EDGE Boston gives us the setup:
[Richard] Curtis, elected to the [Washington] state House three years ago, voted in the spring against a measure to provide domestic partnerships to gays and lesbians.
In 2006, Curtis came out against an anti-discrimination bill to protect GLBT people from being discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality.
I’m sure you can guess the punchline. Check your answer below the fold.
Give yourself one point for each part of your answer found in the Seattle P-I’s opening paragraph:
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A Republican state legislator who repeatedly voted against gay rights measures resigned his seat Wednesday amid revelations he had sex with a man he met at an erotic video store while in Spokane on a GOP retreat.
Give yourself another point if you guessed that:
Curtis, a former firefighter, declared, “I am not gay.”
We now turn to Editor & Publisher. Give yourself another ten points if your answer involved crossdressing (not that there’s anything wrong with that):
The police report states that Curtis allegedly wore women’s clothing, red stockings and “a black sequined lingerie top before engaging in a sex act at the store. He continued to wear them throughout the night under his clothing,” the paper reported.
But for the really juicy details, we must turn to Spokane’s Finest. You can read the police report and search warrant affidavit. But do heed Wonkette’s advice: go to the bathroom first, so you don’t have to interrupt your reading halfway through.
Speaking of Wonkette, I can’t resist quoting some of her commenters:
Trai_Dep:
Nothing says, Bring dignity back to politics like a married-with-kids AIDs chasing man in red fishnet stockings and a black sequinned negligee. Because without the sequins? That’s so tawdry!
and Dave J.:
I think it’s safe to say that when your constituents have to ask “wait, was his DNA on the inside or the outside of the condom?” your political career is probably over.
Epsilon Clue 
You know, would have thought that this would have gotten old after a while, but it’s still funny. Really funny. I don’t know if it’s too many years of watching the conservative religious wing of the Republican party kick harmless minority around or if I’m really just a mean-spirited person. The only thing that would make this more of a hoot would be bigger names. Having Rick Santorum get caught spreading his namesake would make my year.
This is turning out to be an interesting election cycle. The religious nuts that the Republican party worked so hard to grow from a crazy fringe group to a powerful weapon have become a monster that has gotten out of hand. You and I knew all along that these guys were just cyincal hypocrites looking for a bogey man, but we weren’t their audience. Seeing their actual target audience (1) turn away in droves and (2) prove to be truly a vocal and overly powerful minority is just good old fashioned fun.
The big question now is, who is the next target? The easiest way to stay in power is to find an enemy. The Republicans got good mileage out of the gay community, but now that all the ballot measures and state constitutional amendments have passed, it’s hard to get the base worked up into a froth over the Gay Menace, and those who do get worked up are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Republican party’s demonstrated inability to rise to their level of insanity.
As I see it, the only way to go is to return to the tried and true game of racial politics and fear mongering. And of course, the only way you can do that in a politically correct way is to make immigrants the enemy. When the economy is down and people are uncertain about their place in a dangerous world, xenophobia sells even better than homophobia. I think that’s why the immigration issue, which has been around since the dawn of time, has suddenly become a national emergency in the past couple of years. My guess is that next election, we’ll see a replay of the last one with the enemy’s name changed a little bit. The Republicans will try to energize their base not with gay marriage amendments but with state ballot initiatives designed to make sure that illegal immigrants don’t get any state or local government services. I’m not sure how well it will work given that it’s possible to accidentally generate too much bipartisan support for such measures, which would defeat the whole purpose of proposing them to begin with.
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Yeah, it may not be enough of a wedge issue.
The reason abortion and homophobia work, IMHO, is that a) they’re Republican issues (i.e., opinions are split along party lines, but Republicans feel a lot more strongly about them than Democrats do), and b) there are a lot of people who feel that abortion or homophobia are a necessary and sufficient reason to get out and vote. Apparently there are lots of people out there who think, “I disagree with this candidate on just about everything, but he’s the one who’s against abortion, so I’ll vote for him”; enough to make a difference in an election. On top of which, if there aren’t any hot-button issues being voted on, these people won’t bother to vote at all.
I’ve heard rumors that if Giuliani wins the Republican nomination, then right-wingers like Dobson will run a far-right anti-abortion third candidate. If that happens, that candidate might suck enough votes from Giuliani to allow the Democratic candidate to win.
But what I’m really worried about is that the GOP seems to be generating a new sex scandal every week, and I’m not sure they can keep it up until the election.
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