Aug 01, 2003  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

U.S. Rep.. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) acknowledged calling a House Republican rival a “fruitcake,” but the veteran California Democrat with a strong record of support for gay rights denied reports that he shouted another, more graphic anti-gay epithet at another GOP congressman during a tumultuous House committee hearing on July 18.

Developments surrounding Stark’s comments at a mark-up session of the House Ways & Means Committee seemed to turn the normal order of things on their head.

Gay political groups, noting that Stark, 71, has one of the strongest pro-gay records in Congress, mostly refrained from criticizing him for the same type of comments that drawn rebuke when made by others on the Hill. At the same time, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a staunch opponent of gay rights, criticized Stark for making what DeLay called “remarks against homosexuals.”

“The intolerant comments made by Pete Stark I find incredibly offensive, and I am shocked that the media hasn’t treated him like they treat others that make these kinds of remarks,” DeLay told reporters.

House Democrats have said DeLay and other Republicans are using Stark as a scapegoat to deflect attention from the conduct of Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the chair of the Ways & Means Committee. Thomas angered Democrats by attempting to push a complicated pension fund bill through the committee without allowing them enough time to review it.

When Democratic members of the committee left the room to caucus among themselves in a nearby library, Thomas triggered near pandemonium when he called U.S. Capitol Police to have them removed from the library. He later gave a teary-eyed apology on the House floor for his actions after House Republicans joined Democrats in criticizing him for engaging in the heavy-handed tactics.

During the contentious Ways & Means Committee session, committee Democrats designated Stark to remain in the room to stall action on the pension bill through parliamentary procedures while the other Democrats on the panel caucused on strategy in the committee library.

Lindsey Capps, Stark’s press secretary, said Stark reacted with outrage when Thomas ignored normal protocol by refusing to postpone a vote and Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) told him to “shut up.” According to a transcript taken by the committee stenographer, Stark said to McInnis, “You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake.” The transcript, which Republican House members read on the House floor later that day, also quoted Stark calling McInnis a “wimp.”

The Fox News television network reported that, during the chaotic scene that followed Stark’s exchange with McInnis, Stark reportedly called Thomas another anti-gay slur. The network, in a story on its Web site, called the slur “too vulgar to print in full, but the last half of it is sucker.” Fox later described the term it attributed to Stark as “blank sucker.”

Blair Jones, McInnis’s press secretary, said McInnis heard Stark use “that other term” and that McInnis called the Fox report an accurate account of what Stark said.

In a July 22 interview with Fox News reporter Brian Wilson, Stark said he regretted calling McInnis a wimp and a fruitcake.

“I had a poor choice of words. Fruitcake means inept, crazy,” he told Fox. “That’s nut cake, that’s what it means to me,” Stark said.

“But when asked later if he also aimed a vulgar, anti-gay slur in the direction of Chairman Thomas,” Wilson stated on a Fox News program, “Stark told this reporter, ‘I’m certain that at some point in the last year I called Chairman Thomas a blank sucker, but not last Friday.”

Wilson added, “But five sources confirmed for Fox they heard Stark call Thomas that sucker word and another choice phrase that I can’t … begin to clean up for broadcast.”

Capps, Stark’s press secretary, said Stark denies he ever used the “sucker remark” during the Ways & Means Committee markup on July 18 or at any other time in the past. Capps said Wilson of Fox News must have misconstrued what Stark told him.

“He never used that,” Capps said. “He said he never used that word.”

Concerning the fruitcake remark, Capps said, “He had no intention to offend gays and lesbians. He feels it was unfortunate he made a comment that may have offended gays and lesbians.”

Capps pointed to Stark’s longstanding record in support of gay civil rights. Stark, whose district includes the East Bay area just outside San Francisco, received a 100 percent rating on gay and AIDS issues from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group.

Stark first won election to Congress in 1972 as an outspoken opponent of the ...