The Republican Closet

The whole Larry Craig scandal reminded me of this classic Onion piece about Ted Haggard last year:

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—Evangelical leader Ted Haggard, who stepped down last week after confessing that he purchased methamphetamines and various services from a male prostitute, revealed Wednesday that he was repeatedly molested by an unnamed Republican congressman in the late 1990s. "We would communicate on the Internet and then meet in his Washington office to, I thought, discuss faith-based initiatives," said Haggard in a tearful admission in which he asked for the forgiveness of God and his congregation. "Before long, he had progressed from praying alongside me to having me sit on his lap at his desk, and then to touching me in my bathing-suit area. I trusted the congressman, and he violated that trust." Authorities have not acted on Haggard's allegations, saying that Republicans are often accused of wrongdoings simply because so many of them lead secret gay or criminal lifestyles

Of course, as others have pointed out, it's not gays who cruise for sex in public washrooms - they've got bars for that - it's straight men with the occasional closeted urge for man on man sex using the 'wide stance' come on.

Conservative talking head Joe Scarborough makes the surprisingly rational point that the Democrats openness to gay members immunizes them from the charges of hypocrisy that sink so many Republicans.

The argument has been made that the only morally defensible 'outings' are of self hating gay political or religious leaders who attack openly gay people from the closet. The next gay Republican scandal is already brewing, a steaming mess of rentboys, far right politicians, networks of religious homophobes and murder suicide.