Bush-Cheney Campaign Manager, Ex-Chairman of Republican Party Comes out as Gay
Ken Mehlman, the erstwhile chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection effort, has come out of the closet as gay in a column published in The Atlantic.
Mehlman, 44, spearheaded the Bush re-election campaign. The campaign used aggressively anti-gay tactics, including the mailing of a flyer in some states which suggested liberals would allow gay marriage and ban the Bible. Some believe Bush’s support for anti-gay marriage measures carried him to victory, particularly in Ohio, which had a gay marriage measure on the ballot
I often wonder how people like Mehlman manage to do this. How did he rationalize the propagation of hate speech against himself? How can you work to actually curtail your own rights? The mechanisms that allow someone like Mehlman to sleep at night must be quite fascinating. And it’s not like this is an isolated incident, throughout the years we see it again and again with religious bigots, politicians, etc.
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