The political calesthenics that are causing huff and pant over the revelation and confirmation that Matthew Sanchez had a gay porn background promist to be an interesting cultural snapshot.
Sanchez had made a political name for himself when he took up an harassment claim at Columbia to remedy the perceptions of widespread anti-military sentiment on campus. Sanchez has had his picture taken with a number of top Conservative political figures (including Newt Gingrich) and, most recently, Conservative sensationalist Ann Coulter at C-PAC.
The Marine Corps Times covered the admissions on the front page of its website and had a forum discussion on the topic.
L'affaire Sanchez promises historians a chance to take the current temperature on a number of political issues.
1. Pornography - where exactly does the Conservative party stand on the issue of 'adult film entertainment' today, in the context of the Conservative Coalition, i.e. how big is the tent?
2. Gay Pornography - the Marine Corps have reportedly already opened an investigation to determine if Sanchez ought to be dismissed. At a time when the army has lowered its standards, enlisting more people with criminal backgrounds, would expelling Sanchez on former improper conduct make any sense? (Sanchez is only Inactive Reserve at this time).
3. Gay Rights - is 'gay conservative' too much of an oxymoron, if the status quo is anti-gay, especially for service members. Should the gay community in general be "discreet" about revealing background issues that might affect Conservatives' political viability?
4. Conservativism and the military on campus - many people are antiwar and many colleges are opposed to offering the military free recruitment because of its gay expulsion policies. Is Conservatism fighting for harassment policies, which used to be the province of progressivism?
Meanwhile, the mixture of naivetee, intrigue (you find the pictures yourself), and political fight promise to give the story some legs and to provide some humor (this "transcript", from here, is unverified, so take it just for its surprise! value):
Colmes: So this is a scene from one of your gay porn videos?
Sanchez: Yes, that's me
Colmes: And here you are sucking a dick
Sanchez: No, I was assisting him
Colmes: And here you are f----g a man up the ass
Sanchez: No, he asked me to massage his prostate
Colmes: But you are engaging in gay sex on this video
Sanchez: No I'm not. The guy I'm fucking, he's straight! And so am I.
Colmes: Impossible
Sanchez: Trust me, he's straight. He voted for Bush.
Colmes: The man has a rainbow flag tattoo on his ass cheek. Isn't that the symbol for gay pride?
Sanchez: That's the Telemundo logo.
and insight:
To me, it's not so much about Sanchez. When Jeff Gannon was exposed, the Coultergeist said something like, "Since when are democrats against gay people?" as though we were the hypocrites.
After calling calling Edwards a faggot, she was confronted about her own non-family values lifestyle and she proclaimed "where are my privacy rights?" as though the liberal leaning questioner was a hypocrite.
This political judo they perform to deflect their own hypocrisy is really annoying and seems to work with the kool-aid drinkers. She...like many of her conservative colleagues...quips her way out of her self-imposed hypocritical entanglements.
Sanchez being gay and conservative is no problem to me. The fact that the Coulters treat gays as less the human and defective until they are found in their own camp, that's just annoying and wrong.
