When I was speaking Los Angeles recently calling on President Donald Trump to keep his pledge to respect state’s rights on the question of medicinal marijuana I was interviewed by a local blogger named Jeff4Justice. I should have sensed a ringer when his first three questions were disjointed and benign but then he unloaded his “gotcha question” asking about my sexual orientation. “Are you bi-sexual?” he barked.
In view of my self- admitted past as a libertine it was a ridiculous question. I was an avid participant in the Sexual Revolution of the 1970’s. I responded by saying that it while it was none of anyone’s business that “I’m try-sexual – I’ve tried everything” reprising an old Milton Berle joke.
I was subsequently surprised to see myself attacked by Jeff4Justice in The Advocate defending his gotcha question by saying “I think it’s very relevant when you have people who in their own private lives are living sexually wild lives and yet they use their time, talent, and treasure to elevate people to power who utilize the religious right to go and do horrible things to other people.”
“Stone’s alleged sexual activity may or may not correspond with his sexual identity,” bisexual activist Eliel Cruz also told The Advocate. “He may have experimented and found it wasn’t for him or he may actively engage in sex with men while not claiming a bisexual identity. Whether or not Stone is bisexual, his ideology and policies are dangerous to large swaths of people — including the LGBT community. That’s far more important.”
My ideology?
I am clearly not, based on a long-documented history, the person Jeff4Justice or Eliel Cruz think I am. Did either do any basic research on my record?
I have always been a libertarian conservative in the Goldwater mold, wanting government out of the boardroom and out of the bedroom. I have never been a part of the so-called Moral Majority and in fact have been one of their fiercest critics inside the Republican Party. My work was for Republicans like Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Jack Kemp. Republican Analyst Kevin Phillip attacked me for my criticism of Religious Right.
I have long said and written that the Evangelical Christian insistence on opposition to gay marriage and legal abortion would destroy the Republican Party by costing us any chance with younger voters.
In 1978 I resigned as treasurer and a member of the board of the National Conservative Political Action Committee when NCPAC Chairman Terry Dolan (who was gay) included anti- gay rhetoric in a fundraising letter for the organization.
In 1996, along with Senator Arlen Specter I was the founder of the “Republican Majority Coalition” which was a coalition of libertarian and moderate Republicans who supported LGBT rights. Our goal was to counter the influence of the then growing religious right.
In 1996 I sought to persuade Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, a supporter of gay marriage, to seek the Republican nomination and failing to do so, chaired the campaign of Senator Arlen Specter who took the same position in the 1996 race.
I have been publicly supportive of the Log Cabin organization and I am a member of GOProud – an organization of Republicans who support gay equality which I joined at the request of Andrew Breitbart, another libertarian who supported LGBT Rights.
I have signed petitions to remove the anti-same sex marriage language from the Republican Platform since it first appeared. In 2006 I published an OP-ED in opposition to the Florida constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. I was for gay marriage before Bill, Hillary or Obama!
In 2012 I abandoned the Republican Party to join the Libertarian party whose platform I was generally more comfortable with on LGBT rights as well as foreign and domestic policy. I helped persuade Governor Gary Johnson, who had not supported same-sex marriage as governor of New Mexico embrace it in his 2012 presidential campaign.
As a 40-year friend and advisor to Donald Trump I urged him to ad lib pro-gay comments in his acceptance speech in Cleveland. When he tweeted his recent comments on transgender issues I publicly denounced them when speaking at the POLITICON conference in Pasadena which receive widespread coverage.
Donald Trump will, however, protect the LGBT community from the violence and threat of Islamic terrorists. He is well aware of the mass murder of gay people at their hands in the Middle East. Obama and the Clinton’s, at a minimum, want to accommodate them, and in many cases, have empowered them.
I have never engaged in hypocrisy or urged candidates to take an anti-gay position if it were politically advantageous. My conduct in the bed room is irrelevant because I am no hypocrite.
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
RSS