t learn he was Jewish or part-Jewish until he was older, how does that play into his “religious identity?” I believe Allen is a practicing Presbyterian and there is nothing secret about that. Digging up details about whether not Allen’s mother is Jewish sounds like mostly irrelevant gossip to me.
Tommy er, me thinks you need to look a little at the tactics employed by your party before complaining about someone elses. Republican elections tactics, especially lately, leave little to the imagination. Even McCain, a member of their OWN party was attacked using “he has a black baby!”. If that’s not going low, I don’t know what is.
I think it’s fine that you call on your own to clean up their act, and being that you dislike dems, I understand that you don’t believe in their capacity to do the same thing, but you should accept that repubs and dems have pretty much the same long long road ahead of them until discourse is clean again. Repubs have been caught in far more scandals recently than Dems, but that’s just because there are more of them and they’ve been in power for too long. I don’t believe in either one, though I will freely admit I’d rather have a dem congress than a repub one.
Holly LOL, I think you just lost 40 PC points right there! Congrats!
Tommy – You need a better source for statistics than Sailer. Please explain confidence band and population size instaed of Sailer’s disguised racism.
Tommy, good comment about dirt and all.
“Stuff like that just doesn’t belong in the public arena. Let the Dems be below any standards, we shouldn’t sink to their level. They’re in the gutter already.”
Haha seriously this is too much. Give me a break, yes “conservatives” are so moral. Reading that post made me think how ridiculous moral equivalency has really become. Here we have one guy on the left that is doing something preposterous (and I seriously hope that people turn on him and his tactics) and suddenly it’s “worse than the Republicans” when they have been using it to win elections. The 2004 presidential race anyone? Even the common punditry was that Ohio was won because of the anti-gay marraige amendment. The more I think about it, to people that genuinely care about doing the right thing like C Stanley and MvDG, I’m sorry — but even saying that the actions are in the same sport, let alone the same ballpark, is extremely ill informed and lets them get away with it. The Left needs to stop worshipping filth tactics and spend that time on something that actually matters. If they actually had a well reasoned, detailed plan that tried to form enough of a consensus (I’m talking 60-70% of the country support) instead of wasting time on this maybe things would actually change.
Mikkel: I had a good laugh about that part of the comment myself, but Tommy does have a good point: some dirt is not for the public arena, no matter whether it is in one’s political interest to make it public or not.
Lynx,
Nope. We aren’t the same, fundamentally. I’m disgusted by my leaders right now. Democrats are just fine with the likes of Chappaquiddick Kennedy, “the Kleagle” Robert Byrd, and Gerry Studds representing them and they are apparently pretty much OK with Mr. Rogers, too. Fine. No complaints from here on out, please.
Rudi,
Lol. Whatever. I’m not going to explain t-distributions, chi squares, population sizes, confidence bands, normal probability distributions, linear correlation analysis, nonparametric methods, and the like to you. These are basic concepts you can look up for yourself in a statistics textbook.
I agree. Everybody supporting Rogers or not speaking out against it, etc. has no right to complain whatsoever when the Republicans will use dirty tricks.
Michael most “liberals” aren’t disagreeing, and everyone should actively fight to get rid of this. However, please click on the link (same as above but I hid it up there) that talks about the recent history of Republican “dirt tactics” and tell me what you think.
Rudi as much as Sailer is a not-too-disguised racist (who’s arguments are contradictory even) in order for that IQ chart to be valid, the average person in the states near the top would have to be near the 85th percentile. This is well, impossible considering how much of the total US population lives there.
Lynx: …me thinks you need to look a little at the tactics employed by your party before complaining about someone elses. Republican elections tactics, especially lately, leave little to the imagination.
Mikkel: Here we have one guy on the left that is doing something preposterous… and suddenly it’s “worse than the Republicans” when they have been using it to win elections.
Yes, the far left and the far right seem blind to the dirty tricks that their party uses but gets upset with the other party does it. When I call my liberal friends on it, I’m accused of being a closet republican and when I call my conservatives friends on it, I’m accused of being a commie liberal.
I hope both parties would sit down and talk to form an agreement, as Tommy suggested, and move above using these kinds of mud slinging.
Tommy- Is your major point that these tactics are ok because at some point in history, the other side has done the same thing?
My main problem with Ann Coulter (and I’ll admit she symbolizes everything that bothers me about the far right) is not that she’s needlessly nasty-she is, not that she has a shrill demeanor- she does, not even that she makes dangerous irresponsible comments like wishing in print that Tim McVeigh had attacked the NYT’s building instead of the OKC building, but that she just makes things up about people out of thin air.
The more outrageously false her claims, the more her books sell-because a certain part of the right wing reading public doesn’t care whether or not what she says or writes is true. Can you imagine if Maureen Dowd went on Hannity and said the same thing about President Bush? Can you imagine the uproar from his supporters?
And Kim, I hadn’t heard the Coulter comment but it is ludicrous. When would Bill have had time for any homosexual affairs LOL
CS- Yes, I was laughing myself. She was given ample opportunity to take it back, or say that she’d been joking, but she claimed she was completely serious. Of course we have to remember she was the lawyer who encouraged Paula Jones not to drop her lawsuit against Clinton in the first place.
I personally cannot imagine any more uncomfortable position than to be a closeted gay Republican congressman, especially when you have to vote on legislation that denies gays civil rights.
Tommy- You’ll be happy to hear that Gerry Stubbs’ spouse will not be able to get any of his pension funds, because even though their marriage is legal in Massachussets, its not recognized by the federal government.
Listen, to judge the democrat canidates because of Mike Roger’s alligations and plain aweful use of information is wrong. If the democrat running against Craig uses this information in his campaign then you can say that democrats have sank to a new level of hell. the fact is that both sides of nut jobs that come out and say ridculous stuff. Im sitting at work in a university bookstore and next to me is a book of quotes from anne culter (the republican pin-up of a good conservative woman). Her comments range from calling evolution make believe and intelligent design fact. Also she calls for the loss of womens right to vote because she blames women for the horrible conditions of society. I mean thats nuts. I dont see all republicans as freaking crazy as she is. But non the less people do. Just because both sides have nut cases doesnt mean everyone in either side is a nutcase.
Second i cant stress enough how great it is in the midst of this storm of horrible practises that Craig has managed to truely be impartial. I mean really i dont care if hes republican or democrat, hes freaking impartial and goes against his own personal beliefs to vote the way the people he represents feel. Thats amazing in today’s political arena and everyone who reads this site knows that. No more do we have represenatives of the people, all we have are politicians whos job is to re-elected. Hats off to Craig for remaining impartial to the needs of his people in the face of so much corruption.
always a student,
randal
Ed Schultz runs a trashy radio show. This would be expected of it.
Randal: Just because both sides have nut cases doesnt mean everyone in either side is a nutcase.
Good call Randal. Agreed, there are extremes on both sides and to stereotype everyone by the extremes is wrong, not just in politics.
CS: I hadn’t heard the Coulter comment but it is ludicrous. When would Bill have had time for any homosexual affairs
Kim: CS- Yes, I was laughing myself.
LOL. I missed this one the first time. I’ve skimmed most of the thread as it’s getting very long.
MvdG: I agree. Everybody supporting Rogers or not speaking out against it, etc. has no right to complain whatsoever when the Republicans will use dirty tricks.
That is easy to agree with as I don’t support what Rogers did. It shouldn’t be long before a nutcase conservative says something just as low and mean. Then we’ll see who remember this agreement.
Sen. Craig appears to have taken a leading role in defeating ENDA in the mid-90s.
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/ENDA7-16.MEM.htm
It is perfectly okay with Craig for employers to concern themselves with the sexual orientation of prospective employees. So he’d have little cause for complaint when the public turns the same spotlight on the question of his own sexual identity. After all, an employee’s private life is indeed a legitimate concern for the employer.
O, I will Rambie.
m.croche, ‘they do it too’ didn’t work for me anymore when I was 4 years old. Seemingly some people were raised differently.
Tommy – You throw around Sailer as a source, please show me links to back up his statements using independent statistical analysis. I would prefer independent sources, like scientific peer review. Sailer is a closet racist who clouds the issues in vodoo statistics.
Don’t misread me, Michael.
I don’t approve of discriminating against someone based on their sexual orientation. Personal life is personal, and all that. Unrelated to the workplace. That’s why I support ENDA.
But Republicans, starting with Craig himself, who think it’s perfectly fine to mix the two are very poorly placed to argue that a great injustice has been done to Craig. Something’s got to give.
MvdG: I agree. Everybody supporting Rogers or not speaking out against it, etc. has no right to complain whatsoever when the Republicans will use dirty tricks.
Everyone supporting Republicans or not speaking out against it, etc. has no right to complain whatsoever when ANYONE else will use dirty tricks.
Tommy: Yep. For all the whining from liberals about Republicans failing to live up to family values… the Dems have just demonstrated that they hold their own hypocrisies.
Agreed, the extreme ends of both paries have shown their hypocrisies.
CS ,I have a question about Republicans who have scapegoated gays then tolerate them in their work or personal lives…the point I have taken from the political scapegoating of gay people is that they are moral degenerates responsible at least in part for the demise of families in American society. If one really believes this, why would one associate with an openly gay individual if it could be avoided?
Don’t lump CS into that group Denisedh. Granted CS is conservative but is quite consistent and should be group with those that scapegoat gay people.
Rambie- What are you talking about? I have never seen CS scapegoat gay people… Did you mean to say she should not be grouped with those that scapegoat gays?
Kim, you’re right thanks for catching that it was a mistake. It should say “Granted CS is conservative but is quite consistent and should NOT be group with those that scapegoat gay people.”
Sorry CS
I think this thread proved this posting by Joe yesterday.
Rambie and CS,
I’m sorry if I didn’t clairfy: I do not view anything CS has said as scapegoating gay people.
I barely recognized the name Mike Rogers so I did a quick search on the internet. I wouldn’t call him a gay activist. This type of outing is about all he does. I don’t care for the strategy at all. At the same time I do have to say that I can understand the kind of anger gays could easily feel to see someone who is actually a closeted homosexual actively participating in the passage of laws to limit their rights. But it’s still no excuse.
As far as dirty tricks are concerned just remember Bush, McCain and South Carolina in 2000 or Bush vs. Richards in 1994.
No worries from me denisedh.
LOL, Thanks for the defense, Rambie and Kim, and denisedh, I get what you were asking and I didn’t infer from it that you were lumping me in that category. But you missed my original point, which is that I believe that there are two distinct groups of conservatives who aren’t considered friendly to the gay legislative agenda. Some of them are the gay bashers, and yes, I agree it is inconsistent for them to be friendly with individual gay people. But some conservatives (to a degree I place myself in this category, but on the liberal end of it because I am split on my opinions about pro-gay legislation), we believe that homosexuality can be held to be immoral without believing that homosexuals are evil. Just as I believe that ALL people practice some behaviors that are immoral, I don’t think that people who are homosexuals are any worse than any other ‘sinner’ which includes all people. On this one behavior, I disagree with their moral choice but that doesn’t mean I think they are evil or devoid of morals. To me, accepting a moral code of behavior means that if you ask me, I will tell you that I think something is wrong but it doesn’t mean I feel I have the right to judge you.
So, I’m just making a distinction between anti-gay legislators who take that stance for different reasons. Some of them are hypocritical to befriend gay individuals, while some of them are not inconsistent in doing so. To say that we shouldn’t be friendly with people that we disagree with would mean that none of us would have any friends!