The right's anti-gay army

[BobcatJH]

You knew this would happen. The Republican party, simply unable to defend itself in the face of charges that it coddled and covered up a child predator, had to do something. Its hopes to retain a majority in Congress drowning in a sea of scandal. Its base of faith-based "values voters" up-in-arms over Foleygate's blatant hypocrisy. Its leadership panicked, pointing fingers at each other. All of this appears to have led the Republican Party to one conclusion - their only conclusion. In order to save themselves and prevent widespread collateral damage within their ranks, they would do what they do best: Attack. Not only attack, but also play on their base's worst prejudices. And in doing so, in sending their anti-gay armies into battle, the Republican Party is trying to do what they do to so well, taking what should be a sober debate and injecting it with bigotry. Will it fail? Only time will tell. But what's already discernible is that the party in power remains incapable of looking in the mirror and facing up to its many, many problems. And what's also easily seen is that the Republican Party's default fallback position is hatred.

No sooner had Mark Foley resigned in shame than Bill O'Reilly discussed his sexuality. Speaking last Friday about the scandal, O'Reilly said, "Now, there have been rumors about Foley's homosexuality for years. You've heard them, we've all heard them. It wasn't an issue at all until now." Responding was correspondent Major Garrett with more issue-clouding: "It raises suspicions that never had before surfaced publicly about whether or not Mark Foley's sexual orientation in any way impacts his job," he said. "To date, there's been no evidence that it has. This is the first time those two things have been joined together." Two days later, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, in an article titled "Who Protected the Pervert Congressman," argued that the media were missing the point by avoiding Foley's sexuality and that those not labeling him as a "homosexual" were likely doing so to avoid being called homophobic - echoing points made the same day by Newt Gingrich. "In fact," he wrote, "the entire scandal might have been avoided if Foley's homosexuality had been exposed and confronted, rather than protected, over the last several years." Added WorldNetDaily's Linda Harvey, "Open or suspected homosexuals should never be elected. The problem with homosexuals is that they frequently don’t have common sense and don't acknowledge appropriate boundaries. Weird sex, public displays of 'affection' and nudity, and sex with youth are built into the 'gay' sub-culture." Piling on Monday was Fox analyst Tammy Bruce, who said, "All I want, frankly, is a gay person in office who is not a sexual compulsive. I mean, is that too much to ask for? I don't think it is."

Spreading more disinformation was Ben Stein, who wrote, "I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys." This, too, was a tack that noted bigot Pat Buchanan took on "Hardball" Tuesday. Another line of attack, one used by Tony Perkins, the Wall Street Journal and Jonah Goldberg, was to attack the left - and to attack a culture of tolerance. "When we told up tolerance and diversity as the guideposts for public life," Perkins said on CNN, "this is what you end up getting." Read an OpinionJournal editorial, "Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys." Chiming in as he normally does was Goldberg, who wrote, "The funny thing is that you would think the left - particularly the gay left - would be a bit more interested in not having 16 and 17 year old teenagers classified as young children for legal/sexual/political purposes." The formerly bow-tied Tucker Carlson couldn't help himself either, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15116073/">asking Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, "So, the Republican Party is now the party of gay sex, or what exactly is the Democratic line going to be here?"

Reading those quotes, you can almost see the Republican mind at work. What first started as an open-and-shut case of Republican leadership covering up the actions of a child predator soon became murky with discussion of Foley's sexual orientation. While that irrelevant detail was bad enough, it apparently wasn't enough for the right-wing smear machine. So, what became a discussion of Foley's sexual orientation soon became a discussion of a culture of acceptance and tolerance of diversity that the Republicans could pervert into a culture of acceptance and tolerance of Foley's behavior to suit its ends. In short: The Democrats enabled this. So as attacks on the Democrats from Republicans mount - cue Brit Hume and Rush Limbaugh, for instance - look for similar attacks to take shape on progressive values. Short of uncovering pages harassed - or worse - from current Democrats (something I'm sure Republicans are trying to do), shifting the blame to the Democrats appears be their only course of action. Because when you can't defend the indefensible, lashing out at straw men and villains of your own creation makes perfect sense. Why, other than attributing it to a mistake that never happens, do you think Fox News labeled Foley as a Democrat on multiple occasions? Confuse enough people, the thinking goes, and big problems become little problems. And little problems affecting this administration, as we know, tend to disappear.

Anyone with a brain - previous examples excluded - realizes that being gay doesn't make you a pedophile. Being gay just makes you gay. Being a pedophile makes you a pedophile. But that realization, to the Republicans, is a realization the party prefer its usually misled base not make. Because their rabidly bigoted base represents an extremist fringe that not only doesn't want gays to marry, but also doesn't want them to adopt and, quite likely, even exist - just ask Pat Robertson. You know, the 3 percent of "Americans" this president considers his most important constituency. And a group of people the Republican Party knows it needs to keep motivated heading into the November elections. If it doesn't, if the Foley scandal turns "values voters" off enough, then Democrats' dreams of flipping both houses of Congress will become a reality. To that end, the Republican Party knows Foleygate through the lens of Republicans coddling a pedophile is a bad, bad thing. It not only places them on the defensive by having to answer to charges of a cover-up, but it also strikes at the heart of their empty "party of values" rhetoric. On the other hand, Foleygate through the lens of "those evil gays" more quickly diffuses their political crisis, the only crisis Republicans have cared about through this whole sordid affair. It allows them to go on the offensive by doing what they do best - attack - and allows them to play on their base's worst prejudices. In other words, it allows the Republicans to be Republicans.