Wednesday, October 04, 2006

A Gay Question

Ok, I know. I know. People are SICK of the Mark Foley story. But I was reading that blog that outs "closeted gay Republicans" and reading several stories where some on the left blamed Foley being in the closet for his behavior and that he was outed years ago by the Advocate, but no one ran with it. The Rogers blog outed Foley because he voted "against gay rights." I got to thinking about it. Put aside the page scandal for a moment and let's focus on the gay thing because I have a few questions.

I hate to use Foley as an example because he's a scumbag, but bear with me. First, I don't think he was closeted. Isn't closeted when you deny you are gay? Foley never denied he was gay. He only told people that it was none of their business. It seemed everyone knew anyway, but he obviously didn't want to discuss his sex life (now we can see why) but my point is why should anyone be forced to discuss their sexuality??? Because he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act? Just because someone is gay doesn't mean they march in lock step with gay activists. Even on an issue that affects them directly. Maybe Foley didn't think gays should marry. Can't he and other gays believe that if they wish??

Oh yeah, I wanted to add something. You know that all this crap we are writing about and all the details don't mean squat to the American people. They hear the buzz, the basics and that's it. So, I was getting my oil changed today and there were four men in the waiting room with me and something was mentioned on TV about Foley so I asked the guys what they knew about it (like I didn't know anything) and one guy said, "Some gay guy resigned from Congress for talking dirty on the internet with a kid." "yeah", said the another guy, "I'm telling you it's dangerous to let gays around kids. This is just proof of that." (This hasn't been exactly good PR for gays I can tell you that I heard that more than once today) So I asked them, "Was he a Democrat or Republican?" One guy said, "Hmm.... I think he was a Republican." "No" said another, "He was a Democrat." I looked at him and said, "How do you know?" And he said, "Isn't it the Democrats who are all for gay rights and all? The guy must have been a Democrat, but they are all crooks up there anyway." And everyone shook their head in agreement.

My point is that people aren't sweating the details of this and all this is really doing is making Congress look worse than it already does.