Political pundit Bill Maher last night accused the head of the Republican National Committee of being a closet "gay." Appearing on CNN's Larry King Live, Maher said it's an open secret in Washington that RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman is a homosexual and that he has "never denied" it.
Maher added that he plans to out at least three other closeted Republican officials – including "chiefs of staff" – on his HBO political show tomorrow night to show their hypocrisy in supporting traditional family values. He is host of "Real Time with Bill Maher."
King asked Maher if the charges have appeared "in print," and Maher responded affirmatively.
Rumors of Mehlman's sexual orientation first appeared last year in GQ magazine. The RNC denied the charge. "Ken Mehlman is not gay," said then-RNC official Steve Schmidt. However, when asked directly by "gay" publications, Mehlman has dodged the question.
Maher brought up the issue while addressing reasons Republicans lost Congress. He said the Mark Foley scandal hurt Republicans. Foley revealed his homosexuality last month after resigning his Florida seat over sexually graphic e-mails in which he allegedly solicited male pages.
Foley's former chief of staff Kirk Fordham was recently outed by the Los Angeles Times.
The FBI is investigating reports that another "gay" Republican lawmaker, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, engaged in improper behavior with male pages during a camping trip to the Grand Canyon.
Maher joked that GOP voters yesterday wanted to vote a straight Republican ticket but "nobody could find a straight Republican."
Last week, defrocked evangelical leader Ted Haggard confessed to having relations with a homosexual prostitute. Haggard met monthly with White House officials to discuss, among other things, a constitutional amendment banning "gay" marriage.
Mehlman also supports the amendment.
The White House took heat earlier in the administration for credentialing fake reporter Jeff Gannon of Talon News Service, a front for a group called GOPUSA. Gannon, whose real name is J.D. Guckert, turned out to be a homosexual porn star.
Some in Washington have charged the White House and Congress are run by a "Gay Republican Mafia."
Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove's adopted father, who died in 2004, was a closet "gay" who left his mother when Rove was a senior in high school. But Rove still supports a ban on "gay" marriage. "The ideal is that marriage ought to be and should be a union of a man and a woman," he has said.
He and his wife, Darby, have one child.
