Former RNC chief Ken Mehlman: I’m gay 
 
 posted at 6:37 pm on August 25, 2010 by Allahpundit 
 
 He says he realized it “fairly recently,” in Marc Ambinder’s words, which has Tammy Bruce chuckling on Twitter. Honestly, I thought the guy came out years ago. Remember when Bill Maher talked about the rumors surrounding him on Larry King’s show — back in 2006? I guess you were the last to know, Ken. 
 
 He’s doing this now, it seems, because he wants to drum up publicity for the cause of gay marriage and figures that “Republican whom everyone thought was gay actually is gay” headlines will do the trick. Could be, although Ambinder’s careful to remind readers of the sort of social con initiatives that the GOP pushed during Mehlman’s RNC tenure. That won’t endear him to gay activists, and his newly public identity won’t endear him to social cons. Maybe he should have just worked for gay marriage like Ted Olson and kept his orientation private? 
 
 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.” Mehlman’s leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities — such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party’s platform (“Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country…”). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans. Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda. “It’s a legitimate question and one I understand,” Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.” He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.” 
 
 I couldn’t care less either way, but with all the buzz lately about new conservative support for gays — here’s the latest surreal episode in the Coulter/Farah HomoCon saga, incidentally — this is a bracing reminder that an openly gay RNC chief probably would still be a problem. Or would it? 
 
 Related Posts: ||||| Ken Mehlman is gay. Lots of people thought so, but nobody knew for sure until Mehlman began telling friends and family in recent months. Now it's public: Mehlman has given a full interview to the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder. 
 
 This is a big deal. Mehlman managed President Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 and chaired the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. Many influential Republicans have worked with him and respect him. He makes it harder for them to think of homosexuality as a behavior. They now know somebody who is gay. Or, as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, they now know that they know somebody who is gay. 
 
 That's important, because if you look at polls over the last 30 or 40 years, two factors have been driving public opinion in the direction of gay rights. One is whether you know someone who's openly gay. More and more people do, and those who do are more tolerant of homosexuality. The other factor is whether you think it's involuntary. This belief, too, has increased over time, and tolerance has increased with it. It's pretty hard to imagine that the guy who ran the GOP during its recent campaigns against gay marriage would come out as homosexual unless he felt he had no choice. This is simply who he is. 
 
 Look at the early reactions from his colleagues. The party's current chairman, Michael Steele, says, "I am happy for Ken. His announcement, often a very difficult decision which is only compounded when done on the public stage, reaffirms for me why we are friends and why I respect him personally and professionally." Very difficult decision means, among other things, that Mehlman had no choice. And because the friendship remains, Steele now has another gay friend to think about when he hears a pitch to score political points at the expense of gays. 
 
 Ed Gillespie, the RNC chairman who preceded Mehlman, tells Ambinder that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republican National Committee is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Gillespie acknowledges "big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side." Discomfort with abortion isn't going away, but discomfort with same-sex marriage is fading. Homosexuality is becoming normalized. 
 
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 In fact, it's becoming Republicanized. Lately, Mehlman has been advising the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is leading the legal battle for gay marriage in California. The foundation's message is nonjudgmental liberal boilerplate: "dedicated to protecting and advancing equal rights for every American." But Mehlman's personal message goes beyond equality. Ambinder, describing his conversation with Mehlman, reports: 
 
 He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue. "What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party's philosophy, whether it's the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong commitment to each other to get married." 
 
 That message isn't just egalitarian or libertarian. It's socially conservative. It embraces marriage as an institution that promotes and solidifies commitment. Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and other writers have made this point for a long time: If you believe in the cultural virtues of marriage, you should support it for gay couples as well as straight ones. 
 
 If Mehlman can carry that message into the heart of the GOP—if he can give Republicans a way to be pro-marriage without being antigay—he'll have done a great service not just to his party, but to his community. 
 
 
 
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 Latest Twitter Updates Follow William Saletan on Twitter. ||||| Rumors about former RNC chair Ken Mehlman’s Complete Gayness have been swirling around for years and years. Mike Rogers outed him several years back, as part of his campaign to rid the political world of homosexuals who cynically use the rest of the gay community as bait in order to convince rubes, yahoos, bumpkins and other morons to set down the teevee clicker even if it means missing the last five minutes of The 700 Club, in order to go out and vote Republican, due to abject fear of gays. Mehlman’s sins were particularly egregious, since we are after all talking about the guy who helped run the most anti-gay presidential campaign in history, which gave us Four More Years of the Crawford hick and his handlers, Karl and Dick. 
 
 Anyway, now Ken Mehlman has something to say! “Are you there, God? It’s me, Ken Mehlman, and I suck bags of dicks! No, God, I mean literally!”: 
 
 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,” Mehlman said. “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.” 
 
 Oh, but if you had done it years ago, Kenneth, you wouldn’t have made eleventy billion dollars by publicly fighting the gay demons in your mind, for Evil, which you then used to buy a swanky $3.7 million man-pad in Chelsea. 
 
 Anyway, also, Ken Mehlman is very confused as to why The Gays never signed on to Republican pants-shitting campaigns against Muslins: 
 
 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.” 
 
 I wonder why! For the answer to this question, let’s go to our slightly more serious homosexual reporter, also named Evan Hurst: 
 
 Oh, that’s because the Republican plan for fighting Islamic extremism is laughably stupid, driven by emotion and fear, and exemplifies all the characteristics of Severe Small Penis Syndrome. Additionally, it’s been a hilarious failure everywhere it’s been tried. Thanks, Bill Kristol! 
 
 Simple answers to simple questions, this has been. 
 
 For his part, Mike Rogers wants to see Ken Mehlman do a LOT of apologizing and public self-flagellation before he will even think about allowing him to be a Socially Accepted Gay: 
 
 So, how can Ken Mehlman redeem himself? I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for being the architect of the 2004 Bush reelection campaign. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for his role in developing strategy that resulted in George W. Bush threatening to veto ENDA or any bill containing hate crimes laws. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for the pressing of two Federal Marriage Amendments as political tools. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for developing the 72-hour strategy, using homophobic churches to become political arms of the GOP before Election Day. And those state marriage amendments. I want to hear him apologize for every one of those, too. 
 
 Also, he should probably be punched on live television by Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, and maybe one of the man-fags from the So You Think You Can Lip Sync While Wearing Wigs or the So You Think You Can Make Pretty Dresses, For Girls, or whatever the hell shows the gays watch obsessively, in groups, while squealing, especially since Mehlman is still giving money to anti-gay candidates! As Joe Jervis said, “hookers call that ‘working both sides of the street.'” 
 
 
 
 Classic Liz Glover video of Ken Mehlman at his rooftop goodbye party, June 2007. 
 
 For their part, this news is making the homosexual wingnuts show everybody their yucky Quisling boners, which is never appropriate, especially so close to 9/11. 
 
 Anyway, welcome to gayness, Ken! Nobody is going to have sex with you, but don’t let it bring you down, because they probably weren’t having sex with you before. [Marc Ambinder/Truth Wins Out/BlogActive] ||||| > 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 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 stated 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." Mehlman 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." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman's leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities -- such as the 2006 distribution in West Virginia of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party's platform ("Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country..."). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally." He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: "If they can't offer support, at least offer understanding." 
 
 
 
 
 
 "What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn't always heard. I didn't do this in the gay community at all." 
 
 
 
 
 
 He said that he "really wished" he had come to terms with his sexual orientation earlier, "so I could have worked against [the Federal Marriage Amendment]" and "reached out to the gay community in the way I reached out to African Americans." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman understands that his attempts to justify his past silence will not be adequate for many people. He and his friends say that he is aware that he will no longer control the story about his identity -- which will simultaneously expose old wounds, invite Schadenfruede, and legitimize anger among gay rights activists in both parties who did not hide their sexual orientations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman, who has never married, long found his sexuality subject to rumor and innuendo. He was the subject of an outing campaign by gay rights activist Mike Rogers, starting when Mehlman was Bush's campaign manager. Rogers's crusades against closeted gay Republicans split the organized gay lobby in Washington but were undoubtedly effective: he drove several elected officials, including Virginia Rep. Ed Shrock, from office, pushed out a would-be presidential campaign manager for George Allen well before Allen was set to run, slung rumors about Sen. Larry Craig's sexual orientation well before Craig's incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, and even managed to make homosexuality a wedge issue within the party's activist circles. 
 
 
 
 
 
 In 2006, Rogers caught up to Mehlman and asked him why he gave "so many confusing answers to social conservatives about your homosexuality," and followed up by asking whether Mehlman knew of a man who Rogers had claimed was Mehlman's secret partner. Mehlman denied to Rogers that he had given conflicting answers and said that the man in question was a law school classmate. 
 
 
 
 
 
 In several discussions I've had with Mehlman since he stepped down from the Republican National Committee in 2007, he never volunteered information about his sexual orientation, although charges that he helped preside over a resurgence in anti-gay sentiment were clearly an ongoing burden to him. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The disclosure at this stage of Mehlman's life strikes one close friend as being like a decision to jump off of a high diving board: Mehlman knows that there is plenty of water below, but it is still frightening to look down and make the leap. Mehlman likes order and certainty, and he knows that the reaction to his public confirmation cannot be predicted or contained. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Because his tenure as RNC chairman and his time at the center of the Bush political machine coincided with the Republican Party's attempts to exploit anti-gay prejudices and cement the allegiance of social conservatives, his declaration to the world is at once a personal act and an act of political speech. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn't know. My friends didn't know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic," he said. 
 
 
 
 
 
 During the Rogers crusades, many news organizations made attempts to confirm rumors and stories about Mehlman's sexuality. Republicans close to Mehlman either said they did not know, or that it did not matter, or that the question was offensive. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman once joked in public that although he was not gay, the rumors put a crimp on his social life. He admits to having misled several people who asked him about his sexuality directly. 
 
 
 
 
 
 He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party's philosophy, whether it's the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong committment to each other to get married." 
 
 
 
 
 
 "I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman and long-time friend of Mehlman, said that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republiucan National Committe is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Although Gillespie himself opposes gay marriage, he pointed to party stalwarts like former Vice President Dick Cheney and strategist Mary Matalin as open advocates for gay rights who had not been drummed out of the party. He acknowledged "big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side." 
 
 
 
 
 
 But, Gillespie said, he does not envision the party platform changing anytime soon. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "There are a lot of Republicans who are gay, there are a lot of Republicans who support government sanction of gay marriage, a lot of Republicans who support abortion on demand, a lot of Republicans who support cap-and-trade provisions. They're not single-issue voters." Gillespie acknowledged that the party had been inhospitable to gays in the past, and said that he hopes Mehlman's decision to come out leads the party to be "more respectful and civil in our discourse" when it comes to gays. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mehlman said that his formal coming-out process began earlier this year. Over the past several weeks, he has notified former colleagues, including former President Bush. Once he realized that the news would probably leak, he assembled a team of former advisers to help him figure out the best way to harness the publicity generated by the disclosure for the cause of marriage rights. He is worried that some will see his decision to go public as opportunistic. Mehlman recently moved to Chelsea, a gay mecca in New York City. He refused to discuss his personal life with me, and he plans to give only a few print interviews on the subject. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chad Griffin, the California-based political strategist who organized opposition to Proposition 8, said that Mehlman's quiet contributions to the American Foundation for Equal Rights are "tremendous," adding that "when we achieve equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it." Mehlman has become a de facto strategist for the group, and he has opened up his rolodex -- recruiting, as co-hosts for the AFER fundraiser: Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, hedge fund executive, and the president of the Manhattan Institute; Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the GOP's top lawyers; Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and two former GOP governors, William Weld of Massachusetts and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award-winning writer of "Milk," said, "Ken represents an incredible coup for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. We believe that our mission of equal rights under the law is one that should resonate with every American. As a victorious former presidential campaign manager and head of the Republican Party, Ken has the proven experience and expertise to help us communicate with people across each of the 50 states." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Photo: Jay L. Clendenin-Pool/Getty Images 
 
 
 
 
 
 He comes out of the closet and talks about gay marriage, Karl Rove, and more 
 
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– Ken Mehlman sent pundits chattering when he came out of the closet to support gay marriage yesterday. Here's what they're saying: “Honestly, I thought the guy came out years ago,” writes Hot Air blogger “Allahpundit,” recalling Bill Maher’s outing of him on Larry King in 2006 (see video). Still, “this is a bracing reminder that an openly gay RNC chief probably would still be a problem.” William Saletan of Slate thinks it’s great that Republican bigwigs have an extra gay friend. “Homosexuality is becoming normalized,” he writes. “In fact, it's becoming Republicanized.” Mehlman’s pitch for gay marriage is downright socially conservative, arguing that it is an institution that promotes and solidifies monogamous commitment. “My sense is that it’ll be a lot less of a big deal to conservatives than it might be to liberals …for whom the political is also the personal,” writes Peter Wehner in Commentary, adding that he knows and likes Mehlman. “I hope some measure of grace and understanding are accorded to him.” But Evan Hurst of Wonkette isn't ready to forgive Mehlman for his anti-gay campaign tactics, especially because he’s still giving money to anti-gay candidates. “He should probably be punched on live television by Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.”