And, of course, he explains why this is all necessary!
From Tucker Carlson on Thursday October 5, 2006:
CARLSON: Accusations about Mark Foley‘s X-rated e-mails to underage pages first surfaced on the Internet on blogs. My next guest is a blogger who has been writing about former congressman Foley for over a year now and reportedly has warned of more revelations to come.Hat Tip Larwyn
Joining me from Washington, Michael Rogers, gay activist and blogger.
Michael Rogers, thanks a lot for coming on.
“Radar” magazine had an interesting item last night, writing about a site called stopsexpredators.blogspot, which appears to be the original site on which a number of these exchanges first surfaced. It‘s not clear who runs this site, it‘s not clear who owns it, what the purpose of it is, but it‘s clearly an orchestrated effort to torpedo Foley.
Are you behind this site?
MICHAEL ROGERS, GAY ACTIVIST & BLOGGER: I am absolutely not behind the site stopsexpredators.blogspot.com. Absolutely not.
I did receive the e-mails a little bit before they went up on Stop Sex Predators, and the Stop Sex Predators site administrator apparently, from an Gmail account, claiming that, told me about them, that they were posted there as well. And then when I had first received them I made sure that I immediately confirmed that they had been handed over to the proper law enforcement authorities prior to my obtaining them.
CARLSON: So it sounds like you were one of the very first people in America to see these exchanges. Where do you think came from? Who was behind this?
ROGERS: Well, I think that “The Hill” reported on that today. It‘s clear that it was a GOP operative. And, you know, as we see, that‘s because the GOP is pretty much falling apart at the seams on this. And the greatest kept secret for the GOP for the past six or seven years has been the extraordinary number of closeted men who have been helping to facilitate that anti-gay agenda.
And I know that there are a lot of my friends on the Republican side who are fed up and have been feeding me information on people like Mark Foley for well over an year. It‘s been known on my blog where I reported about him I guess last March of 2005. So...
CARLSON: ... you believe that Mark Foley was outed, his behavior was revealed to the world by gay Republicans bitter at the fact he was not publicly identifying himself as gay?
ROGERS: I‘m saying it was gay Republicans. It was people who are—I would think have something against Mr. Foley.
We see in “The Hill” that it was a GOP aide.
CARLSON: Right.
ROGERS: So clearly—and we have now known while people are claiming that this was released now, these are the folks that have sat on these for well over a year, and in some cases folks have been known, I guess, five years ago talking about this. So what I would say is I think what‘s happening is we‘re finding a crowd of people who are looking to point fingers at people who are in Congress and staff members in Congress who are—they want to point, you know, all these gay folks.
And what I would say is this: if gay men and lesbians are such a trouble inside of the Congress and they believe that it‘s such a problem, when I report on more of them before this next election, what are going to say about them? Will they join me in having them resign from the House?
CARLSON: But doesn‘t—I mean, look, don‘t the people have a right, A, to lead private lives of their own choosing, and B, to have their own political opinions without being harassed about their private lives by other people?
ROGERS: Absolutely, Tucker. And the only thing that I come into in terms of my reporting on hypocrisy is when those private lives are in direct conflict with the public lives and the public persona that they lead.
For example, if you are a gay man and you vote for the Defense of Marriage Act and refuse to support a repeal of Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell, and serve as a Boy Scout leader—this has not been known, that Mark Foley is listed on the Boy Scouts Web site as a Boy Scout leader. And when that happens, you have to realize that these closets are just—they‘re perpetuating all of this.
And I think that what we‘ve seen is, time and time again, there is no—the lies—clearly someone is not telling the truth. There are so many stories, the spinning that goes on.
My question is this: we have—we‘ve seen the family values crowd that this is affecting. What is Lou Dobson—I‘m sorry, what is James Dobson, what is Tony Perkins going to tell his constituency and their constituencies when folks like Ken Mehlman are depending on that 72-hour turnout?
CARLSON: Right.
ROGERS: I think this is a serious, serious problem for the Republican Party. I think that what we‘ve seen happen today is that the House will flip to the Democrats. That‘s my prediction.
CARLSON: Yes. I mean, this clearly hurts the Republican Party.
I—you know, there‘s a lot of talk about how the Republican base, the fabled base is so intolerant of homosexuality. I don‘t know. I‘m not sure that‘s exactly right.
ROGERS: I agree.
CARLSON: There are a number of conservative members of Congress who have gay staffers, openly gay staffers, and that doesn‘t seem to be a problem for them or for the staffers.
ROGERS: And Tucker, there are a number of gay Republicans and Democrats in Congress who I have not identified because they don‘t spend their days beating up lesbian and gay individuals. There are Republicans and Democrats that I have no interest on reporting on whatsoever because they‘re not hypocrites.
It‘s not about being gay. It‘s about being hypocritical. It‘s about saying I want to live by a different set of rules than everyone else. And that to me and I would hope to the American people, be it whether or not you‘re hitting on 16-year-olds online...
CARLSON: Right.
ROGERS: ... or you‘re deciding to restrict rights of the very community that you‘re asking to harbor you secretly, it‘s unacceptable. And I‘m
certainly going to continue to speak out about that.
CARLSON: All right. Mike Rogers, thanks very much.
ROGERS: Thank you, Tucker.
There seems to be a lot of this "New McCarthyism" going around lately.