Reply #64: A big factor is that he's a REPUBLICAN. The tolerance for "gay", [View All]

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

especially UNCLOSETED gay, is not exactly there, eh?

That's why people like David Brock essentially had his career as a Right Wing sleaze merchant ended once he was outed. Even though no one would come out and say it to his face, his Republican buddies just didn't feel comfortable hanging with him anymore.

The fact that the guy resigned, with a statement about being sorry about letting everyone down etc. is pretty much a concession ON HIS PART of guilt or malfeasance. So if the conditions on HIS SIDE of the political fence make it necessary for him to leave in disgrace, what's the point of your defending him?

You can't be a Republican, gay, out, and have a bunch of AOL chat logs with you talking about people's boners and packages and "spanking it" and wanting to take off their clothes in the papers. You will lose about 80 percent of any possible voters, even if there is no crime.

The other thing is, the fact that the teens were interns amounts to abuse of his power position over them. That's one of the reasons why Clinton/Lewinsky was not, IMHO, strictly speaking just a consensual sex issue. Because she was a subordinate, it was wrong for that reason, even more than because it was adultery, in the White House, etc.