Failing The GOP Boy Scout Test
Yesterday, embattled House Majority Leader Tom Delay pleaded, "Just think of what we could accomplish...if we spent less time on our soapboxes and more time on our knees."
Unfortunately for the GOP, that advice is only making matters worse for hypocritical Republican politicians across the country. On the very same day as Delay's bizarrely ironic comments, Spokane Mayor and outspoken anti-gay Republican Jim West admitted to relationships with men, cruising gay web sites, and offering an internship to a Spokesman-Review investigator posing as an online chat partner. (He denied charges of molesting two boys over 20 years ago.) West, it appears, will also be resigning from his board post with the Inland Northwest Council of, you guessed it, the Boy Scouts.
These admissions come from the same man who sponsored legislation barring gay men and lesbians from working at schools and day care centers, fought anti-discrimination legislation and supported the "one man-one woman" definition of marriage.
The outing of West is just the latest in a series for Republican closeted crusaders. Last summer, Federal Marriage Amendment backer and Virginia GOP Representative Ed Schrock saw his career end as his frequenting of gay phone sex lines became public. Republican consultant and Hillary hater Arthur Finkelstein moved to Massachusetts to marry his long time partner. And Talon News faux reporter Jeff Gannon was revealed to be, well, a White House mouthpiece.
A little advice to Republicans. Before you make any pronouncements about sexual preference and public policy, be sure you can pass your party's Boy Scout Test. That is, if you can't be a Boy Scout Troop Leader, then you can't hold office as a Republican. Put another way, if yours is the love that dare not speak its name in the U.S. military, then you have no career in conservative politics.
Democratic Governor Jim McGreevey saw his career end not because he was gay, but because he was corrupt and a liar. Republicans would do well to follow the Democrats example and adopt The Seinfeld Test for public service by gay Americans: "...not that there's anything wrong with it."
I agree with your article entitled "Failing The GOP Boy Scout Test." As a gay man, however, I resent the subtle homophobia inherent in the lead. "On our knees" apparently is just too delicious to let pass, even by a man as sympathetic to gay rights as you seem to be. Surely, Delay has made other hypocritical statements that you could have used to make your point without titillation.
I do think it's tragic that the Boy Scouts have been taken over by right-wing evangelicals over the last decade and a half.
There was a time when being a Boy Scout was about tying knots, riding horses, and hiking and camping.