When You Did in the Closet, Does Anyone Hear?

We all know that there are gay Republicans. At least several. And many are conflicted in their loyalty to the Grand Old Party, for obvious reasons. The Log Cabin Republicans, for example, the largest club for gay Republicans, refused to endorse El Presidente in the past election, though they also didn't exactly campaign against him, far as we could tell.

Why there are gay Republicans becomes a mystery as inscrutable almost as cold fusion theory. The North Carolina Republican Party, for example, wouldn't allow North Carolina gay Republicans to set up a card table at the state's Republican convention last year. Why would you hang out politically with people who think they'll get gay cooties if they allow you in the lobby?

So reading this headline in the Washington Times got our attention -- "Republican media advisor found dead" -- and discovering that said "media advisor" was G.A.Y. but evidently still in the official party closet, according to the Times, reconfirms our impression that Kool Aid-imbibing may be more rife than we had suspected.

The "media advisor" about whom the headline was written was R. Gregory Stevens, "who recently served as co-chairman of the Bush/Cheney Entertainment Task Force," i.e., a shill for lining up even third-rate Hollywood talent for the 2nd Bush Inaugural. Stevens was 42 -- 42! -- and was found dead by actress Carrie Fisher in one of her guest bedrooms last Saturday morning. No explanation, no known cause of death.

Then the Times gets real, real coy, in that 1950s up-tight style of theirs: Mr. Stevens was "a flamboyant personality and bicoastal bachelor."

Oh. Oh, right! Might as well have written, "Mr. Stevens was out of the closet among his friends and in Hollywood but still very much in the closet as far as the Republican mullahs who are currently jerking El Presidente's chain on values and morality."

Mr. Stevens was also "regarded as something of a misfit [wink, wink] in the corridors of the buttoned-down lobbying firm" he worked for, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, the powerhouse K Street Republican outfit started by former Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour, who is currently guv of Missislappy.

It's obviously a loss when a 42-year-old, "very popular" bicoastal personality dies suddenly and without explanation. It's much sadder that he served a power structure that can't acknowledge who he was.