WP: Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet: Foley Scandal and Gay Staffers

[DeepModem Mom]

Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet
Foley Scandal Points Up Acceptance And Anxieties of Gay Staffers
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; Page C01


Foley scandal figure Kirk Fordham, Hill sources claim, once worked for a congressional Republican who publicly forbids employing gay staffers. (By Chip Somodevilla -- Getty Images)

In October 1993, after the ban on gays in the military was replaced with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, three Oklahoma congressmen said they wouldn't hire an openly gay person onto their staffs. Then-Rep. Jim Inhofe (R) told the Tulsa World: "I would not appoint a gay person in that type of leadership position."

That declaration sent a ripple of fear across a certain set on Capitol Hill. A small, bipartisan group of staffers huddled and formed the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association, which now has a confidential e-mail list of more than 200. And a frustrated aide contacted the Tulsa World and gave an anonymous interview.

I'm gay, he told the newspaper, and I'm on Inhofe's staff.

The aide was Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff for disgraced former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and a key player in the ongoing investigation of the page scandal, said Hill sources who requested anonymity because of the investigation.

In the 13 years since, even as gays have moved visibly into mainstream America, they hold a tenuous, complicated spot within the ranks of the GOP, whose earlier libertarian, live-and-let-live values have been ground down by the wedge issue of opposition to gay rights. And, even though an Inhofe staffer confirmed last week that his boss still maintains his employment ban, many gay men are key aides to Republican legislators, powerful silent partners in winning elections by pledging allegiance to religious "values voters" ever on the alert against "the homosexual agenda."

This dichotomy -- or hypocrisy, depending on who's doing the labeling -- has been forced out of the closet by the page scandal, just as surely as Foley....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901931.html

[roguevalley]

1. they remind me of nazi prison guards hiding from their past as

Jews. They put on the garb and hide in plain sight. Quizlings of the worst kind.