Ken Mehlman- GOP Leader during Bush2- comes out

Ken Mehlman, former wunderkind power lawyer, campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2004, and GOP chairman from 2005-2007, has come out as gay.

In 2006 when Bill Maher referred to him as a closeted gay man in a Larry King interview he made calls so fast that the video was edited to delete that comment before it aired for the late showing. He also told the New York Daily News, the New York Times and the Washington Post all “I’m not gay" after this, no “might sorta kinda be” or “my personal life is nobody’s business” or “no comment”, but flat out “I’m not gay”. He also said “those stories did a number on my dating life for six months"; no idea what happened at the end of those six months but presumably it was a case of three denials before the cock grew.

But now he tells Atlantic Weekly he isn’t as not gay as he may have previously implied or outright stated on numerous occasions.

He says he only arrived at this conclusion “relatively recently”. He’s 44, so I’m not sure if relatively recently means he figured it out in 1992, March of 2008 or last Wednesday, though I’m interested how any man capable of an erection can fail to notice which gender makes their dick hard when looked at, felt up or fantasized about, but then maybe he hadn’t discovered his right hand until relatively recently either.

and

That’s beautiful, man, beautiful. You know what would be a good way to do that? Start by towing the party line like a Hitler Youth captain wanting a Christmas bonus until you get a chance to run the re-election campaign of an administration that wants to govern based on the “greatest hits” selections of a bunch of desert nomads claiming to hear a sky god 2500 years ago (not all the things they say, just the ones that don’t really affect the majority of the party anyway and claim the rest are meaningless). What’ really cool about this is that you’re not just working for a guy who wants to make the first ever homophobic Constitutional amendment, you get to destroy the middle class AND send thousands of Americans in the prime of their lives to die in a pointless war based on lies while you do it and yet lead your meetings with prayer meetings!

Then what you do is you can lick ass in a straight Christian non-sexual way until you’ve become one of the most powerful voices in the party and have a chance to REALLY make a difference simply by saying “I’m queer, I’m here, I’m Republican, try the veal” at a rally. Or… or… if you don’t want to be that bold, how about waiting out your tenure and the whole Bush regime and then after Bush is out of power and the Republicans are winged a bit and you are essentially a dead-in-the-water former GOP spokesman, THEN come out when nobody gives a fuck and you can’t do jack shit to change anything in your party! It’s always easier to open the gates of a fortress from the outside with a pointed stick you call a battering ram than it is to open them from the inside when you’re holding the keys.

In fairness he admits that he “probably” could have done more when he was GOP spokesman, which is “probably” true. And he says he can understand if some people are irked with him but he’s going to work hard to help undo the anti gay rights agenda (that he worked very hard to put the people who were most powerful in implementing into place). The CNN article also says that many gay activists are happy for this- it does after all give them a chance to say “I’m happy about this” and their name in the news.

I’m not an activist. I’m just a guy Mehlman’s age who grew up in and has lived his entire life in places one hell of a lot less conducive to being openly gay than metro Washington D.C. where Mehlman has lived most of his life but who nevertheless thought to himself many years ago “You know, fuck people who can’t deal with it, I’m not chicken shit enough to hide in a closet or deny what I am for the benefit of others”, but who am I to judge? Well, actually that kind of is my qualification to judge I suppose, but then other than having the chance to actually make himself heard loud and clear in the Republican party and instead blowing it like it was the $20 hustler behind the truckstop in his college town what has Ken of Narnia done that’s worthy of contempt? Well, I can think of many actually, like sending the message that “being openly gay is so repulsive and so scary even rich guys with lucrative careers can’t risk doing it” bullshit, and…

But anyway, the point is, let me join with the alleged happy gay activists in welcoming Brother Mehlman to the fold and even giving him some free New Queer Handbook advice:

It is said we can never truly learn to love another person until we start by loving ourself.

You say you have very little sexual experience with other men, so if you want to learn to be a good lover in your new openly gay life, start by fucking yourself. Hard.

[SIZE=1]Bitch*.

Can’t say I disagree. The guy is scum of the highest order, and I hope they’re building a special place in hell for him. If you want (or feel you have to) stay in the closet, that’s one thing. It’s quite another to take your fucking closet and use it as a weapon against everyone else.

Let’s hope he hits the bathhouses and gets AIDS.

Fuck him. Fuck him sideways.

I wish the gay community had a tradition of shunning. He should die alone and lonely and loathed.

ETA: Although I have to disagree with The Facts. That’s not a fate I’d wish on my worst enemy.

It’s hardly surprising coming from an administration of cowards.

Brave Chicken hawks who dodged military service yet unafraid to send others to their deaths.

Brave tax-cutters without the political will or balls to cut spending, dumping the mess on succeeding administrations.

The list goes on. Are you surprised a moral coward found a home there?

Charming. Just . . . charming.

I hope he falls in love with a man who loves him back, and that he internalizes the ensuing wonderful feelings to the point where he feels deep, poignant guilt - for his previous behavior - for the rest of his long, otherwise happy life. So much so that he spends that life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to expiate that guilt and makes himself the poster boy for an unashamed, open gay life. And that when he dies he realizes that he still didn’t do enough.
Roddy

Another disavowal of AIDS, but I do hope he gets a full introduction to the full shitstorm the Tea Partiers and their ilk can throw.

And less anyone misread the OP: if this were a Fortune 500 CEO or a truckdriver or a Nobel prize winning physicist coming out at the age of 44 and claiming he didn’t know he was gay until recently but boy he’s glad of it now, I’d probably still wonder how the hell anybody doesn’t at least have a good clue they’re gay after age 20 or so but I wouldn’t have any scorn. It’s only because he was the mouthpiece of a homophobic entity and was too chickenshit to risk Mommy, Daddy, Nana and Uncle Dubya finding out to come out when it might actually do some good that I say ‘fuck him’ and not in the good way. At least until such time as he works diligently to undo the damage his masters have caused, and I don’t count openly taking his 20 year old trick to the Roy Cohn Memorial Scholarship Ball as diligent damage undoing.

And to play bipartisan (not that it’s necessary) I felt similar scorn when Bill Clinton called the Defense of Marriage Act (has anything this side of the Playboy Mansion ever had more adulterers in its history?) and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell “dumbass” pieces of legislation he regretted signing. What fucking good does regretting them do when you had the opportunity to wipe your ass with them and burn the edges while laughing maniacally to a Sex Pistols/Julie Andrews mashup? Better perhaps than not disavowing them but the end result is exactly the same.

It seems to me that there’s been a recent shift in gay rights issues with a number of high-profile conservative commentators (O’Reilly, Coulter, Hasselback, etc.) Isn’t it just curious that he managed to come to terms with his sexuality now that the GOP messaging has changed? Boy, that’s some bravery right there.:rolleyes:

Here’s a gem from the Atlantic article:

Right. Whenever Republicans condemned a homophobic regime in the Muslim world, gay people refused to find common cause with them? Come on.

The OP was a beautiful piece of writing.

It just goes to show that even the gay community cannot prevent lying, evil, demogoging assholes from joining up. As long as he doesn’t register Democratic, I’m fine.

And somewhere out there, you know Roy Cohn is cheering.

I could see how it could take someone 43 years to get comfortable with being Republican.

Damn that was a good OP. Very well said.

My guess is that he should have stayed in the closet.

Is there a risk that, by coming out, he would have lost his position? Because that’s the only reason I can come up with for not coming out when he could have made a difference.

That said, I don’t wish ill on him. Just that he knows how stupid he was.

So your going with team stupid? I’m pretty sure he was firmly on team evil.

He was one of the main people pushing Bush’s anti gay campaign. You know the one were W in his fear mongering promised to push forward the Federal Marriage Amendment banning gay marriage.

Mehlman is a sad pathetic man who deserves to be ostracized by the gay community. Until he devotes his life to undoing the wrongs he supported and pressed forward every homosexual in the country should spit in his face.

I don’t know if a personal anecdote will help here, but I realized I was sexually attracted to other guys and not to girls a long time before I realized I was gay.

I keep reading and re-reading the quote, but I can’t parse it any other way that “didn’t they notice we have switched scapegoats ?”.

I saw this and for the life of me I cannot get the idea that his last name is the same as Alfs home planet…

…fabulously!

Link to Mahar clip here. I know he says some nutty shit from time to time, but a lot of the time, he’s totally right, and very much a calm and reasonable voice.