“Ken Mehlman is not gay,” Steve Schmidt, a senior official of the Bush campaign and a friend of Mehlman’s told Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent who wrote the piece for the magazine.
...One staffer tells Tapper a fact known inside the beltway but not widely reported-that some members of Congress posture as being more anti-gay than they actually are to please constituents. “We’re a representative democracy,” the staffer told GQ. “And while members may not have personal problems with having gay staff, they vote the way their constituents want them to.”
—GQ Magazine, 2005
How quaint that quote is! This the worst kept secret in DC. I’ve been blogging about Ken Mehlman being gay for several years now. That he’s just “coming to the conclusion fairly recently” is, to put it mildly, challenging.
Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.”
While it’s nice that Ken has finally come out of the closet as an advocate, it’s really hard to forgive him for the damage he did to the community by working actively against it for pay for years. That he can coast on the gains for our community by supporting AFER’s stellar work on Prop 8 on the backs of many during his tenure at the RNC who bore the brunt of homophobia, those who died as a result of hate crimes, the activists who were assailed professionally is unbelievable. Yet here we are in 2010 watching it unfold.
As a human being Mehlman owes the community a serious apology for fomenting homophobia for political gain. This is how he addressed that point:
Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.
“It’s a legitimate question and one I understand,” Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.” He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.”
Mike Rogers hasn’t forgotten; he has awarded the former head of the RNC the Roy Cohn Award.
If I had to say what one thing really moved me to create this site it would be the 2004 reelection campaign of George W. Bush, the most homophobic national campaign in history. That campaign was run by one of the nation’s worst closeted individuals, Ken Mehlman.
It’s always nice to know that my reporting is validated as correct, even if the media has been hiding it for six years.
...The three people most responsible for the anti-gay actions of the Bush reelection campaign are Mehlman, Karl Rove and Bush. In addition to his role at the RNC, Mehlman served in the first Bush Administration as White House Political Director. In 2004 he was the general chairman of the Bush reelection campaign.
...In 2006, Mehlman told the New York Daily News, “I am not gay, but those stories did a number on my dating life for six months.”
It’s so nice to be proven right, me that is, not Ken.
If this move doesn’t call for a Roy Cohn Award, I don’t know what does. Ken Mehlman is horridly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past.
Mehlman, as is typical for quite a few gay Republicans, attempts to focus on the fact that he is not a single issue voter or activist. I find this view, particularly by someone who worked every day to make life for LGBTs in this country intolerable on so many levels, a position that is hard to defend.
He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue.
“What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party’s philosophy, whether it’s the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong committment to each other to get married.”
“I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights.”
I’m willing to move forward and appreciate that change can come, no matter whether personally or politically motivated. We need both parties to be strongly pro-LGBT. Witness the ineffective, lame-ass, slow-mo “support” for LGBT rights shown by the Dems in charge (in the WH and on the Hill). The power of Mehlman’s coming out and the recent desire by prominent conservatives to move away from gay-bashing in the wake of the Prop 8 ruling should concern the DNC about keeping a slice of LGBTs in the fold over the long haul.
Only time will tell if and when Mehlman and the rest of the pro-equality conservatives can truly boot the hardline anti-gay leadership—as well as show willingness to jeopardize losing the base that mans the phone banks, responds to direct mail appeals re: social issues, and uses the church to get out the vote.
I’m not certain they can do this anytime soon; we know we are going to win this fight, it’s another thing for a party to turn itself around to attract the very demographic it sh*t on for years based on a few powerful homos and conservatives with little to lose and the legal wind behind their backs deciding to come out for marriage equality.
NOTE - My pad was cited by the swamps of the Free Republic today in its reactions to Ken’s coming out.
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NOTE 2: Look at this shite, the twisting of history begins. The media is running from the truth - it covered for Mehlman and is trying to whitewash his record. Word’s getting around on Twitter:
RT @msignorile: It’s clear: Media will downplay Mehlman’s role in antigay efforts to cover for their own refusal to expose his hypocrisy for years. NYT already puffing up Mehlman, claiming he “avoid[ed]” social issues (!!!), is now “working his thick Rolodex” for gays http://nyti.ms/9T85Du
The quote in question:
Mr. Mehlman was in Mr. Bush’s inner circle in both presidential campaigns, and ran his campaign in 2004. But Mr. Mehlman, in his work as chairman of the Republican National Committee and as head of Mr. Bush’s campaign, tended to avoid social issues, arguing that they would undercut the Republican Party’s efforts to expand its appeal.
NOTE #3: From Change.org—Mehlman, as he says, is not a one-issue voter. And he proves it by supporting anti-gay Republican candidates for office. To truly show he’s for equality, he’s going to have to make some changes in his donation targets.
Look him up on opensecrets.org, and you’ll see that Kenneth Mehlman has given money to a wide range of politicians working to take away rights for LGBT Americans.
There’s $2,400 to Missouri Republican Roy Blunt, who has voted to add a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage, as well as to ban gay adoption.
There’s $2,400 to Sen. John McCain, who wants to keep gay servicemembers out of the military.
There’s $1,000 to Ben Quayle, who is running for Congress in Arizona and who just labeled Barack Obama the worst President in history, and who just sent out a mailer to voters touting his opposition to marriage equality.
There’s $2,400 to Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, who voted to keep “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in place (and who himself is subject to lots of rumors about his sexual orientation).
There’s $2,400 to Utah Republican Sen. Robert Bennett, who tried to stop marriage equality from becoming a reality in Washington, D.C.
And the list goes on and on and includes Republicans like Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte, Bob Corker, Richard Shelby, and Johnny Isakson, all of whom have taken positions completely contrary to full equality for LGBT Americans.
Flashbacks - The “Best” of Ken Mehlman:
* Ken Mehlman has no fear—he’s gay-baiting Harry Reid
* Closeted Heterosexual Deputy Chief of Staff Ken Mehlman?
* Ken Mehlman speaks: on “Realignment” of U.S. Politics
* Have you visited Blogactive today? (Missing Person Alert! Where is Ken Mehlman? He’s been MIA since Foleygate broke. Hmmmmm.)
Ken Mehlman, practicing some ‘hot moves’
You may want to put whatever you are drinking down before you click this link to a series of pix on Capitol Buzz, where the RNC head is showing the ladies his groovy hetero vibe in a DC bar/club called the Guards.
Reactions, including that of National Organization for Marriage’s pathetic Brian Brown, are below the fold.