I'll be honest – I don't like what Mike Rogers does. I believe it is dangerous and, indeed, at least as hypocritical as the things he exposes. And yes, I still hold a grudge over the harm he did to an old family friend, Congressman Ed Schrock, a couple of years back.

On the other hand, when a student needed legal assistance when faced with discrimination based upon his sexual orientation, Rogers was gracious in his willingness to direct the young man to resources and organizations.

So I'll be honest – I've got mixed emotions about the man. But I cannot deny that he has promoted himself into a power position in the blogosphere.

Rogers, sitting on a club chair in his Northwest Washington apartment, is basking in the attention. For three years now, he's been a feared one-man machine, "outing," he says, nearly three dozen senior political and congressional staffers, White House aides and, most damagingly, Congress members on his blog. On Capitol Hill, a typical phone call from Rogers -- "Are you gay?" he'd ask -- is "a call from Satan himself," says a former high-ranking congressional staffer whose name is on the list.

Rogers reasons that there's justice behind his tactics -- "odious," "outrageous" and "over-the-line" as they might seem to his detractors.

In Rogers's mind, if you're against gay rights in your public life and you live a secret homosexual life, all bets are off.

The problem, of course, is that Rogers is every bit as much of a fundamentalist "true believer" as some of those he attacks. And his actions are based upon a rather arrogant assumption – that homosexuals must share a certain set of political and social beliefs to be entitled to what the gay community claims for itself – the right to sexual privacy, and to be let alone.

So if a gay politician who opposes gay marriage (or a gay staffer for such a politician) – or the extension of hate crimes legislation to include crimes against homosexuals – is "anti-gay" and a hypocrite. Under this theory, one's sexual orientation must be the guiding factor in one's political and moral beliefs. And failure to at all times live up to these beliefs – what the Christian faith would call sin – is in his eyes "plain, hate-filled hypocrisy."

And therein lies my problem with Mike Rogers. It is the hypocrisy that permeates his activity. He does not out "friendly" closeted homosexuals, so it is clear that a more solidly pro-gay Mark Foley, for example, could have actually followed the route of former Massachusetts Congressman Gerry Studds and engaged in sex acts with a page safe from any possibility of Rogers would have acted against him. Instead, a series of creepy emails were sufficient for Rogers and others to tear the Florida Republican down last year (though they held the emails for nearly a year to ensure maximum political damage to the GOP, proving that they didn't give a damn about the pages).

But more to the point, Rogers seeks to use the very prejudices he claims to want eradicated to destroy those who do not hew to his agenda. In that, he is the equivalent of the kapos in the concentration camp, or a southern black who would cooperate with the Klan. And just as such morally corrupt individuals may have thought their actions were acceptable, history has judged them harshly, as I believe it will ultimately judge Rogers and his ilk harshly.

After all, this is the many who tried to get one blogger fired for daring to criticize his outing campaign, and temporarily got another's site shut down with false accusations against him. In that, Rogers is very much what those bloggers labeled him – a gay terrorist (or at least a gay McCarthyite), not a gay activist.

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Posted by: Greg at 12:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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