Mike Rogers — the gay activist blogger on an “outing” mission that I referred to last week — is starting to make some bigger waves… and his target yesterday was Idaho Senator Larry Craig:
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.”
I’m already on record with my disgust at this invasive, vicious campaign; nothing new to see here, really, for Polimom. I did find some amusement, though, in the reaction from some conservatives. Captain Ed, for instance, says:
Once again, the Left shows its obsession with sexuality, but it’s really more than that. The Left obsesses over identity politics in all forms, and that obsession comes out in pathological terms. Rogers reveals this in his blog post, demanding that gay staffers on the Hill identify their orientation publicly, or else he will do it for them. Sexual identity is everything to him, and the concept of sexual privacy has no value to him at all. He wants to humiliate gays who prefer to keep their sexual activity private, forcing them to wear the virtual pink triangle against their will to experience obloquy and castigation.
The Left shows its obsession? You mean all this bizarre Amendment-mania that has come from the Right has been about something besides sex?
Then there’s La Shawn Barber, who doesn’t like the “outing” approach, and wishes everybody would keep their sex lives private… but says she understands politically-motivated outers:
But here is where I depart with fellow conservative bloggers: If a person speaks out against laws, policies, lifestyles, etc., that you support and you find out he is doing the thing he speaks against, shouldn’t you expose them as a hypocrite? I suppose the equivalent for me would be a “closeted” Christian lawmaker pushing for IRS investigations of churches and Christian non-profit organizations, or criticizing the “religious right” as nuts.
Ummm…. there may very well be quite a number of “closeted” Christians who warm a pew every Sunday while pushing back against the Religious Right’s agenda on Monday. However, exposing them (so to speak) isn’t received in quite the same way. (Isn’t that sorta what David Kuo’s book did?)
Pew-warmers just aren’t particularly sexy (in or out of the closet), and sex sells in politics. It may not win voters (and in many cases turns them off), but it always gets the headlines.
Thanks to years (decades?) of the RR trying to recast everything other than man-woman missionary-position marriage-sanctioned sex as the work of the devil, America has become a nation obsessed with a very unhealthy desire to look into everybody else’s closets (or under their covers). They collectively point and gasp, even as they voraciously lap up every titillating detail.
Welcome to the future.
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Others blogging:
Glenn Greenwald
The Moderate Voice
Joe. My. God.