Miss McConnell is a closet case with the worst record on LGBT issues in the entire Congress. ProgressivePunch rates him a ZERO in the current session and a ZERO for his entire career. Miss McConnell is what you call a mentally unbalanced hypocrite, exactly the type Republican state Senator Roy Ashburn warned us about when he was caught, drunk, with a young male prostitute in his car and decided to come out of the closet and come clean. Right after his arrest Ashburn went on the radio and told his constituents that he'd been "hiding" for his entire career, being a leader in legislative homophobia to cover up his own fears of being exposed.
"I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic 'no' vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that."No one thinks we'll ever hear those words coming from Miss McConnell-- but no one ever thought we'd hear them coming from Senator Ashburn either. Unlike swishy, fun-loving "lifelong bachelors" like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), David Dreier (R-CA) and Mark Foley (R-FL), Miss McConnell isn't fooling around. He's dedicated to keeping that closet door shut TIGHT. Like other psychotic GOP closet cases Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Larry Craig (R-ID) and Jim McCrery (R-LA), he's entered into a phony-baloney "marriage" to trick voters into thinking he's straight. He's become personally very rich while serving in the Senate-- the 10th wealthiest person in that body with an estimated net worth north of $40 million-- and there's a lot riding on his ability to hold onto that Kentucky Senate seat from which all those millions flow his way.
He may be relieved Ashley Judy is giving the race a pass but there are two more lethal threats to his career ahead, a possible Tea Party primary and then popular Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a mainstream Democrat. It isn't likely that McConnell's sexual hypocrisy is going to do him much damage in his reelection bid. His base doesn't believe it and normal people already oppose him. But the stories about McConnell fondling a private's private parts and then getting tossed out of the Army in 1967 have been around. People have even talked to witnesses but no one comes forward on the record and the media plays it down-- just like they always did with Idaho Senator Larry Craig and Florida Congressman Mark Foley-- until they were caught in the act.
In the spring of 2008, Mike Rogers, one of the journalists who first reported how Larry Craig was trawling public toilets looking for sex, wrote about a startling similarity between Craig-- who also molested enlisted men in the army-- and McConnell:
McConnell's discharge was expedited by Cooper's claim that the enlistee needed to be released quickly to attend New York University.McConnell, of course adamantly refuses to allow the release of his records. They're as tightly closeted as he is. The country is moving; Miss McConnell isn't. From an analysis of that movement by Anzalone Research, the Blue Dog consulting firm:
NYU records, however, indicate that McConnell never applied to the school, and at the time of his discharge he had already earned a law degree from the University of Kentucky. Why exactly would a United States Senator write to the Commanding General of one of the nation's most important military installations with false information about a member of the US armed forces?
A lot of smart people have pursued this story. The common thread? McConnell's military records. That's because those records are private, unless of course McConnell chooses to make them public. Sen. McConnell doesn't even acknowledge his military service on either his US Senate or re-election campaign websites, so it's probably no surprise that he's kept those records under lock and key for years.
So, why revisit this story, and why revisit it now?
Like when I investigated and reported on Larry Craig after 26 years of rumors, I've turned fresh eyes on this case and recently noticed an interesting inconsistency with McConnell's public Army record. In particular, there is a differing answer to a section of his records titled, "Transcript of Court Martial." While every other section of McConnell's records without information simply "n/a," this particular section uniquely states, "not on file." Does that mean a McConnell court martial file exists? Only the Senator knows.
I also have reviewed copies of phone records showing a flurry of calls from the office of McConnell's patron in the Senate, Sen. Cooper, in the days immediately preceding McConnell's discharge. The calls abruptly stopped as McConnell was released from the service. It is also interesting to note that the UK archives show that despite a frequent correspondence during the years prior to his discharge, it was three years after McConnell's discharge before they exchanged letters again.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that support for marriage equality stands at the highest it's been in the ten years the question has been asked. Right now, 58% of Americans believe it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married, while 36% think it should be illegal. In 2003, those numbers were an almost mirror-opposite: 37% supported legal marriage for same-sex couples, while 55% opposed it. According to the poll, marriage equality enjoys majority support from men and women and across major educational, income and regional divides for the first time...Our own polling on behalf of the Americans for Equal Rights found that 75% of Americans now believe that the ability to marry the person you love is a Constitutional right. Secondly, this once hot-button political issue is as much a generational divide as a partisan one.
...Support has risen across racial groups and religious affiliations, as well, though substantial divides still exist. A majority of Catholics (both white and Hispanic) support marriage equality, but only a third of Protestants do. Part of the reason Protestant support is lower is that support among white Evangelicals stands at just 19%. There is also a big difference between white mainline Protestants, a majority of whom support same-sex marriage, and black Protestants, of which only a third support marriage equality.
While support has grown among the religiously affiliated, this does not necessarily mean their religious views have changed. In fact, 56% of Americans believe same-sex marriage conflicts with their religious beliefs, yet 66% think that same-sex couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Among the 28% who agree with both statements, support for marriage equality is split, 46% favor to 44% oppose.
Support among African Americans has increased dramatically in recent years. Some of this increase may be due to President Obama's declaration of support last May. Polls conducted by Public Policy Polling in North Carolina and Maryland saw a major shift of support after the announcement, as did a national poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post, which found 59% of African Americans in support of same-sex marriage, an 18-point jump from the average of 41% in polls before Obama's announcement.
Why the shift?While generational changes can explain part of the shift (Millennials make up a larger share of the adult population today than 10 years ago) that is not the whole story. Politicians like President Obama, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Rob Portman and former Secretary of State Colin Powell have publicly spoken about their personal journeys on the topic, and they are not alone. According to Pew, 14% of the public, or one in seven Americans, has changed his or her mind in support of gay marriage.
When asked what it was that made them change their mind, 32%, like Portman and Cheney, attributed it to knowing someone who is homosexual. Another 25% have had an "evolution" like Obama, saying they had given it more thought and grown more open. And after an election season that saw voters in three states approve measures legalizing same-sex marriages, and voters in another state reject an amendment that would have denied same-sex couples the right to marry, 18% said they changed their mind because they think the world has changed and same-sex marriage is inevitable.
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