Two reports last week questioned the sexual orientation of U.S. Senator Barbara
Mikulski, who finally last weekend announced her opposition to the Federal Marriage
Amendment. (Photo by AP)
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ADRIAN BRUNE
Friday, July 09, 2004
The voicemail came on a Thursday afternoon, in between busy committee meetings
and at the end of a hectic week for Senate staffer Jonathan Tolman. It was a
confusing message — the demands vague, the voice unidentified and unrecognizable.
The call had asked for “some updates” for an article involving
Tolman, the staffer recalled, and left a number. Tolman simply assumed the
caller wanted a revised version of a report on environmental policies he authored
while working for a downtown Washington thinktank. As it turned out, that wasn’t
the article in question.
Tolman, a senior aide for the Senate Committee on Environment & Public
Works, chaired by conservative Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, was
about to become the first Capitol Hill staffer publicly outed through a campaign
led by two activists.
The “article” was a profile of Tolman three years ago in Metro
Weekly, a local gay and lesbian magazine, a story that Tolman said he had long
forgotten about.
“My appearance in the magazine was a mistake on my part, mostly because
I didn’t know what it involved. I know now,” Tolman said.
After word of Tolman’s outing reached Inhofe, the senator’s office
released a statement emphasizing that the Senate Environment & Public Works
Committee employs Tolman, and not the senator personally.
“Senator Inhofe does not hire openly gay staffers due to the possibility
of a conflict of agenda,” an official statement said.
The Human Rights Campaign gave Inhofe a “0” score during the last
two sessions of Congress.
Tolman said he questioned the morality of the outing campaign.
“The agenda behind this outing seems to be kind of fascist. It says
to me: Because you don’t subscribe to our personal idea, because you
don’t choose to push sexual politics over environmental, we’re
going to punish you.
“The senator knows I’m gay and it’s not changing his position
and he’s not firing me. So my question to them is: Are you going to let
it drop?”
Not likely, say Mike Rogers and John Aravosis, the two men loosely heading
an ongoing outing campaign on the Hill. As the date nears for a Senate vote
on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriages in the Constitution,
Rogers said the outings have picked up steam — from 13 documented offices
to nearly 20 currently on a target list provided by Rogers to the Blade.
In addition to Tolman, Rogers and Aravosis, working in tandem but not together,
claimed in the last week to have outed via the Web Democratic Sen. Barbara
Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida.
While Tolman confirmed he is gay, the Mikulski’s office refused to comment
on speculation she is a lesbian, something Aravosis implied last week on his
site.
A spokesperson for Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) also declined to comment
after Aravosis specifically asserted that Foley is gay on his Web site last
week.
Both members of Congress have long been the subject of rumors about their
sexual orientation.
Aravosis continued to defend the outing campaign.
“An acquaintance of mine, a Southern Republican, worked for a member
who was not anti-gay personally, but he signed on to the amendment [banning
gay marriage],” Aravosis said. “My friend quit. I’m basically
saying, ‘You know what, you have a choice. It’s 2004. You can work
for pro-gay Democrats, and now you can work for pro-gay Republicans.’”
Aravosis said he decided to target Mikulski after the 67-year-old senator,
who has never married, declined for months to state her position on the Federal
Marriage Amendment. The Washington Blade has made repeated requests for Mikulski’s
position on the issue without a response until this week.
Within days after Aravosis claimed on his Web site that Mikulski is a lesbian,
the Maryland Democrat issued a statement declaring her intention to vote against
the amendment. But Mikulski’s staff declined to otherwise remark on any
other aspect of the controversy, according to spokesperson Amy Hagovsky.
“A constitutional amendment is not about helping families. It is about
helping George Bush get re-elected,” Mikulski said in a statement. “Congress
has already spoken on this issue. There is a federal law — and state
law in Maryland — that defines marriage as being between a man and a
woman. With our country at war in Iraq, we do not need a cultural war here
at home.”
Mikulski was also targeted this week by gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile
in the New York Press. Mikulski has been long besieged by questions about whether
she is hiding her sexual orientation.
During her first Senate campaign in the mid-’80s, the Republican Party
ran against her a conservative pundit named Linda Chavez — who was later
nominated by President George H.W. Bush as Labor Secretary until she was accused
of paying her housekeeper under the table.
Throughout that race, Chavez attacked Mikulski, a former Baltimore social
worker, for her relationship with Teresa Marie Brennan, an Australian feminist
academic and congressional aide who shared Mikulski’s home for two months.
Mikulski won the election by a wide margin, and in 1996 voted in favor of
the Defense of Marriage Act. She avoided criticism from conservatives, but
incurred the wrath of gay activists who confronted her later that year at a
book signing for her mystery novel, “Capitol Offense.” Shortly
afterward, her voting record on pro-gay legislation improved, according to
activists.
“[Her orientation] is something everyone knows, and that gays and lesbians
have put her back in the closet is shameful; it’s diminishing what people
did 10 years ago,” said Aravosis, a former staff lawyer for Sen. Ted
Stevens (R-Alaska).
Over in the House, Republican Mark Foley said in March that he would vote
against the Federal Marriage Amendment — one week after his spokesperson
said he would not take a position on the measure until it came up for a House
vote.
Despite Foley’s FMA opposition, Aravosis purported to out Foley as well,
taking him to task for supporting President Bush, who endorsed the measure
late last winter. Labeling Foley as “our latest closeted gay hypocrite,” Aravosis
said Foley made the list for putting politics ahead of his own community by “whoring
for an anti-gay president.”
As in the case with Mikulski, rumors that Foley is gay had long circulated
within the Beltway, and local newspapers in South Florida — including
the Express Gay News and an alternative newsweekly — cited his long-term
relationship with a Palm Beach physician.
Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R) has vowed to vote against the Federal
Marriage Amendment, but gay activist John Aravosis said he decided to out
the congressman anyway because Foley supports the re-election of President
Bush. |
Foley responded to the reports by initiating a telephone press conference
among non-gay Florida media and called discussion about his sexual orientation “revolting.” He
declined at that time to answer questions about his sexual orientation and
subsequently abandoned his bid for the Senate, citing concerns over his father’s
health.
Aravosis said he obtained the latest information about the five-term congressman
from Foley’s former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham.
Fordham, who is gay, headed up fund-raising efforts for Foley’s aborted
Senate campaign and is now the finance director for one of the remaining GOP
primary candidates in that race: Mel Martinez, George W. Bush’s former
Housing & Urban Development secretary. Martinez has come out in favor of
the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Fordham denied ever speaking with Aravosis and told the Blade, “I just
don’t discuss Congressman Foley’s personal life with reporters,
but I’m not sure what their motive is in outing him, other than to draw
attention to themselves. Foley has a good track record with gay issues and
opposes the FMA.”
Asked for comment, Foley spokesperson Jason Kello re-issued the congressman’ statement
on the amendment.
“The issue we are facing right now is whether Congress will approve
a Family Marriage Amendment — something the Senate is posed to act on
soon,” Foley said. “I oppose this amendment — and I am confident
it will fall short of the votes it needs and will go nowhere.”
Both Aravosis and Rogers said they continue to collect information from their
network of sources, which include employees of the Human Rights Campaign and
Log Cabin Republicans, and plan on outing more staffers and members.
The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, Log Cabin Republicans and other
gay lobby groups have urged activists not to reveal personal information about
gay Hill staffers or members of Congress.
When Tolman was contacted by Rogers and threatened with being outed, he said
he asked Rogers if the activist was trying to blackmail him after he said Rogers
claimed he would print 1,500 copies of the “Coverboy Confidential” article
and pass them out on the Hill should Tolman publicly deny he is gay.
But now Tolman said he doesn’t have time to give the matter too much
thought. He saw the e-mail warnings about the outing campaign weeks ago, and
basically ignored them to concentrate on the Water Research Development Act,
a water safety bill before his committee.
In retrospect, he said he wonders if he should have devoted more attention
to thwarting his involuntary involvement in the outing campaign.
“My bottom line is that I’ve never tried to hide who I am, but
it isn’t my style to broadcast my sexual orientation with klieg lights,” Tolman
said. “I am getting the impression that they intend to make this as painful
as possible for me simply because I am a Republican and I work for one.
“But I give my boss advice on environmental issues, not social issues.
If he would ask me [about the Federal Marriage Amendment], I would say, ‘Don’t
vote for that Jim,’ but he hasn’t.”
Adrian Brune can be reached at abrune@washblade.com.
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