(2009) Director/writer Kirby Dick opens his documentary, exposing the conspiracy to keep gay and lesbian politicians closeted, with the audiotape of Idaho congressman Larry Craig, trying to deny to his accuser having made a sexual advance with what turned out to be an undercover police officer, while seated in a toilet stall in a restroom of the Minneapolis airport. "There's a right to privacy," says Massachusetts (D) congressman Barney Frank, "but not a right to hypocrisy."

With Craig's being one of the "anti-gay closeted individuals" he's helped out, BlogActive's Michael Rogers figures prominently among those interviewed on camera, declaring that these politicians who repeatedly vote against gay/lesbian rights are "horrible traitors to their people."

Others responsible for making the public aware of those leading secret, double lives to the detriment of the community include Sirius XM radio host Michelangelo Signorile, who outed Malcolm Forbes as gay after the wealthy man's death; David Rothenberg, who fingered former New York City mayor Ed Koch for refusing to support funding for AIDS patients (whose lover Richard Nathan died of AIDS); journalist Chris Bull of The Advocate with McCrery's college companion Gary Cathey reveals how congressman Jim McCrery flipped from being Democratic, gay, and atheist to Republican, married heterosexual, and Christian in order to get elected; reporter Mark Cromer, who investigated Calif congressman David Dreier's self-promoting prevarications with a voting record that belied his lifestyle; Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff, personally confronting Fox News's rising star Shepard Smith.

Lots of gay people inhabit the corridors of power in Washington, DC, as political consultant Hilary Rosen and Log Cabin Republican Rich Tafel attest, but most of them are closeted. Ken Mehlman with George W. Bush's campaign is one (Bill Maher told Larry King: "Hating yourself is the greatest love of all"); but according to Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign, Dick Cheney's daughter Mary Cheney, a lesbian paid operative for the GOP, deserves especial opprobrium for being "steeped in hypocrisy."

People hate gays, remarks Congressman Frank, because their leaders tell them to. Those who have honestly (though often belatedly) admitted to their homosexuality - released and relieved of the suffocation afflicting their integrity and decency - include former Arizona (R) congressman Jim Kolbe, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey ("You discover you're gay by yourself"), Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, and former mayor of Tempe, AZ, Neil Guiliano.

What about the spouses (bizarre scenes of the wife standing beside her repentant gay husband) of those who have deceived their families: How could they have not known? McGreevey and his former wife Dina provide contrasting explanations of their existence in parallel universes.

Why would a homosexual denigrate others of his/her own sexual orientation and actively deprive them of rights? Because bashing gays "proves" one isn't gay. Or as another puts it: the weak come out while the strong remain within, true to their conservatism without a sexual agenda.

Larry Kramer, founder of Act Up; Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America (in which Sen Joe McCarthy's former counsel Roy Cohen, a homosexual Jew, denies his own identity while destroying the reputations of others); Andrew Sullivan, senior editor at The Atlantic add their voices to the despicable agenda of the conservative coalition responsible for creating the emotional campaign to ban gay marriage throughout the country (see President George W. Bush's 2004 State of the Union address, calling for an amendment to the US Constitution) for the purpose of garnering votes by exploiting raw politics.

Allowing that Larry Craig "may be one of us," Elizabeth Birch quickly transposes, "though we don't want him."

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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