Damned if You Do, But for This GOP ArchAngel, it's Here Comes Both Grooms

::Cough::

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

"I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners," he said.

He declined further comment on the wedding, which was in December.

Some of Mr. Finkelstein's associates said they were startled to learn that this prominent American conservative had married a man, given his history with the party, especially at a time when many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have campaigned against same-sex marriage and proposed amending the Constitution to ban it. Mr. Finkelstein has been allied over the years with Republicans who have fiercely opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and has been the subject of attacks by gay rights activists who have accused him of hypocrisy. He was identified as gay in a Boston Magazine article in 1996.

You know, I'm very happy for this Mr. Finkelstein and his male partner in marriage.

But isn't it a tad hypocritical to support all the people and programs who make certain other homosexuals can't marry while taking advantage of it yourself? (Waving to Andrew Sullivan whose little torch lights up whenever the president doesn't go quite so far as suggesting Andrew's little torch needs to be amputed in Christ's name.)

That's what I don't get again and again with the current wave of politics. We see one after another African American, Hispanic, woman, homosexual, corrupt-piece-of-pork-ass and Bill Bennett say one thing to make "the party of Lincoln" happy and healthy, while they do something completely different for themselves.

And isn't that a big difference between Democrats and Republicans? Rank-and-file Dems basically believe that if you create a law, then everybody's basically supposed to be subject to it. Today's GOP, however, is happy to create laws but is sure these laws only apply to the "riff-raff" while they themselves can break that law with impunity because it really didn't apply to them.