Pink Elephants

Mark Leibovich writes in the NY Times, Foley Case Upsets Balance of Gay Republicans, about the still-closeted gay Republicans -- "Known in some insider slang as the Velvet Mafia or the Pink Elephants, gay Republicans tend to be less open about their sexual orientation than their Democratic counterparts."

No? Afraid to express oneself in the party that panders to homophobes? Can it be true?

On this same theme, Marc Ambinder of the National Journal states, in A Calamity For Gay Republicans, that the gay Republicans "feared a backlash." That is:

A close friend of Foley's summed up the situation this way: "It is a disgrace. It's a disgrace for the party, and it's a disgrace and a disaster for all of us."

Washington's community of gay Republicans includes at least one member of Congress, more than a dozen high-ranking congressional aides, current and former White House staffers, advisers to the Pentagon, press strategists for prominent conservatives, several well-known journalists, and a legion of influential lobbyists.

Calling it "a sociological quirk of Washington life" the article notes:

Republicans in Washington, even some who publicly crusade against gay marriage and refuse to meet, officially, with gay Republican groups, often knowingly hire and socialize with gay people. The atmosphere of quiet accommodation extends to the top reaches of the party.

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Not surprisingly, many Democrats and liberal gay-rights activists shun well-placed gay Republicans as traitors to their sexual orientation.

Pam Spalding also has an excellent assessment of the issues (and articles) at Pandagon:

[The] stories about the gay Republican subculture of DC running now . . . that is politely skirting what we all know is a depth of knowledge about who is and isn’t gay in this scandal that the media is withholding.

I’m not arguing that they should or shouldn’t out anyone, but that if it turns out to be relevant that a lot of lies about the Foley scandal are being told because some powerful closet doors are going to get blown open, the GOP has a big problem here because we’re talking about elected officials preying on children and abusing their positions of power in order to do so.

This may be more about protecting GOP closets than it is about gay Republicans in top positions of power trying to save their jobs (though with one, probably comes the other at this rate in the scandal).

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The closet is really a short-hand term to describe a coping mechanism many gay people have developed because of our heterosupremacist society and the homophobic religious upbringing that too many of us have been immersed in. Anyone who tells you that either of these factors has no impact on the mental health of an individual would be lying. That’s like Tony Snow saying racism doesn’t exist or have any impact on the life, health or self-perception of a person of color in this society.

What one can and should point out — and what seems to have been lost in much of the debate — is it matters how one chooses to deal with the factors that create the need for the closet.

You can seek help to develop self-awareness and acceptance over time, or you can be forced into a dark place.

Likewise, Glenn Greenwald has covered this issue in depth, exploring the various nuances of the scandal. My favorite post is Does the Foley scandal prove the existence of a God?. Calling the scandal "divinely inspired," he lists the corrupt attributes that are vividly on display:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM'd with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on. There has been a virtual carousel -- as there always is -- of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working.

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Beyond the deceit and desperation is the hypocrisy so glaring that it makes one's eyes squint. The examples are literally too numerous to chronicle, but one of my personal favorites is the feigned above-it-all, dismissive bewilderment that something as inconsequential and petty as a sex scandal could possibly be getting so much attention.

* * * *

The same people who impeached a popular, twice-elected President of the U.S. over a sex scandal involving consenting adults, who caused our country's political dialogue for several years to be composed of the filthiest and most scurrilous speculation peddled by some of the lowest bottom-feeders and dirt-mongers, and who constructed a political movement based in large part on sermonizing about private sexual morality and demonizing those who deviate, are now protesting -- without any irony -- the fact that a sex scandal is distracting from the Truly Important Issues our country faces and that Mark Foley's sexual pursuit over many years of 16 and 17-year-old Congressional pages is nothing that really matters.

All true. And in the end, I just don't understand how anyone can be a member of the Republican Party -- especially if you are gay. But there have always been Uncle Toms. I guess this would just be the Uncle Gaylord version.

(I didn't have a pink elephant, so this elephant from AbZOOlutely Chestnut Hill will have to do).

Tags: Politics, Foley