Liberal Gay-Bashing: Ted Haggard

Dems and liberals and assorted anti-Christian evangelical crusaders are so hypocritical.

The big story for the past couple of days has been the antics of Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Why has his personal life been put under the microscope?

It's similar to the Mark Foley scandal.

It's not that elected officials or the lib media care about "child" congressional pages or the evangelicals.

There is an orchestrated effort to derail the Christian evangelical vote for Tuesday's election.

The libs' plan didn't work when they dropped the Foley bomb. It was a dud. So, for a November surprise, the Left brought out its nuclear arsenal.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The Rev. Ted Haggard said Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fueled trysts with Haggard.

A quick question: Is it possible to condemn something and believe in its immorality, while simultaneously engaging in the behavior?

Yes. It happens all the time. I think it has something to do with being human.

On Friday, Haggard said that he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel, and that he bought meth for himself from the man.

But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones. And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.

Jones, 49, denied selling meth to Haggard. "Never," he told MSNBC. Haggard "met someone else that I had hooked him up with to buy it."

Jones also scoffed at the idea that a hotel would have sent Haggard to him.

"No concierge in Denver would have referred me," he said. He said he had advertised himself as an escort only in gay publications or on gay Web sites.

According to the Left: If you're a liberal, you're allowed to freely use illicit drugs, hire prostitutes, be a prostitute, engage in adultery, and, of course, be gay.

If you're conservative, however, such behavior is scandalous.

Understand?

...In addition to resigning his post at the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Haggard stepped aside as leader of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending a church investigation. In a TV interview this week, he said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

Do you know what's ringing in my ears?

"I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."

Another case that comes to mind is that of former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.

From Newsday:

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey revealed during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he was having an affair with another man while his wife was hospitalized for the birth of their child... .

In the interview, the audience members said Winfrey explores McGreevey's lifelong struggle with his sexuality.

McGreevey recounted going to the library as an adolescent to look up the word "homosexual" in a dictionary. When he found it included terms like "perverse" and "psychiatric disorder," the Irish-Catholic said he quickly learned to repress his feelings, audience members said.

...The interview also explores how McGreevey came out to his wife and parents, how his life is more authentic today, and what life is like with Australian financial adviser Mark O'Donnell, whom he refers to as his "life partner," the audience members said.

Despite his reckless lifestyle, including gay trysts at truck stops with complete strangers, McGreevey is hailed as a hero, a brave advocate, a "gay American."

Any dishonesty involved in the secret and not so secret lives of Clinton and McGreevey is a purely personal matter, and not fodder for public discussion. That's for the individual and his spouse to sort out, not society at large.

In Haggard's case, however, any alleged dishonesty about his personal behavior is supposed to destroy him.

What libs have come out in support of Haggard?

Has McGreevey issued a statement?

How about the widower of Gerry Studds?

Barney Frank is another I'd like to hear from. He knows about prostitution, considering a gay prostitution ring operated out of his Capitol Hill home.

Have gay advocate groups come to Haggard's defense?

(Crickets chirping)

My purpose in bringing up these cases is to illustrate the dramatic difference between the treatment of Haggard and the treatment of liberals during and after a scandal.

It's a cruel double standard, grounded in pure hate.

In Denver, where Jones said his encounters with Haggard took place, police said in a news release they planned to contact the people involved for information on whether a crime was committed. The statement did not say whether an investigation was under way, and police spokeswoman Virginia Quinones declined to elaborate.

Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said that a public admission isn't enough by itself to bring a case, but that charges will be filed if criminal conduct can be proved.

At this point, the case is a smear campaign, just like the Foley case.

No charges have been filed.

It's the politics of personal destruction.

And there's another thing that disturbs me about the allegations against Haggard -- Why do the lib media, elected Dems, and Dem operatives assume that these revelations will influence the election?

Clearly, they're trying to demoralize the Christian evangelicals into sitting out this election.

Using Foley or Haggard to do it makes no sense to me.

As a result of the scandals or alleged scandals, why would any Christian evangelical decide to allow radical Leftists to take power in government?

Surely, most Republicans are far friendlier to their values than partial birth abortion-supporting Dems.

Surely, evangelicals realize that they are the ones actually coming under assault.

I think their intelligence and their tolerance are being underestimated by the Left again.

So what else is new?

Very troubling to me is the willingness on the part of Democrats and their lib media propaganda tentacles to bash conservative gays to score political points.

Why don't they grant Foley and Haggard the compassion, and ultimately the hero status, that formerly closeted liberal gays receive?

HYPOCRITES

Gerry Studds

It's very sad that former Rep. Gerry Studds died on Saturday.

I feel for his loved ones in their time of sorrow.

I'm not going to speak ill of the dead. I'm going to speak ill of the liberal media and its glaring hypocrisy.

From The New York Times:

Gerry E. Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress and a demanding advocate for New England fishermen and for gay rights, died early Saturday at Boston University Medical Center, his husband said.

The cause was a vascular illness that led Mr. Studds to collapse while walking his dog on Oct. 3 in Boston. He was 69.

From 1973 to 1997, Mr. Studds (whose first name was pronounced GAIR-ee) represented the Massachusetts district where he grew up, covering Cape Cod and the barnacled old fishing towns near the coast. He was the first Democrat to win the district in 50 years, and over the course of 12 terms, he sponsored several laws that helped protect local fisheries and create national parks along the Massachusetts shore.

A former Foreign Service officer with degrees from Yale, he was also a leading critic of President Ronald Reagan’s clandestine support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He staunchly opposed “Star Wars,” or the Strategic Defense Initiative, which Mr. Studds once described as “the Edsel of the 1980’s” — overpriced and oversold.

His homosexuality was revealed through scandal. In 1983, he was censured by the House for having had an affair 10 years earlier with a 17-year-old Congressional page. For Mr. Studds, formal and dignified, a model of old New England reserve, the discovery sparked intense anguish, friends said.

"Intense anguish" for Studds?

What about the page? What about the child that he sexually abused?

Why isn't The Times upset about the fact that Studds had sex with a minor?

What about protecting the children?

Instead, The Times focuses on Studds' personal agony.

I don't think that a congressman who engages in sex with a 17-year-old can be considered "formal and dignified."

He had long been unsure of the role his sexuality should play. At the nation’s first major gay march on Washington in 1979, he told friends he could neither attend nor stay away.

“His act of courage was to jog within a block of it,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the congressman from Mr. Studds’s adjoining district, who announced his own homosexuality four years later. “He felt that conflicted.”

Once outed, however, Mr. Studds refused to buckle to conservative pressure to resign.

“All members of Congress are in need of humbling experiences from time to time,” Mr. Studds said at the time. But he never apologized. He defended the relationship as consensual and condemned the investigation, saying it had invaded his privacy.

"REFUSED TO BUCKLE TO CONSERVATIVE PRESSURE TO RESIGN"???

The Times makes it sound like evil conservatives attacked him for his homosexuality.

Excuse me?

The man had sex with a 17-year-old congressional page!

These same libs aren't satisfied with Mark Foley's resignation. They are conducting a full-blown investigation.

Is that an invasion of Foley's privacy?

"Dennis Hastert should resign," the libs cry.

"What did Republicans know and when did they know it?"

GIVE ME A BREAK.

He went on to win re-election in 1984, surprising both supporters and opponents.

...Mr. Studds’s re-election in 1984 had reverberations of its own.

“In a sense, he became a role model,” said Charles Kaiser, author of “1968 in America” and “The Gay Metropolis.” “His experience convinced other people that it would now be possible to run as an openly gay person.”

Mr. Studds also seemed emboldened by his re-election. He began to demand more money for AIDS research and treatment. He pressed for the right of gay people to serve openly in the military, releasing a previously suppressed Pentagon report in 1989, which concluded that sexuality “is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left- or right-handed.”

If Mark Foley goes on to serve as an advocate for gay rights, do you think the Left will embrace him as a role model?

No way. He's a Republican. If Foley was a Dem, then everything would be different.

The Left is unapologetically biased.

Foley is a monster for his behavior with pages while Studds is held up as a hero in spite of his physical sexual contact with a kid.

Fair and balanced? I don't think so.

In addition to speaking on the House floor on behalf of gay marriage, he set an example. In 2004, he and his longtime partner, Dean T. Hara, became one of the first couples to marry under a Massachusetts law allowing gay marriage.

“Gerry often said that it was the fight for gay and lesbian equality that was the last great civil rights chapter in modern American history,” Mr. Hara said in a statement.

“He did not live to see its final sentences written,” Mr. Hara added, “but all of us will forever be indebted to him for leading the way with compassion and wisdom.”

I'm sure Studds showed compassion and he probably had moments of wisdom now and then.

He was not acting wisely when he had sex with a 17-year-old congressional page.

Mr. Studds’s past had recently resurfaced. In the final two weeks of his life, the two-decade-old controversy surrounding Mr. Studds became an issue in the 2006 midterm election campaign as a new Congressional page scandal unfolded.

Though his name had barely been mentioned in Washington since he retired, the resignation late last month of Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, revived interest in Mr. Studds’s own dalliance with a teenage page in 1983.

Across the country, several Republican candidates sought to deflect criticism aimed at their own party by reminding voters about Mr. Studds. The National Republican Congressional Committee chastised Democrats in this year’s race for taking contributions from party leaders who had served with Mr. Studds.

It was completely appropriate for Republicans to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Democrats.

The Democrats and their mouthpieces in the lib media wanted Foley tarred and feathered.

They demanded that Hastert resign. They still are making those demands.

Naturally, the Studds scandal would be raised. It provides a blatant example of their insincerity about concern for the children.

The Times suggests that it was somehow inappropriate and sinister for the "two-decade old-controversy" to surface.

What a crock!

...Mr. Hara, Mr. Studds’s husband, declined to comment on the newest criticism.

A memorial service will be held in November. In addition to Mr. Hara, Mr. Studds is survived by his brother, Colin Studds; his sister-in-law, Mary Lou Studds; his sister, Gaynor Stewart; four nephews; and his English springer spaniel, Bonnie.

I love animals. Pets are like members of the family, but does The Times usually cite dogs as survivors?

I know it's not uncommon for families to name pets of the deceased in a death notice, but that sort of stuff usually doesn't find its way into an obituary written by a publication like The Times.

Strange.

The Associated Press has an interesting quote from Hara and additional information on Studds' relationship with the page.

"He gave people of his generation, of my generation, of future generations, the courage to do whatever they wanted to do," said Hara, 49.

Like have sex with a 17-year-old and be proud of it?

...[When the scandal surfaced], Studds called the relationship with the teenage page, which included a trip to Europe, "a very serious error in judgment." But he did not apologize and defended the relationship as a consensual relationship with a young adult. The former page later appeared publicly with Studds in support of him.

...Hara said Studds was never ashamed of the relationship with the page.

"This young man knew what he was doing," Hara said. "He was at (Studds') side."

I wonder. Did the young men that Foley interacted with know what they were doing, as Studds' sex partner supposedly did?


It doesn't matter whether or not it was consensual. Studds should not have had sex with an underage page.

Studds told his colleagues in a speech on the floor of the House that everyone faces a daily challenge of balancing public and private lives.

"These challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as am I, both an elected public official and gay," Studds said at the time.

Studds played the gay card, just as former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey did.

Why is it that when Dems are caught with their pants down they act like they're victims of an intolerant society or a vast conspiracy rather than taking responsibility and acknowledging their indiscretions?

By the standards that the Dems are using to judge Mark Foley, Studds was a predator.

But because he was a Dem, he was a hero.

These obituaries are further proof that the mainstream media is terribly inconsistent, unfair, and unbalanced.

That is undeniable.

Certifiably Insane

In Friday's Washington Post,
the truly bizarre Dems engaged in a truly bizarre Kabuki dance. Truly.

It's hard to believe this actually happened; but it did! Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Dana Milbank writes:

Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.

The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.

"At the next hearing," he told his colleagues, "we could use a little subpoena power." That brought the house down.

As Conyers and his hearty band of playmates know, subpoena power and other perks of a real committee are but a fantasy unless Democrats can regain the majority in the House. But that's only one of the obstacles they're up against as they try to convince America that the "Downing Street Memo" is important.

...The hearing was only nominally about the Downing Street Memo and its assertion that in the summer of 2002 Bush was already determined to go to war and was making the intelligence fit his case. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA operative, barely mentioned the memo in his opening statement. Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, said the memo "only confirms what I already suspected."

No matter: The lawmakers and the witnesses saw this as a chance to rally against the war. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) proclaimed it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country." Conyers said the memos "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) concluded that "the time has come to get out" of Iraq.

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

The event organizer, Democrats.com, distributed stickers saying "Bush lied/100,000 people died." One man's T-shirt proclaimed, "Whether you like Bush or not, he's still an incompetent liar," while a large poster of Uncle Sam announced: "Got kids? I want yours for cannon fodder."

Conyers's firm hand on the gavel could not prevent something of a free-for-all; at one point, a former State Department worker rose from the audience to propose criminal charges against Bush officials. Early in the hearing, somebody accidentally turned off the lights; later, a witness knocked down a flag. Matters were even worse at Democratic headquarters, where the C-SPAN feed ended after just an hour, causing the activists to groan and one to shout "Conspiracy!"
I'm speechless.

This is hilarious!!! Reread the story. Each time I read it, it seems to get weirder and weirder. It's a sick kind of fantasy. The only thing missing from this freak show is Michael Jackson.

Can you believe these nutjobs are elected officials?

For a long time now, I've felt the Dems had little to offer the country. On many issues, I've found myself agreeing with the Republicans and totally alienated by the Dems.

This exercise has taken my dissatisfaction with the Democratic party to an entirely new level.

I sincerely believe these Democrats are crazy. Those participating in this "performance" cannot be taken seriously. They are unfit to serve.

Mad Dr. Dean Strikes Again

From the Boston Globe:

Dean rips DeLay at convention
May 15, 2005

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Party, said yesterday that the US House majority leader, Tom DeLay, "ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence," referring to allegations of unethical conduct against the Republican leader.

Dean's remark, in a speech to Massachusetts Democrats at their party convention, drew an immediate rebuke from US Representative Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat and one of DeLay's harshest critics. "That's just wrong," Frank said in an interview on the convention floor. "I think Howard Dean was out of line talking about DeLay. The man has not been indicted. I don't like him, I disagree with some of what he does, but I don't think you, in a political speech, talk about a man as a criminal or his jail sentence."

When Barney Frank criticizes a fellow Dem, you know the transgression had to be extreme.

Does Dr. Dean think his comments are made in a vacuum? No doubt, the Democrats he was addressing loved his suggestion that Sen. DeLay go to jail in Houston. What about the all of the self-proclaimed Dems that voted for Bush? What about Independents? Does the Democrat party really think this sort of inflammatory rhetoric from its chairman is helping them in all those Red counties?

With the good Dr. Dean at the helm of the DNC, each day is like Christmas for the Republicans.

Blowhard Barney Frank on Tom DeLay

Roy Blunt is a very patient, tolerant man.

Had I been on Meet the Press with Barney Frank, I doubt I could have maintained my composure as well as Blunt.

After watching the segment, my head was pounding. Barney Frank does not sell the Dem message well. Why do the Democrats keep looking to the fringe to be their voice in their DeLay bash fest?

Oh, that's right. The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the loony left. The DNC offers its latest DeLay talking points here.

MTP Transcript Excerpt

MR. RUSSERT: Has he done anything wrong?

REP. BLUNT: My impression is he has not done anything wrong. I know he has certainly spent lots of time and effort over the years, lots of money on ethics attorneys, to be sure he knew where the lines were, and those lines weren't crossed, and that's why we have those ethics rules so that members know where the lines are.

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Frank.

REP. BARNEY FRANK, (D-MA): One of the things that bothers me, because I don't know the details of all of these things, it's that the Republicans--because Tom DeLay was three times last year criticized by the Ethics Committee, they didn't formally vote the whole House to be critical, but they sent three letters--they called them letters of admonition. Mr. DeLay seriously resented that. In fact, he complained on the floor of the House last week, that letters which said to a member. He didn't mention it happened to be himself. And, so, what happened was the Republican leadership decided to punish the Ethics Committee.

Barney doesn't know the details; yet he blabs on and on and on.

Rather than focus on DeLay's alleged misdeeds, the discussion becomes about changes on the Ethics Committee, Barney complaining the evil Republicans weakened it as part of a diabolical scheme to protect themselves.

REP. BLUNT: Well, the three changes we made, I think, have been blown totally out of proportion in terms of their impact on the Ethics Committee. It's no more difficult to file an ethics charge than it ever was. The three changes were made--one was you should be able to have your own counsel, that the Ethics Committee shouldn't be able to decide who your counsel were. Two were, you should at least know you were being investigated before the Ethics Committee publicly criticizes you, which happened to one of our members last year. And three was that it would take a majority to move forward with an investigation after--I think it's 45 days and then a virtual automatic 45-day extension. You've got 90 days where one party can decide, "We want to continue to investigate."

But there's a reason that the Ethics Committee is divided equally. It's the only committee divided equally, because the reason is it would take a member from the other party always to move forward. Fifteen years ago--Barney mentioned 15 years ago--that's what the rule was 15 years ago: It took somebody from the other party to decide to move forward. Only in 1997 in a package of ethics changes, really without much thought, was it decided, "OK, we're going to have this one area where a majority doesn't have to make a decision and half of the committee can just keep a member perpetually under investigation."

Barney continues to babble and Blunt clearly states the reality of what is happening:

REP. BLUNT: He wants to lay out a case. Tom DeLay wants to lay out that case. I think our friends on the other side know the only effective way he can do that is if the Ethics Committee does its work, and they're using what I think is a totally spurious trumped up reason to say that the Ethics Committee can't do its work. The idea that a majority wouldn't investigate something has nothing to do with whether you could file a charge or whether a member could respond to a charge. Tom DeLay said repeatedly he wants the Ethics Committee to be organized so he can make that case. The Ethics Committee, the Democrats, have refused to organize it on the basis that this one issue that has really never been a problem, but potentially, when you look at it clearly could be a problem, that this one issue ruins the entire ethics process is just absolutely nonsensical and they know it and everybody else does, too, that looks carefully at what's really happened with the ethics changes.

Blunt also appeared on FOX this morning opposite Steny Hoyer. Like Barney, Hoyer shifted the focus to the Ethics Committee.

Could it be the Dems believe that when the actual charges against DeLay are discussed they open themselves up to scrutiny that they cannot withstand?

If, in fact, DeLay has not done anything illegal, the "Get DeLay" battle certainly can't dwell on what he has legally done.

The battle must shift to something else. Judging by the Sunday morning shows, the strategy now is for the Dems to attack DeLay by way of attacking the Ethics Committee.

This entire DeLay things gets more convoluted every day. In the meantime, the business of the people is ignored.

As Blunt said on MTP, TOM DELAY WANTS TO LAY OUT A CASE.

The Dems don't want that. Why? Perhaps it's because DeLay would be exonerated and the Dems would need to find another person to demonize.

In addition, all their anti-DeLay t-shirts and ads would go to waste.