Tea Partiers held a rally Saturday in Greenville, South Carolina, and look who they found to beat up on:
"Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsay. But as our U.S. senator, I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own country. And I need to make sure you being gay isn't it."
That would be Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), of course. The speaker, who's not identified on the YouTube clip, goes on to say: "I'm going to take some heat about that on Monday. You can count on that." A commenter on the clip suggests that it's William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration who's doing the gay baiting.
Proving once again that they'll share a stage with just about anybody, conservative Republican leaders turned out for the rally, too. Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. Jim DeMint and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer all spoke that day, reports the Palmetto Scoop.
There's more. Former Colorado representative and Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo hit the birther note about President Obama, telling the crowd: "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"
If you want to read up on Graham and the gay thing, try this, this, and this.
(H/T: @QueerjohnPA)
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Weird.
Now...do you want to know the REALLY funny thing? Andre Bauer...he of the Lt. Governor fame....and running to be governor is also gay and sat right there and didn't say anything about it.
For the last part, I guess Lindsay is going to have to resign now from the US Air Force Reserve JAG Corps. He has just been called out on his gayness, albeit by a third-person, but that has never stopped the witch hunters...er...gay hunters before. He will have to be dishonorable discharged for his gayness. Maybe he will have to get them to hurry up the repeal of this Don't Ask-Don't Tell so he can keep double dipping his Senator salary and his Lt. Colonel salary. Ya' Think?
Just because you say you're tolerant doesn't make it so.
I actually kind of feel sorry for Graham. There's no easy way out of this for him. If he says, "I'm gay," he's a hypocrite. If he says, "I'm not gay," he looks like he's joining the crazies.
Please save your sympathy. Lindsay Graham has spent the last 13 years in Congress consistently voting for every anti-gay piece of legislation that he could find or co-sponsoring it if he knew that it would never pass. It is no secret that he is gay. We in South Carolina have known for most of his political career when he first ran for solicitor in upstate South Carolina where this rally was.
Lindsay brought this on himself. His anti-gay hypocrisy has led to having people use it against him. And the worst thing is, his superiors in the Air Force have known all along that he is gay, but because of his political positions, have not had him discharged, all the while discharging people on the suspicion of being gay. Now if that isn't hypocrisy on wheels, I don't know what is.
No Sympathy Soup for YOU, Lindsay!
I don't know Senator Graham's story around this particular issue, so I can't personally feel sorry for him. And of course I've never met the man, so I have no idea what he's really like.
In his role as a public figure, though, I do not feel sorry for him one bit, because, like practically every other elected Republican, he has pandered to Bush, McCain and the extreme right wing of his party whenever he thought he could derive some benefit from doing so.
Now that he is getting a taste of their extremism and cruelty himself, he has a few things to think over. That's a good development, not a bad one.
It's 2010 - we've moved way past "tolerance" being enough - it's about equality, accept no substitutes.
Sounds like a threat to me. They're saying, "Hey, we know stuff; we're not going to shut up until you do exactly what we want you to do."... and a warning as well to anyone else with secrets.
LINDSEY GRAHAM is GAY?!?!?!?!?!? and I dont care except that I agree with The Sacrlet Pimpernel, LG needs to be dishonorably discharged.
I want to know why, why, why "important people" are too big too fail, too important to be dihonorably discharged, too important to be charged with inflaming public violence and too important to be charged with treason? All these story about these military men being dishonorably discharged because of being gay and LG is not. LG should be ashamed of himself. I want to know why normal, ordinary people who struggle or not have to deal with all the consequences of their actions and the "important people" dont.
I'm living in Australia (dual citizen) and I can't believe Americans have gotten used to how absolutely nutty the country has become! Forget individual issues - Rachel must feel like Alice in Wonderland, discussing financial reform with the Mad Hatter, and Health Care with Humpty Dumpty (when the nuts will agree to be interviewed!).
At what point in America did "the truth" become "that which best serves my needs TODAY"?
Except for Rachel - who checks - who cares?
Didn't MSNBC out Graham a couple of years ago?
Latinos only have big voting blocks in California and New York. Romney would lose those two states even if they didn't have any Latino voters. He should ignore the squeals of the illegal aliens and concentrate on the voters who have supported him.