Gerry Studds

It's very sad that former Rep. Gerry Studds died on Saturday.

I feel for his loved ones in their time of sorrow.

I'm not going to speak ill of the dead. I'm going to speak ill of the liberal media and its glaring hypocrisy.

From The New York Times:

Gerry E. Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress and a demanding advocate for New England fishermen and for gay rights, died early Saturday at Boston University Medical Center, his husband said.

The cause was a vascular illness that led Mr. Studds to collapse while walking his dog on Oct. 3 in Boston. He was 69.

From 1973 to 1997, Mr. Studds (whose first name was pronounced GAIR-ee) represented the Massachusetts district where he grew up, covering Cape Cod and the barnacled old fishing towns near the coast. He was the first Democrat to win the district in 50 years, and over the course of 12 terms, he sponsored several laws that helped protect local fisheries and create national parks along the Massachusetts shore.

A former Foreign Service officer with degrees from Yale, he was also a leading critic of President Ronald Reagan’s clandestine support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He staunchly opposed “Star Wars,” or the Strategic Defense Initiative, which Mr. Studds once described as “the Edsel of the 1980’s” — overpriced and oversold.

His homosexuality was revealed through scandal. In 1983, he was censured by the House for having had an affair 10 years earlier with a 17-year-old Congressional page. For Mr. Studds, formal and dignified, a model of old New England reserve, the discovery sparked intense anguish, friends said.

"Intense anguish" for Studds?

What about the page? What about the child that he sexually abused?

Why isn't The Times upset about the fact that Studds had sex with a minor?

What about protecting the children?

Instead, The Times focuses on Studds' personal agony.

I don't think that a congressman who engages in sex with a 17-year-old can be considered "formal and dignified."

He had long been unsure of the role his sexuality should play. At the nation’s first major gay march on Washington in 1979, he told friends he could neither attend nor stay away.

“His act of courage was to jog within a block of it,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the congressman from Mr. Studds’s adjoining district, who announced his own homosexuality four years later. “He felt that conflicted.”

Once outed, however, Mr. Studds refused to buckle to conservative pressure to resign.

“All members of Congress are in need of humbling experiences from time to time,” Mr. Studds said at the time. But he never apologized. He defended the relationship as consensual and condemned the investigation, saying it had invaded his privacy.

"REFUSED TO BUCKLE TO CONSERVATIVE PRESSURE TO RESIGN"???

The Times makes it sound like evil conservatives attacked him for his homosexuality.

Excuse me?

The man had sex with a 17-year-old congressional page!

These same libs aren't satisfied with Mark Foley's resignation. They are conducting a full-blown investigation.

Is that an invasion of Foley's privacy?

"Dennis Hastert should resign," the libs cry.

"What did Republicans know and when did they know it?"

GIVE ME A BREAK.

He went on to win re-election in 1984, surprising both supporters and opponents.

...Mr. Studds’s re-election in 1984 had reverberations of its own.

“In a sense, he became a role model,” said Charles Kaiser, author of “1968 in America” and “The Gay Metropolis.” “His experience convinced other people that it would now be possible to run as an openly gay person.”

Mr. Studds also seemed emboldened by his re-election. He began to demand more money for AIDS research and treatment. He pressed for the right of gay people to serve openly in the military, releasing a previously suppressed Pentagon report in 1989, which concluded that sexuality “is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left- or right-handed.”

If Mark Foley goes on to serve as an advocate for gay rights, do you think the Left will embrace him as a role model?

No way. He's a Republican. If Foley was a Dem, then everything would be different.

The Left is unapologetically biased.

Foley is a monster for his behavior with pages while Studds is held up as a hero in spite of his physical sexual contact with a kid.

Fair and balanced? I don't think so.

In addition to speaking on the House floor on behalf of gay marriage, he set an example. In 2004, he and his longtime partner, Dean T. Hara, became one of the first couples to marry under a Massachusetts law allowing gay marriage.

“Gerry often said that it was the fight for gay and lesbian equality that was the last great civil rights chapter in modern American history,” Mr. Hara said in a statement.

“He did not live to see its final sentences written,” Mr. Hara added, “but all of us will forever be indebted to him for leading the way with compassion and wisdom.”

I'm sure Studds showed compassion and he probably had moments of wisdom now and then.

He was not acting wisely when he had sex with a 17-year-old congressional page.

Mr. Studds’s past had recently resurfaced. In the final two weeks of his life, the two-decade-old controversy surrounding Mr. Studds became an issue in the 2006 midterm election campaign as a new Congressional page scandal unfolded.

Though his name had barely been mentioned in Washington since he retired, the resignation late last month of Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, revived interest in Mr. Studds’s own dalliance with a teenage page in 1983.

Across the country, several Republican candidates sought to deflect criticism aimed at their own party by reminding voters about Mr. Studds. The National Republican Congressional Committee chastised Democrats in this year’s race for taking contributions from party leaders who had served with Mr. Studds.

It was completely appropriate for Republicans to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Democrats.

The Democrats and their mouthpieces in the lib media wanted Foley tarred and feathered.

They demanded that Hastert resign. They still are making those demands.

Naturally, the Studds scandal would be raised. It provides a blatant example of their insincerity about concern for the children.

The Times suggests that it was somehow inappropriate and sinister for the "two-decade old-controversy" to surface.

What a crock!

...Mr. Hara, Mr. Studds’s husband, declined to comment on the newest criticism.

A memorial service will be held in November. In addition to Mr. Hara, Mr. Studds is survived by his brother, Colin Studds; his sister-in-law, Mary Lou Studds; his sister, Gaynor Stewart; four nephews; and his English springer spaniel, Bonnie.

I love animals. Pets are like members of the family, but does The Times usually cite dogs as survivors?

I know it's not uncommon for families to name pets of the deceased in a death notice, but that sort of stuff usually doesn't find its way into an obituary written by a publication like The Times.

Strange.

The Associated Press has an interesting quote from Hara and additional information on Studds' relationship with the page.

"He gave people of his generation, of my generation, of future generations, the courage to do whatever they wanted to do," said Hara, 49.

Like have sex with a 17-year-old and be proud of it?

...[When the scandal surfaced], Studds called the relationship with the teenage page, which included a trip to Europe, "a very serious error in judgment." But he did not apologize and defended the relationship as a consensual relationship with a young adult. The former page later appeared publicly with Studds in support of him.

...Hara said Studds was never ashamed of the relationship with the page.

"This young man knew what he was doing," Hara said. "He was at (Studds') side."

I wonder. Did the young men that Foley interacted with know what they were doing, as Studds' sex partner supposedly did?


It doesn't matter whether or not it was consensual. Studds should not have had sex with an underage page.

Studds told his colleagues in a speech on the floor of the House that everyone faces a daily challenge of balancing public and private lives.

"These challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as am I, both an elected public official and gay," Studds said at the time.

Studds played the gay card, just as former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey did.

Why is it that when Dems are caught with their pants down they act like they're victims of an intolerant society or a vast conspiracy rather than taking responsibility and acknowledging their indiscretions?

By the standards that the Dems are using to judge Mark Foley, Studds was a predator.

But because he was a Dem, he was a hero.

These obituaries are further proof that the mainstream media is terribly inconsistent, unfair, and unbalanced.

That is undeniable.