But even some conservatives who've taken the scandal seriously insist it won't matter in November. "I don't see that it's relevant to the election," insists Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative activist who has called for Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign because of his inaction when he received word of Foley's inappropriate attention to pages. "We all know that there's a certain percent of homosexuals who are Republicans and Democrats. They work on the Hill. We all know that. I don't think that's going to resonate or have any particular legs out there."
But Jay Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian organization, does profess to be disappointed in the Republicans, and points to revelations about the role of gays in the party as an element of that dissatisfaction. "It'd be the same way on the flip side," says Glover. "If a person was a fundamentalist Christian and they were hired by Bill Clinton to be chief of staff, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL and friends and the NOW gang would be having kittens, because they would say clearly this means he would be hostile to things we believe in. You cannot separate a person's moral philosophy from their political philosophy."
Glover believes conservative disillusionment is already evident in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Rick Santorum has been floundering in his race for reelection. Rogers outed Robert Traynham, Santorum's director of communications, in 2004. Traynham made a statement confirming his homosexuality, and Santorum issued his own statement supporting Traynham. Glover insists one of the reasons Santorum is likely about to lose his Senate seat is because he continues to employ a gay man, and the news has filtered out to his core demographic. "He's hurt his own base," Glover says.
On CNN's "Anderson Cooper" show Monday night, writer Andrew Sullivan -- who is openly gay -- struck a similar note. "I think within the Republican Party there is a problem," he said. "They have plenty of gay people in their ranks. They privately tolerate them ... And yet they play an antigay message at the base. And that's what's behind this particular problem. You can't send one -- give one face to Washington and another face to the base. And the people at the base realize they've been kind of lied to about the subject."
Viguerie disagrees. "I don't think the voters are going to hold that against Santorum," he says. "My gosh, sounds like he, you know, is a pretty reasonable fellow if he has a known homosexual on his staff, he's tolerant. [And] I don't think anybody's ever accused Rick Santorum of not being supportive of any issues in the same-sex-marriage area."
Rogers, who acknowledges that he is a Democrat, denies any partisan motives, saying that if his efforts focus on Republicans, it is because that's the side of the aisle the people who are closeted and antigay are on. Still, he says, "I find it absolutely sweet that what will topple this government, apparently, is the exposing of a slew of antigay closet cases."
But, he says, he won't be outing gay politicians and staffers indiscriminately. "I'm not interested in outing gay people," Rogers says. "I have no interest in any way, shape or form in outing any gay people. I have a huge interest, however, in reporting on hypocrites who are themselves gay and hurting the gay community." He mentions a staffer in a senior position for a Republican congressman as an example of someone he won't out because, he says, he believes that staffer isn't being hypocritical but is working within the party to try to change Republicans' stances on gay rights.
This has long been the standard for outing adhered to by gay activists; it's commonly referred to as the "Barney Frank rule," named after the Massachusetts Democrat who started his political career in the closet. Under the "Frank rule," it's acceptable to out those who, unlike Frank, are working against the perceived interests of gay people while in the closet.
Of course, that rule gives a lot of latitude to individuals like Rogers to decide which closeted Republicans are "working within the party" to advance gay rights and which are hypocrites. The personal injury to the gay Republicans being not only outed but blamed for the Foley scandal doesn't appear to have factored into anyone's political equation. But no one interviewed by Salon expected the fallout from Foleygate to include a wholesale GOP purge of gays.
"There may be isolated incidents where they do [fire gay staffers] depending on what the relevant individual circumstances are," says one of the former Hill Republican staffers, "but I genuinely believe that 2004 was the high-water mark for the Christian conservative role in the Republican Party. Since that time, we've seen a backing away from that, certainly on the part of, probably, both sides."
That former staffer believes the party must now reassess just how far it's willing to go to please its base.
"Most Christian conservative groups are looking for ideological purity," he explains. "You build a political party by expanding it, not by contracting it, and [Republicans'] continued appeals to conservative Christians and that element of the party are only going to last and only going to work for so long.
"Ultimately you're going to push so many people away that that's all you have left, a theocratic party. And if I sound like I'm being pretty critical of the Republican Party, I am, because it's something that they're going to have to realize. They're going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century one way or another."
About the writer
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.
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