Posted on 08/25/2010 3:58:16 PM PDT by LonelyCon
Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."
Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush "was no homophobe." He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called "the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now."
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Everybody Else: Who Cares?
Yeah! I thought she was the first Amish woman to do that!!
“”I had a lot of bad things happen to me that made me think God was punishing me for being gay.”
One of those bad things might be this. However, I doubt seriously that it was a punishment from God.
* November 14, 1988
* Vol. 30
* No. 20
Memoir of a Brief Time in Hell
By Kelly McGillis
Savagely Raped by Two Men in 1982, Actress Kelly McGillis Tells of the Terrifying Ordeal and the Anguish That Followed
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100476,00.html
Wow,What a story.I just read the whole thing.
LOL. If you don’t know what color your hair is, it’s gray.
After 18 years of marriage, I finally convinced my prematurely gray wife to stop putting those god awful chemicals in her hair. 3 years later, still no chemicals, still gray, and she’s still not sure about the decision :-)
Yes, I remembered when she started speaking about it. It's hard to believe it was over twenty years ago. When I reread her account just now, maybe because I am older with a twenty seven year old daughter, it seemed to have a much bigger impact on me than it did in 1988. No two ways about it, this woman went through a harrowing ordeal. It had to have had a profound affect on many aspects of her life.
My first thought was
“fine, go be ‘gay’ over there and leave the rest of us out of it”
So that is what those little white lines are that I have to cover every 3 weeks........
Let's see: the gay lobby has shut parents out of any decision-making about what their children will be taught about sexuality from kindergarten onwards; the gay lobby has insisted that gay issues be included in all curricula including math so that parents cannot opt their children out; GLSEN insists on indoctrinating children into unhealthy sex techniques and where to pick up gay partners; gay activists have taken tiny children with them to revolting public sex exhibitions like Folsom that feature live sex acts including S&M; gay activists have sued to have the words "husband" and "wife" removed from schoolbooks and marriage licenses; gay activists have persecuted ex-gays and the public places that try to host their meetings; gay activists targeted supporters of Prop 8 for hateful stalking and threats; the gay lobby has called the founding religious traditions of the greatest nation the world has ever known "bigotry" -- and you think conservatives have caused gays "so much pain"?
Ya, I really just don’t agree with you. I think there’s a tendency towards paranoia on this issue. There’s this fear. If I could paraphrase the sentiment I read out there sometimes, “These faggots need to be killed.” I mean that’s the sort of rhetoric that you read out there. Now, I don’t blame this on conservatives, or anyone really, just sayin’ that when you read that from someone, or see signs about homo’s being killed or whatever, I think it’s completely out of line and actually really sick and evil. To a lesser degree, I read someone say that they should be “shamed and shunned.” Again, I think the visceral cold-hearted nature of this type of language and emotion is simply unallowable. It’s a moral outrage to say this. I know most people aren’t like this. It’s a good thing we live in America where we are able to conduct ourselves as adults and make rational decisions about these things.
As far as specific policy issues, I believe that people have a right to feel how they want, as long as they are respectful humans, and the public will sort it out through the voting process. After that, we can all move on with our lives and stop fighting so much. The ruling class wants us to be fighting over insignificant issues so they can keep running to the bank to collect our savings. If we wanna keep living on this planet for a long time to come, then we better resolve our differences and move on with our lives.
Your reply does not address the facts — that the cases I mention have actually happened and are under pressure to become the ironclad law of the land, actually stigmatizing heterosexuals and their entirely natural reproduction and family formation backed by thousands of years of human experience. Gays can only reproduce artificially, and therefore are a fragile twig on the tree of the continuation of the species, medical research into congenital health or illnesses, social behavioral research, genealogy and psychology. Their desire to interrupt these processes in order to pretend to be like blood families and to purposefully deny children their natural heritage are facts, not paranoia.
The gay lobby’s insistence on lowering the age of sexual consent and pretending that sexes don’t exist so that grown men with penises can enter girl’s bathrooms or seduce girls and boys in classrooms, school buses and gyms, denying them a healthy, uncomplicated childhood in the protection of their parents are the actual facts of numerous state lawsuits and pressure tactics, not paranoia.
You say we should all vote on this and be done with it. The FACT is, we have voted on it over and over and over and over, and the will of the voters is continually challenged by lawyers and overturned by popinjay judges. If you think this issue so rapacious towards children will be settled by a vote, you have only to look at the past 40 years of fighting over Roe v. Wade, which allowed the murder of children in their mother’s wombs, with their fathers shut out of the decision. That fight has not gone away, and this fight will not go away, either; because gay activists are not content to compromise, such as accepting civil unions without insisting on the religious term “marriage”, and mounting campaigns among themselves against child sex abuse. But no.
So you are fighting a losing battle against Mother Nature, who is more powerful than any electorate or any human judge. She has the ultimate judge on her team.
You have pled the case of the hurt feelings of people who are “shamed and shunned” for this behavior, and wish to sweep aside the mountain of testimony of adults who were sexually used by adults in their childhoods and have suffered deep trauma as a result of having an unequal capacity to decide or to resist at all. You cite fears of “homos being killed”; while the actual incidence of hate crimes against gays has continually gone down, not up, as reported by the FBI. The far greatest number and rising incidence of hate crimes are directed against persons by religion or race.
As to “homo’s being killed or whatever”, the regulars here on FR espouse no such thing as a conservative value; we simply believe (as you say you do) that the will of the People should be respected, that the will of the People has over and over and over again rejected the legalization of homosexual behavior and indoctrination directed at children; yet this most basic freedom of our Constitutional guarantees — Consent of the Governed— has been swept aside as meaningless.
You call rejection of this dangerous behavior “visceral and cold-hearted”, “a moral outrage” and “unallowable”, and see no contradiction in your position that we should just take a vote, suppress the results of the vote, and punish the Christians and even the atheists who clearly see the tons of evidence that gay behavior is a symptom of deeper emotional distress and can cause life-threatening physical illnesses, deep and painful psychological trauma and early death.
Wake up. No one wants to kill homosexuals simply for having this particular anxiety disorder; although I won’t deny that many of us think that any rape of any pre-pubsescent child by any adult under any circumstances should be tried as a capital crime. But for their part, homosexuals seem to think that the twisting of children’s natural growth patterns towards narcissism and rebellion shouldn’t upset their parents; that gay teachers should be exempt from the same protective standards parents should expect of any caregiver; and that open displays of S&M and self-mutilation at gay pride events that violate the public obscenity statutes heterosexuals would be liable for shouldn’t upset their neighbors.
I can personally say that hatred of persons with gay behavioral disorders is the last thing on my mind. What I feel is sadness, compassion and pity for the rank and file GLBT’s and exasperation and resentment towards the strident activists who attempt to supplant traditional child-protective morality with destructive hedonist legality. I have worked in the arts and watched many bad breakups and drug dependence among lesbians and more than 50 gay male friends die of AIDS, staying with one of my life’s most cherished and brilliantly talented friends at the hospital until he died, his once-strong 6-foot frame reduced to 85 pounds. At a certain point, he recognized that was he responsible for his choices and regretted having traded in the chance to live out his life and use his talents for cheap thrills in dance clubs and bathhouses. He saw a glimpse of his actual self-worth and felt the lost opportunity to love an understanding woman and be a real father, and he suffered longer than necessary trying to forestall his dreaded and inevitable death. Trust me, no one was preaching negativity to him — he was surrounded by loving Christians who did their best to reassure him of God’s understanding, love and redemption.
tommy k5, most Christians I know are motivated by wanting homosexuals to wake up and seek healing; we want homosexuals to face the truth and stop harassing and punishing those who speak the truth about the ill effects of gay behavior on those who indulge in it; and we want homosexuals to extend the same tolerance of difference that they demand for themselves to those who believe the behavior is not a natural identity, but a social club like the mafia (once you get in, you can’t get out except by death or witness protection).
Gay behavior is a high-risk, dangerous and deadly influence not just on its practitioners in private; but the gay agenda let loose on society, is a destructive force upon all adults and children required to deny their spiritual integrity to accommodate its opposition to nature.
Gay behavior is an addiction; it tempts people to use more and more lethally unhealthy forms of “high”; and most importantly, in the quiet moments of the soul, it turns people away from God, whether anyone says so or not. It is what it is; it is an escape from, and a bad solution to, a difficult emotional problem.
This is the truth as I know it. Do not turn away.
Really troll?
Where have you seen this expressed on Free Republic?
Which leftist group do you belong to that is trying to smear conservatives?
There's no paranoia. There's truth and then there's the campaign to keep the truth hidden.
Do these mentally ill people look like they're "in pain" Or do they look like they enjoy their deviancy.
Btw, it's their guilt that causes them pain.
TROLL
These people are "in pain" because they know their behavior is abnormal. Forcing others to accept their mental illness as normal will not erase their own guilty feelings.
The great thing about America is not our conservative or liberal tradition, but rather our tradition of compromise
The Founding Fathers did not compromise. The penalty in Virginia when Jefferson was Governor was death. Homosexuality is a damaging behavior. It damages those who practice it mentally and physically. Their health problems are legion. Fortunately we no longer have laws against it as there IS mental health available. However America does not give special rights based on deviant behavior. We DON'T compromise morality.
More importantly they are humans.
With mental health issues. That is not a thing to be approved and glorified.
Our history is littered with gay humans who have greatly advanced our evolution.
Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end. Homosexual behavior is also a killer. Their lifestyle KILLS.
When the bible is used to justify hatred, we only repeat our past.
No one on FR has ever used the Bible to spread hatred. It is not a book of hatred. It IS a book that talks about sin and overcoming sin.
We only repeat our past? How about repeating Rome's past? They allowed immoral degeneracy and collapsed from within. No outside force could defeat them. Deviancy from within rotted them.
zot
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."-- Abraham Lincoln
Liberals are looking suicide in the eye and thinking it looks pretty good. Of course, they’re using their blind eye but hey, they know everything. It must be wonderful to be ignorant of facts and history. That way every idea is new and fresh. Nothing is tainted by a past failure. Or 10.
it must be a screenwriter from the hit piece mockumentary on CBS that was “the reagans”. It was so far away from reality it is vanished like a cockaroach in daylight.
I started getting white streaks in my hair at age 27. I started dyeing it in my early 30s. Finally quit in mid-forties, dye is horrible poison. I tried henna which is sort of okay but a big mess and doesn’t cover gray very well. Maybe there’s better stuff now.
Health and cheer and good skin care are all she needs!
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