Having once been a libertarian (card-carrying, even), the news from the New Republic (Jan. 30) was a little surprising: Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate who is raising beaucoup buckets of campaign cash and who everybody considers (positively) as a closet libertarian, is flat-out lying about a number of his perceived political opinions. And it’s all in print. Author, or sponsor, of a large number of pre-blog newsletters that reveal ‘decades … [of] deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews and gays.’ One of the milder pieces refers to Black people as ‘animals’ and he goes on to accuse Martin Luther King, Jr., of seducing ‘… underage girls and boys.’ Paul’s record on gays is not any better—he writes of ‘limp wrists,’ the ‘gay lobby’ and the ‘Pink House’ (when Bush I signed a hate-crimes bill and invited gay leaders to Washington for the ceremony). He concluded once that it was ‘… far better … when social pressure forced them [gay people] to hide their activities.’ The newsletters go on and on about AIDS, including some extremely un-libertarian views of restrictions on AIDS patients’ movements—like that they shouldn’t be allowed in restaurants, for example. (And managers would know their status by the large pink stars on their chests?) Many of the top leaders of the Libertarian Party and movement are gladly and openly gay, and if any of them were anti-Semitic or racist it would be quickly known and disapproved of. One wonders what they think of Paul’s campaign. One also wonders why gay writer Andrew Sullivan endorsed Paul.
Richard Roeper, in the Chicago Sun-Times (Jan. 23), seconds Out Magazine’s Josh Kilmer-Purcell, who founded ‘Phags for Phelps’ to show support for the frothing-at-the-mouth Phelps family of the Topeka, Kan., Westboro Baptist Church, ‘who claim natural disasters are God’s way of punishing us for our take on abortion, same-sex marriage, loose morals, whatever.’ (Most of the whatever is tolerance for homosexuals. The Phelps are known for picketing military funerals because the military’s well-known tolerance of homosexuality.) ‘They never explain why God takes out nuns and do-gooders and Christians and babies in these tragedies.’ Kilmer-Purcell calls the Phelps family ‘… the most important [gay rights] activists since Stonewall. Why? Quite simply because they give homophobes a bad name.’
Tho’ he’s kidding and says so, Father Andrew Greeley, in the Chicago Sun-Times (Jan. 23), says if you’re going to play the victim card and vote for a candidate only because she’s a woman, or only because he’s Black, shouldn’t we vote for a gay or transgender candidate who’d score even higher on the victimization criterion? [On a separate matter, we hope the rumors floating around about the Chicago Sun-Times closing are just that—rumors.]