Redstate

By Dana R Pico Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Well, maybe, and maybe not. Mike Rogers, the scumbag who runs blogActive , has published a claim that Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) is homosexual. I won't go into the sordid details Mr Rogers presents; if you are really interested, you can visit Mr Rogers' site. Senator Craig has flatly denied Mr Rogers' allegations, calling them laughable.

Patterico has the details and (at the moment) 123 commenters who are rightly disturbed at Mr Rogers' abusive tactics. Sister Toldjah is rightly indignant, and Brian at Iowa Voice is hopping mad.

While Mr Rogers’ “outing” of Senator Craig (whether true or false) is repugnant, I have taken the position that all politicians must be truthful and specific about this.

Sister Toldjah wrote:

Let’s assume for purposes of discussion that Senator Craig is gay - are we to assume that his votes against issues that are important to the gay community were an attempt by Craig to mask his ‘hidden desires’? Or was it more Craig’s intent to represent the voters of Idaho who put him into office based, in part, on his stances on those issues? My guess would be the latter - and again, this is assuming for discussion purposes that Craig is gay, something that can’t be proven one way or another (unless there are emails, IMs, video, pix, etc - and God help us if that kind of thing surfaces).

I think the indignation over Mr Rogers' nasty tactics misses the point. Sis is absolutely right about what she wrote, but the problem that I see is one of honesty between politicians and their constituents.

Ignoring Senator Craig for the moment, since we don’t know whether Mr Rogers’ claims are true or false, look at Mark Foley. There were rumors he was homosexual when he first ran for Congress, and then again when he considered a Senate run; naturally, he denied them.

But this means he was lying to his constituents, right from the get-go. How ethical is it for someone to present himself to the voters as heterosexual when he knows it is a lie? Mr Foley started his congressional career with a huge lie!

Now, look where that led.

It might be true that a candidate who tells his prospective constituents that he is homosexual will have less of a chance of winning; so what? If winning is so important that it must be based on a pretty fundamental lie, then you are seeing a candidate who cares more about himself and his prospective career than he does about the country and the people he is asking to serve, and that, to me, is fundamentally disqualifying.

Mr Rogers is a scumbag, no doubt about that; were he set on fire, I wouldn’t urinate on him to put it out. But if his claim is accurate (and Senator Craig has denied it, but in the cases of other politicians he has exposed, some have been correct), then Senator Craig would have set himself up for such by not being honest from the very beginning.

Way back in the early 1980s, I was processed for a security clearance. I was (and still am) married, and I was asked very bluntly about whether I had ever cheated on my wife or whether I had ever had any homosexual encounters. The reason was obvious and simple: had such been true, and were I unwilling to disclose them, I would have been blackmailable. Were such true, and I did disclose them to the people who would be affected, I would not have been blackmailable, and thus it would not have been an issue for a clearance.

The same is certainly true for elected officials: if they are homosexuals, and keep it a secret, they are setting themselves up for what Mr Craig has suffered (whether legitimately or otherwise), at the very least, and possibly blackmail.

Every reason save one of political and personal honesty argues for candidates being forthright and honest about their personal lives -- and the single exception is that such might reduce their chances of winning the election. That exception is one which places selfishness above service, and taking that reason ought to be disqualifying anyway.