Ken Mehlman Apologizes For First Time

"At a personal level, I wish I had spoken out against the effort. As I’ve been involved in the fight for marriage equality, one of the things I’ve learned is how many people were harmed by the campaigns in which I was involved. I apologize to them and tell them I am sorry. While there have been recent victories, this could still be a long struggle in which there will be setbacks, and I’ll do my part to be helpful." - Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, finally publicly apologizing for spearheading a dozen state-level anti-gay ballot measures in order increase voter turnout for the 2004 reelection of George W. Bush.

RELATED: In the last two years Mehlman has worked to help convince GOP lawmakers to support same-sex marriage in several states. However later this month he will also co-chair a high-ticket fundraiser for the reelection for House Speaker John Boehner, who recently tripled the federal budget to defend against the overturn of DOMA.

Architect Of Anti-Gay State Amendments Named To Out Magazine's "Out 100"

Because Ken Mehlman finally came out as a millionaire gay banker and then played a "quietly instrumental role" in New York's marriage equality battle, the folks at Out Magazine have forgiven his days as the head of the Republican National Committee, where he orchestrated numerous successful statewide campaigns to demonize and make illegal the lives and loves of LGBT people.

For all those millions of people made miserable by Ken Mehlman? Forgiven. The kids who killed themselves because of relentlessly vicious campaigns spawned by Ken Mehlman? Forgotten. The anti-gay politicians funded last year by Ken Mehlman? Ignored.

UPDATE: On their blog, Out Magazine notes this post and asks for feedback.

"We also announced Tom Duane and Daniel O'Donnell, two politicians essential in the fight for same-sex marriage in New York State. Should we only recognize the steadfastly positive and not the ones who may have a more complicated track record?"

UPDATE II: The Advocate (Out's sister publication) notes this post and quotes Out editor Aaron Hicklin.

Hicklin contends that Mehlman, and people like him, are necessary to advance marriage equality nationwide. "He is a savvy political operator, and we need people with his experience and influence to help our fight," Hicklin said. "I expected his inclusion to elicit some protests, but ultimately it’s up to readers themselves to decide how they feel about his record. The media’s role is to provoke conversation, and in this we clearly succeeded."

Ken Mehlman Confronted Over Past

Activist Jon Winkleman tried to get former RNC chair Ken Mehlman to own up to his role in numerous anti-gay campaigns, but Mehlman wasn't having it. Clip description:

I ran into Bush's former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman who oversaw the anti-LGBT campaigns and ballot questions Bush used as wedge issues and to throw red meat to his base. Mehlman claims he came out after Bush left office, though it was widely known in DC that Mehlman was gay at the time. He knew what he was doing and that it was hurting other LGBT Americans. I know he helped with the efforts to pass marriage in NY but he still supports those who do us harm. Also his cynical anti-LGBT campaigns at the RNC fanned the flames of hate and violent hate crimes increased in the districts they focused. LGBT people were hurt...physically, because of Mehlman's actions. So of course I had to go over and say something.

Ken Mehlman Speaks To GOProud

Just posted to GOProud's YouTube channel is this clip of the repulsive Ken Mehlman speaking at Saturday's fundraiser in the DC home of former Cheney staffer Mary Matalin. Mehlman: "We must follow the tradition of what GOProud is doing, which is to say, 'We will define conservatism by what your mind tells you, not by arbitrary characteristics that you were born with that you can't help."

Photo Of The Day - Mehlman & Matalin

Former RNC chairman (and 21st century Roy Cohn) Ken Mehlman attended Saturday's GOProud fundraiser in the home of former Dick Cheney adviser Mary Matalin. GOProud has posted dozens of photos.

Quote Of The Day - Andrew Breitbart

"The point is to welcome people into the big tent. I'm working on getting a venue. The first annual Roy Cohn CPAC Breitbart Homocon Welcoming 80's Extravaganza. I'm thinking of DJ-ing." - Wingnut commentator Andrew Breitbart, invoking the name of the most detested self-loathing homosexual in history to describe the party he says he'll throw for GOProud at this year's CPAC.

Breitbart, who says he supports GOProud's inclusion at the event, is using the controversy to ramp up his long-running feud with World Net Daily. We thank him for making the GOProud-Roy Cohn connection.

Homocon Tweet Of The Day

This is the same guy that made those fawning videos about Homocon 2010, which he has since deleted due to mocking comments. He's also started a Homocons NYC page on Facebook.

Here's My MSNBC Clip

Thanks to everybody who sent the clip this weekend. Obviously I had a LOT more to say, but thanks to Paris Hilton and the Titanic, they cut our segment very short. But do check out how the LCR idiot tries to spin Ken Mehlman as a some kind of superhero gay mole working within the GOP. What a fuckload of lying crap.

The Original Ken Mehlman

"Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through the City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry? No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?

The president?

"Even better, Henry. His wife. I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because what I am defines entirely who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with boys." - Al Pacino as Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels In America.

Repulsive Anti-Gay Quisling Homophobic Scumbag Asshat Closeted Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman Has Come Out

Maybe the $4M loft he bought in gay gay gay Chelsea this summer did (or more likely, brought) the trick, as Mike Rogers reports today that repulsive 2004 Dubya campaign manager and former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman is about to come out. [UPDATE: It's official. See update at the bottom of this post.]

In 2004 Steve Schmidt (then the Republican National Convention spokesman and later the McCain campaign's senior strategist) lied to me when I asked him point blank about Mehlman. "Ken Mehlman is not gay," he proclaimed. In 2006, Mehlman told the New York Daily News, "I am not gay, but those stories did a number on my dating life for six months." It's so nice to be proven right, me that is, not Ken. If this move doesn't call for a Roy Cohn Award, I don't know what does. Ken Mehlman is horridly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past.

As we saw with Jim McGreevy, many gay leaders will attempt to elbow themselves to the front of the line to say on cable TV how wonderful it is that Ken is now being honest with the American people. Someone will be quoted in the New York Times saying something like, "After so many years of working for the Republicans, it's wonderful to see Ken be true to himself." Or perhaps you'll read a quote in the Washington Post about how "every gay person is on their own personal journey and we are happy Ken has decided to be so open about his personal struggle." Next up will come the book, then the TV shows, and of course the speaking tour. I'll only buy it if he is really sorry.

Mehlman's crimes against his own people are motherfucking LEGION. Mike Rogers continues:

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.

We can be sure that GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans are positively drooling over the prospect of welcoming Mehlman onto their boards of directors. VOMIT.

UPDATE: It's official. Here's Mehlman's statement.

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life. 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. 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."

Read the entire story on the Atlantic. Andy Towle is reporting that Mehlman has already agreed to chair a "major anti-Prop 8 fundraiser" for Americans For Equal Rights, Ted Olson and David Boies' outfit. Gee thanks, shitbag. That's like offering to help rebuild a house when YOU were the fucker that helped BURN IT DOWN.

UPDATE II: Courtesy of Towleroad, here's the official invite to the AFER/Mehlman Prop 8 fundraiser. UPDATE III: Oscar winning Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black cheers on Facebook.

Barbara Walters: Why I Was Roy Cohn's Beard

In an interview promoting her new memoir, Audition, Barbara Walters tells the San Francisco Chronicle about her relationship with Roy Cohn, the most despised gay man in American history, explaining why she allowed Cohn to pose as her boyfriend.

Many of Walters' other friends were horrified that she would even talk to Cohn, but what Walters reveals for the first time in "Audition" is that Cohn somehow got a warrant for her father's arrest dismissed. He had failed to show up for a New York court date because the family was in Las Vegas at the time.

Cohn liked to hint that they were more than friends "because I was his claim to heterosexuality," Walters says. "He never said that he was gay, he never admitted to me that he had AIDS. He was a very complicated man. He died, alone, up to his ears in debt. He had been disbarred and he was hated. And I might have thought the same way, but he did something when my father was in trouble, [and] I never forgot that."

Loyalty, she says, means everything to her. "I still have many of the same friends I had when I was younger," she says.

Did Cohn have a secret "nice" side?

"I would not use the word nice," she laughs. "He was very smart. And funny. And, at the time, seemed to know everyone in New York. He was very friendly with the cardinal, he was very friendly with the most famous columnist in New York, Walter Winchell, he had a lot of extremely powerful friends."

Some background for the youngin's who somehow may not know who Roy Cohn was:

When he was 24, as Assistant District Attorney of Manhattan, Cohn's eviscerating questioning of nuclear scientists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg was widely credited with their espionage convictions. In his autobiography, Cohn claimed that the judge imposed the death penalty on the Rosenbergs on his recommendation. The actual guilt of the Rosenbergs (Ethel, in particular) remains a topic of great debate. Cohn's performance in the trial led FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to recommend him to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

As McCarthy's chief counsel during the communist witch hunts of the 1950's, Cohn and his boss called hundreds of government employees to testify before a Senate subcommittee on accusations of communism, espionage, and homosexuality. (That subcommittee continues to operate today as part of the Senate Committee On Homeland Security.) Thanks to Cohn's vicious interrogations, many of these gay people lost their jobs, homes, and families. This was all done with Cohn's purported lover G. David Schine, a handsome young lawyer, working at his side as an unpaid consultant. (Some historians say Cohn was merely infatuated with Schine and that they were not sexually involved.)

After Schine was drafted by the Army and was in danger of being sent to Korea, Cohn attempted to intervene and get Schine a safer assignment. He then accused the Army of holding Schine "hostage" unless Cohn ended his investigation of communist infiltration of the armed services. The hearings into Cohn's allegations backfired (with Senators snickering that Schine was a "fairy"), resulting in Cohn's resignation and McCarthy's later censure by the Senate, effectively ending the witch hunts.

In his private practice over the next 30 years, during which he often defended mafia bosses, Cohn also lobbied strongly against homosexual rights, all while visiting gay clubs and chasing "muscle men." One of his last acts was to work against NYC's gay rights ordinance. Cohn's death from AIDS in 1986 was immortalized by playwright Tony Kushner in his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, Angels In America. (Cohn was also a character in Kushner's lesser known play, G. David Schine In Hell.)

Previous to this revelation about his helping her father, Barbara Walters' devotion to Roy Cohn had been explained as gratitude for his role in the adoption of her daughter. You have to wonder how Walters managed to have a such a successful career in journalism while being lifelong friends with such a famously evil person.