VOTE FOR MY MARRIAGE RING
Predictably, another family values Republican has been caught naked in a hotel room with a young man, offering him cash (and a free continental breakfast) for sex. Indiana State Rep. Philip Hinkle, who voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, also voted with his hotel keys and arranged a liaison with 18-year-old Kameryn Gibson, who advertized on Craigslist for a “sugga daddy.” A lot of bizarre behavior has been issuing from Tea Party Occupied Indiana recently (see this article), but this one is extraorinarily replete with conservative quantum weirdness.
Hinkle ― whose voting record includes not only the anti-gay constitutional amendment but typical Tea Party themes orbiting around pro-gun, anti-union, and anti-tax obsessions ― offered Gibson $80 (plus potential tips for a “good time”) to meet him at a Marriot Hotel. Helpfully, Hinkle memorialized the negotiations in excruciating detail in his emails, including the aforementioned offer of a free continental breakfast. (Note to hypocritical homophobic conservatives ― don’t use emails to hook up with young men). At this point, to paraphrase Churchill, it was clear what sort of person Hinkle is, the parties were now merely haggling over the price.
Gibson met Hinkle, but got cold feet when the 64-year-old lawmaker plopped down on the bed naked and informed the teen he was a government official. No doubt sensing he was getting involved in a scandal that might leave him with a bullet in the back of his skull, or at least a cover shot on The National Inquirer, Gibson tried to leave, but Hinkle became an octopus and grabbed his posterior.
Hijinx followed as Gibson’s sister arrived, leading to Hinkle desperately offering to give the object of his affection cash and electronic equipment to to forget the whole thing. When Gibson went public, Hinkle followed the conservative Republican reaction like clockwork and alleged a “shakedown,” suggesting some political or criminal plot lured him to the Marriot. Then Hinkle’s (apparently longsuffering) wife allegedly offered Gibson $10,000 in hush money. Piling on to the absurdity, Hinkle’s verbally lax attorney, Peter Nugent stupidly said he was “trying to get to the bottom of everything involved."
All the wonderfully sordid details are here.
The pitiful incident wouldn’t interest normal people in the slightest, except for the fact that Hinkle, like all conservatives, politicized his family life by blaming gays (and liberalism) for the alleged deterioration of marriage in society, and engaging in expressions of legislative homophobia, making his bumbling foray into gay quasi-prostitution repulsively hypocritical. You don’t have to be Dr. Freud to understand the psychology of homophobia as expressed in conservative Republican circles. You just have to listen to Michele Bachmann’s husband and his ministry to convert gays to “normal” sexuality to see what’s going on.
The politics of homophobia is not just scandal fodder, but an important issue, as gaybashing has become central to the GOP. Needing someone to blame for their own sense of economic and cultural insecurity, the Tea Party hobbits have crafted a discourse of scapegoating, whether it's immigrants, feminists, "cultural marxists," or gays. As the Left-Wing Noise Machine is fond of saying, conservatism is less a political philosophy than a sexual dysfunction. Isn’t it time that homophobic conservative males embrace their inner gayness and stop this gun-toting, mock-macho family-values drum beating that so transparently veils their own self-hatred? That or at least shut up and stop attacking sexual minorities, of which they are unsuccessfully pretending not to belong.
Hinkle ― whose voting record includes not only the anti-gay constitutional amendment but typical Tea Party themes orbiting around pro-gun, anti-union, and anti-tax obsessions ― offered Gibson $80 (plus potential tips for a “good time”) to meet him at a Marriot Hotel. Helpfully, Hinkle memorialized the negotiations in excruciating detail in his emails, including the aforementioned offer of a free continental breakfast. (Note to hypocritical homophobic conservatives ― don’t use emails to hook up with young men). At this point, to paraphrase Churchill, it was clear what sort of person Hinkle is, the parties were now merely haggling over the price.
Gibson met Hinkle, but got cold feet when the 64-year-old lawmaker plopped down on the bed naked and informed the teen he was a government official. No doubt sensing he was getting involved in a scandal that might leave him with a bullet in the back of his skull, or at least a cover shot on The National Inquirer, Gibson tried to leave, but Hinkle became an octopus and grabbed his posterior.
Hijinx followed as Gibson’s sister arrived, leading to Hinkle desperately offering to give the object of his affection cash and electronic equipment to to forget the whole thing. When Gibson went public, Hinkle followed the conservative Republican reaction like clockwork and alleged a “shakedown,” suggesting some political or criminal plot lured him to the Marriot. Then Hinkle’s (apparently longsuffering) wife allegedly offered Gibson $10,000 in hush money. Piling on to the absurdity, Hinkle’s verbally lax attorney, Peter Nugent stupidly said he was “trying to get to the bottom of everything involved."
All the wonderfully sordid details are here.
The pitiful incident wouldn’t interest normal people in the slightest, except for the fact that Hinkle, like all conservatives, politicized his family life by blaming gays (and liberalism) for the alleged deterioration of marriage in society, and engaging in expressions of legislative homophobia, making his bumbling foray into gay quasi-prostitution repulsively hypocritical. You don’t have to be Dr. Freud to understand the psychology of homophobia as expressed in conservative Republican circles. You just have to listen to Michele Bachmann’s husband and his ministry to convert gays to “normal” sexuality to see what’s going on.
The politics of homophobia is not just scandal fodder, but an important issue, as gaybashing has become central to the GOP. Needing someone to blame for their own sense of economic and cultural insecurity, the Tea Party hobbits have crafted a discourse of scapegoating, whether it's immigrants, feminists, "cultural marxists," or gays. As the Left-Wing Noise Machine is fond of saying, conservatism is less a political philosophy than a sexual dysfunction. Isn’t it time that homophobic conservative males embrace their inner gayness and stop this gun-toting, mock-macho family-values drum beating that so transparently veils their own self-hatred? That or at least shut up and stop attacking sexual minorities, of which they are unsuccessfully pretending not to belong.
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