With the vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment coming right up, opponents are playing hardball.
With action on the Federal Marriage Amendment slated for next month, gay activists are renewing calls to “out” closeted members of Congress, as well as gay staffers who work for members who support the amendment.
It is, to be sure, a controversial move. The recently formed Gays, Lesbians and Allies Senate Staff Caucus opposes the campaign. Nevertheless, it appears at least one person has already been outed as part of the effort.
The campaign, which is targeted at closeted gay Members and staff, has already claimed some victims, including one staffer who works for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the most conservative Members of Congress and a leading proponent of the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Gay rights activist Mike Rogers, who is waging the campaign, alerted Inhofe last week that one of his aides is openly gay outside the office. (The staffer was the featured “Coverboy Confidential” a few years ago in Metro Weekly, a Washington gay magazine.)
Rogers says Inhofe is “a homophobe and I won’t tolerate it.”
The staffer, whose name [Roll Call] is withholding, is bothered by the outing campaign and called it unfair. He also defended Inhofe, saying, “The Senator and I may disagree on this issue, but I didn’t come to the Hill thinking I was going to find my political soul mate in a Member.”
I find it difficult to imagine how a gay, politically active aide could voluntarily work for someone like Inhofe, but that’s not my call.
In fact, the outing and the reaction make the whole effort seem like a reckless waste of time.
For example, Inhofe’s office had a rather twisted reaction.
Inhofe’s personal office provided a statement to Rogers last week drawing a distinction between working for the Senator and for the committee.
The committee provided a statement to [Roll Call], also pointing out that the staffer does not work for Inhofe’s personal office and that “Senator Inhofe does not hire openly gay staffers due to the possibility of a conflict of agenda.”
The gay staffer won’t be fired because he’s part of Inhofe’s committee staff, but the senator’s office wants to make sure the world knows that Inhofe believes gay people might have their own “agenda” and therefore won’t be able to work for him directly. Classy.
The same report explained that the man will be able to keep his job, which is good news, but leads me to wonder if the effort is pointless.
Is the goal to shame lawmakers into voting against the FMA? That doesn’t seem likely; Inhofe is as supportive of the amendment now as ever. Is the goal to get these gay staffers fired? Probably not, but it’s not happening anyway. Given the circumstances, the effort should leave staffers out of this altogether if it’s not going to have the desired effect, whatever that may be.
That said, I still believe that if there’s a GOP lawmaker who’s railing against an alleged “homosexual agenda” and voting for the FMA despite being secretly gay, he or she is practically inviting this kind of attack.