The Detroit News published audio recordings today that expose an effort by two married Michigan Republican lawmakers to try to suppress news of their affair with each other. As part of the cover-up, state Reps. Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat, among the most vocal opponents of gay rights and defenders of “traditional marriage” in the state legislature, planned to start a rumor that Courser was actually having an affair with a man…. “Courser, a Lapeer Republican, said on one recording the email was designed to create ‘a complete smear campaign’ of exaggerated, false claims about him and Gamrat so a public revelation about the legislators’ relationship would seem ‘mild by comparison,’” Chad Livengood reported. “Interviews with former House employees and the recordings show freshman lawmakers Courser and Gamrat, R-Plainwell, used their taxpayer-funded offices to maintain and cover up their relationship.”
Ya just gotta love the GOP “family values” crowd, right? Holier than thou…and built to stay that way…they hold others to standards they’d never dream of holding themselves to. They cling (at least publicly) to beliefs that are music to the ears of the American Taliban. They decry what they perceive to be our collective declining moral standards, which to them means abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and their dismay that America isn’t hewing to their narrow agenda.
Turns out that such holier-than-thou public moralizing is a smokescreen, a Right-wing politician’s way of indulging themselves in the same sorts of sins and moral transgressions that have plagued mankind since Adam and Eve discovered that a penis could be a whole lot of fun when inserted into a vagina. In the case of Courser and Gamrat, two married (not to each other) Republicans for whom “family values” has a much different meaning, the challenge was in how to deal with their affair becoming public knowledge. Their plan was, to put it mildly, something less than perfect, with Courser deciding it was preferable for him to be accused of clandestine homosexual behavior than to have to admit he was engaging in an extramarital affair with a colleague.
You have to know that we’re in a Brave New World when it’s considered preferable to be accused of homosexual adultery than the heterosexual varity.
The pair are socially conservative legislators who often invoke their Christian faith in pursuit of new legislation governing gun rights, abortion and marriage. Their political alliance dates back to Courser’s unsuccessful 2013 race for Michigan Republican Party chairman when Gamrat ran as his vice chairwoman.
But since being sworn into office in January, the self-described tea party “gladiators” have fought with Republican leaders. In an unusual move, Courser and Gamrat wrote a “liberty response” to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s State of the State address in January — the kind of retort that typically comes from Democrats.
That two Republicans were exposed as hypocrites is hardly newsworthy; politicians of all stripes can and do easily trend toward the hypocritical. What makes Courser and Gamrat so spectacularly inept as hypocrites is that they flaunted their religious beliefs even as they were allegedly banging one another. Their bizarre plan to hide their relationship behind a smoke screen of faux outrage didn’t quite go according to plan. What were to be portrayed as malicious and dishonest accusations that Courser was a closet homosexual blew up, revealing Courser (and Gamrat) to be just another Right-wing hypocrite unwilling and unable to live by the standards they demand others adhere to.
This, kids, is why your God shouldn’t be our government. Any questions?
