Kirk Fordham, who is Foley's former chief of staff and who has been accused of trying to broker a deal with ABC News to keep Foley's lurid instant messages out of the news, told the Washington Blade, a local gay paper, that he was "out in the community but not in the press."
Salon was not able to find any instance of Trandahl, the former clerk of the House, publicly identifying himself as gay. Trandahl, who reportedly confronted Foley about e-mails between the former congressman and one former page, has publicly associated himself with gay causes: He was a longtime volunteer for AIDS charities in Washington; was on a committee for a 2001 inaugural breakfast given by the Republican Unity Coalition, an organization for gay Republicans; and is on the board of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's most prominent gay-rights groups. In 2000, he contributed $1,200 to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which supports publicly gay candidates of both parties across the nation.
The Houston Voice, a gay publication in Texas, identified Trandahl as gay on Oct. 4. Still, it was not until this past weekend that the Washington Post became the first mainstream media outlet to report Trandahl's sexual orientation. The Post stated that Trandahl was "openly gay" without providing evidence, such as a quote from Trandahl or any family member or friend. The New York Times followed with a similar statement on Sunday.
According to the two gay former GOP staffers interviewed by Salon, Trandahl and Fordham are not alone. There are other gay Republican staffers, and their default stance in the Bush era is a more relaxed version of the military's policy of "Don't ask, don't tell." Both staffers say homosexuality wasn't an issue for the members of Congress for whom they worked.
"My employer was very supportive and was very direct with me," says one of the staffers, who was named on Rogers' 2004 list. "He said, 'I've never cared about that issue; all I care about is that you do your job well, and you do your job well, and that's how you're going to be judged by me.'"
A former senior Republican Hill staffer -- who says he believes Rogers "deserves a special circle in hell" -- reports a similar experience.
"When [my boss] found out about me, we never had a direct conversation about it, but I knew his attitudes about it ... And I know that when he did find out, his exact quote was, 'Yeah, so what? He did a damn good job.'"
The two staffers are divided as to whether the role of gay staffers in the Foley scandal will hurt the GOP with its conservative base. Rogers' former target believes there will be no appreciable effect on conservative turnout in November.
"I might be naive, [but] I just don't think that in today's world this is the issue that it once might have been," he says. "There are certainly a lot of people who would have concerns and who might be quick to, I guess, be negative, but I do think most people think the issue through. It's not like you're a person with your name on the ballot. Staffers don't vote -- congressmen do."
But the other gay ex-staffer contacted by Salon thinks the news of gay GOP staffers may push social conservatives away from the party.
"This may be the beginning of a reflection, on the part of the Christian right, that they have not accomplished what their goals were in trying to use the Republican Party as a vessel for advancing their ideology ... I think ultimately what you may see is more and more [that] the Christian right is going to start moving away from the party and heading back to other ways of proselytizing."
Other conservatives contacted by Salon were likewise divided on the question of whether Foleygate will hurt the GOP in November. So far, there's little evidence that mainstream conservative organizations are paying attention to the effort to out gays involved in the scandal. Of the organizations Corn listed as having received the list of alleged gay staffers, only Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition responded to a request for comment by Salon. Both denied having received the list. Over the weekend, Focus on the Family's James Dobson was widely quoted as alleging that Foley's online interactions with young male pages was "sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages." But the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins told CNN Monday night he believes this is the natural result of having gays on Capitol Hill: "This is what you get," he said "... congressmen chasing boys in the halls of Congress."
Signs that Republicans may be having trouble energizing their base were beginning to show even before the Foley scandal broke. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center showed a 21 percent loss in white evangelical support for Republicans over the past two years and, over the past year, a 9 percent drop in the number of white evangelicals who view the Republican Party favorably. And a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News and released Tuesday showed that the Foley scandal made 21 percent of those surveyed more likely to vote Democratic and 5 percent more likely to not vote at all; only 3 percent said the scandal made them more likely to vote Republican.
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