The Coming Gay Republican Purge

Max Blumenthal
The Nation
Oct. 13, 2006

Immediately after the Mark Foley scandal broke, some anti-Republicangay-rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican Congressionalstaffers and sent it to leading Christian-right advocacy groups. Thefounder and chairman of one of those groups, the Rev. Don Wildmon of theAmerican Family Association, told me he has received that memo, which hereferred to simply as "The List." Based on The List's contents, Wildmonis convinced that a secretive gay "clique" boring within theRepublican-controlled Congress is responsible for covering up Foley'ssexual predation toward teenage male House pages. Moreover, Wildmoncalls on the Republican Party leadership to promptly purge the"subversive" gay staffers.

"They oughtta fire every one of 'em," Wildmon told me in his trademarkMississippi drawl. "I don't care if they're heterosexual or homosexualor whatever they are. If you've got that going on, that subverts thewill of the people; that subverts the voters. That is subversiveactivity. There should be no organization among staffers in Washingtonof that nature, and if they find out that they're there and they're amember, they oughtta be dismissed el pronto."

Wildmon claimed that an investigation by Congressional Republicanleaders into the gay menace lurking in their midst will clear HouseSpeaker Dennis Hastert of allegations that he repeatedly ignoredwarnings about Foley's behavior. "I think the identification of themembers of the homosexual clique is going to come out," Wildmondeclared. "I think it's going to come out whether or not Hastert knewwhat he says, and at this point I'm inclined to believe he's telling thetruth. I'm beginning to think that the homosexuals shielded their formerCongressman Foley and that Denny Hastert did not know the depth ofwhat's going on up there." Wildmon's defense of Hastert dovetails loosely with Hastert's ownexplanation for his actions, or lack thereof. Hastert did nothing afterbeing warned last spring by House majority leader John Boehner andRepresentative Tom Reynolds about Foley's explicit exchanges with Housepages. Yet during an October 10 press conference, Hastert deflectedblame onto his own staffers, who he said may have engaged in a"cover-up." (In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Hastertalso blamed his woes on "ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives,people funded by [liberal billionaire philanthropist] George Soros.")

While Hastert has never suggested his staffers were part of any gayRepublican "clique," openly gay Hill staffers who had contact withHastert's staff and his Congressional allies have become subjects of aHouse Ethics Committee and FBI investigation into Foleygate. One of thegay staffers, Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff to Foley, was servingas Reynolds's chief of staff when the news broke of Foley's activities.Another, Jeff Trandahl, served as House Clerk from 1999 to 2005 andoversaw the page program.

Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, has confirmed he was informed byFordham of Foley's lurid IMs in 2005. Fordham, however, alleges thatPalmer knew of Foley's behavior much earlier than 2005. Trandahl, forhis part, was presented with Foley's IMs in 2003 and, together withIllinois Republican Representative John Shimkus, told Foley to breakcontact with the teen.

Even though Fordham and Trandahl are key figures in the Foley scandal,the disclosure of their actions does not absolve House Republicanleaders of their own roles in keeping Foley's licentious and possiblyillegal behavior from the public. Yet Fordham and Trandahl are temptingtargets for the gay-obsessed Christian right. In their desperate effortto stave off a Democratic takeover of Congress and preserve theirpolitical agenda, Wildmon and his allies have volunteered as Hastert'ssurrogates, casting him as the victim of a gay Republican cabal.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins first laid out thestrategy on October 9, writing in FRC's newsletter :"Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members andor staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have towonder." Perkins continued: "Does the [Republican] party want torepresent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?" Though a portrait ofTrandahl appeared beside Perkins's missive, Perkins stopped just shortof calling for a purge of gay GOP staffers.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, a co-founder of the FRC and aclose ally of Wildmon, has taken a different tack. During the October 6broadcast of his radio show, syndicated on more than 3,000 stationsworldwide, Dobson dismissed Foley'sexplicit e-mail exchanges with a former House page as "sort of a joke bythe boy and some of the other pages." Dobson then suggested that theliberal media concocted the entire scandal in order to depress turnoutby so-called "values voters."

Five days later, Dobson returned to the airwaves to give the liberalmedia another tongue-lashing. After accusing Media Matters for Americaand the Huffington Post of "spinning" his earlier comments downplayingthe Foley scandal--"These folks can always be counted on to give themost extreme liberal interpretation of everything," Dobson exclaimed--herecounted an upsetting inquiry from a reporter from the St.Petersburg Times.

"She [the reporter] said, 'I heard late yesterday that Dr. Dobson hadasked House leadership to fire all gay staffers,'" Dobson recalled in avoice brimming with indignation. "That's crazy too. That, first of all,would be flat-out illegal. You can't fire people just because somebodysays so, and they're certainly not going to do it because James Dobsonsays so. That's crazy! They're trying to make us look like extremistsand people who do ridiculous things, and there's absolutely no basis inthis."

With Wildmon brandishing The List and demanding a gay purge, which inDobson's words would be a "crazy," "flat-out illegal," "ridiculousthing," the chaos and panic among the House leadership has spread to theChristian right. As Election Day draws nearer, the movement's mostinfluential leaders are markedly off-message, contradicting one another,and on the defensive. And their rhetorical fusillades have made gayRepublican House staffers, some about to testify before the EthicsCommittee and the FBI, fear for their careers.

Meanwhile, the so-called "values voters," cultivated to propel theRepublicans into control of the White House and Congress, appear to havelost the faith. An October 5 poll bythe nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of whiteevangelicals plan to vote for Republican Congressional candidates in themidterms--a twenty-one-point drop in support from 2004. With such alarge portion of the GOP's core constituency likely to stay home onNovember 6, the results could be devastating.

Yet Wildmon remains confident that the Christian right can somehowsnatch victory from the jaws of defeat. "This [scandal] might backfirein that if the 'values voters' see the methodology being used here, thatcould irritate them more than ever and motivate them to vote," Wildmonassured me. "George Soros and his wrecking crew might have made atactical mistake."