in a post yesterday (crossposted here), steph mineart explained why she isn't voting for jon elrod: she can't bear to vote for a closeted gay man, which she's convinced elrod is. she has no evidence that elrod is gay, only what she claims is highly tuned gaydar.

this prompted abdul to complain about it on his blog (not indyu, but the other one), as well as a chat on his radio show that demonstrated he didn't understand what steph had written. (hint: it has nothing to do with being married; look up the slang term "beard".)

as predicted, gary welsh went apoplectic, as he does whenever someone looks at elrod funny. but curiously, gary attacked abdul for repeating the rumor, not even mentioning steph's name.

now steph is on the receiving end of a DOS attack.

i've never met elrod, let alone slept with him, so i wouldn't know his orientation. and i wouldn't vote for him regardless, because he's wrong on most issues. but i realized that i have no idea if i'd vote for someone i thought was closeted. i've never thought about it before. naturally, i'd have no reservations voting for someone who was out of the closet, but growing up in indiana (with a few years of college in the upper south), i haven't had much opportunity.

for what it's worth, elrod says he's straight. ¶

stAllio,

Can you explain what a denial of service attack is? ¶

Gary Welsh is in ultra-censorship mode. I tried to post this innocuous comment:

The Prophet Mohammad wisely required at least 4 witnesses for a sodomy case. That's a good rule for political gossip too: in a hot election cycle, disregard the crap unless there are at least 4 reputable witnesses... ¶

a DOS attack is a hacker attack in which a server is flooded with bogus requests. the idea is that the server gets so overloaded with fake traffic that it can't serve up content to legitimate users, essentially preventing anyone from viewing the site. ¶

There's nothing wrong with being gay, so it's not an insult to speculate on the sexual orientation of others. In fact, trying to figure out if someone is gay is pretty much THE national pastime for gay and lesbian people, and they do it to pretty much everyone; co-workers, celebrities, politicians, family members, that guy on the other side of the restaurant.

There is, though, a huge taboo about admitting to anyone outside the gay community that we do this (and have so much fun doing it). It's a taboo born out of internalized homophobia; about the belief that it's an insult to imply someone is gay & therefore lesser.

It's very revealing that Gary, David Wene and some other gay folks have referred to my open speculation about Jon Elrod as a "Smear."

It's not an insult in my eyes that he might be gay, but it is in theirs, and I'm to be condemned for breaking taboo. ¶

This whole kerfuffle shows what a thoroughly amateur and unprepared Congressional campaign the pitiful Elrod effort is turning out to be.

The GOP is notoriously and thoroughly homophobic. A 30-year-old unmarried fairly-cute candidate who is politically famous for being LGBT-friendly should have been aware that questions would inevitably arise if only from his own bigoted base. This could significantly reduce turnout from the prejudiced party faithful.

Didn't the Elrod folk have any campaign material or tactics designed to deflect or distract from such speculation or gossip? Didn't they do any analysis of their candidate's perceived strengths and weaknesses? They seem to be caught totally flatfooted by "the issue that dare not use its name". Gary Welsh went into pure Rudy 9/11 Giuliani Islamophobia, fulminations and censorship.

Weak and silly! ¶

i just noticed that melyssa thinks steph is a dude. ¶

I noticed that too, but didn't have the heart to point it out to her, since she blogged rather sympathetically about gay people. ¶