Harris Wofford: Pennsylvania's 1st gay senator

(886 words)

I was surprised to learn on election day I’d voted for Pennsylvania’s first gay U.S. Senator.

In 1991!

Yes, one of my favorite senators, Harris Wofford, 90, is marrying Matthew Charlton, 40.

Talk about switching parties.

Even for a romantic like me, it’s all a bit confusing.

See, back in 1991 Harris Wofford had been happily married for 43 years to his wife Clare (she died in ’96) and they together had three children.

Some would mistakenly surmise, I guess, that means Wofford was in the closet.

If he was then the closet was in a different house in another state because Wofford was a life-long happy hetero.

It was an interesting time for me. I was doing general assignment features for the local paper that often brought me into frequent face time with Pennsylvania’s senators.

They were at the time Arlen Specter and John Heinz III, both moderate Republicans.

In this divisive era, many people are quick to label me a raging liberal — and I’m fine with that. But it wasn’t always so and the reasons have to do with Harris Wofford and my political coming of age.

See, one of the politicians I most admire was Heinz, a classic Pennsylvania Republican.

He was fiscally conservative and socially moderate. To give youngsters some idea of his political pedigree he was married to Teresa Heinz who is now married to Secretary of State John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

And Heinz was brilliant.

That was my conclusion after an impromptu interview/bull session outside a ’91 memorial service for local Gulf War victims.

I found Heinz and an aide just hanging out behind the church. I approached and asked if he had time to answer some questions.

He did.

About 30 minutes, as it turned out.

I was very professional and concise at the beginning. I asked relevant policy questions about global hot spots and federal budgetary matters. Having exhausted the issues, I felt him out about insider politics and in no time we’d begun to banter.

We talked baseball, music, history, books, the arts and the best places to get a great local pizza.

It was wonderful. He was so warm and engaging. I remember thinking, wow, this man will one day be president.

Had I enjoyed the true gift of prophesy, I would have said, “Senator, for God’s sake, don’t get on any helicopters in the next month!”

Because just three weeks later, Heinz was dead, killed in an aviation accident over Philadelphia. He was 52. With him died, I believe, a political civility that’s never been recovered as the GOP began its historic rightward lurch.

Given there wasn’t enough time to hold primaries, Gov. Robert Casey appointed Wofford, who won the general election handily, mostly on the strength of his remarkable history and evident dignity.

He’d helped found the Peace Corp and was pals with Martin Luther King. A Civil Rights icon, he’d been rumored to be on Bill Clinton’s VP shortlist in ’92.

I was proud to have such a man represent me and the Keystone State.

So I was pissed in ’94 when this man who cared so much about equal rights for all was driven from office by a man who seemed to care exclusively about the rights of straight whites like himself.

He was Rick Santorum, maybe my least favorite politician in my lifetime.

Because Santorum was the tip of the spear in the culture wars that have dominated and divided us lo these 25 years.

He was opposed to teaching about sex in schools, opposed to pre-marital sex, wanted to ban pornography, found homosexuality icky and thought any sexual dabbling outside the marriage would lead to perdition.

I remember marveling how such a man so opposed to sex could have had any intimate role in the conception of eight children.

So, of course, when President Clinton got busted screwing an intern Santorum immediately mounted his white horse — and please get that bestial image out of your head.

He was adamant. He wanted Clinton impeached. He joined with self-righteous GOP stalwarts Newt Gingrich (three marriages), Bob Livingston (multiple affairs), Henry Hyde (adulterous homewrecker), and Dennis Hastert (this very day being sentenced for molesting young boys) in — hallelujah — protecting the sanctimony of marriage.

The Clinton impeachment trials turned me from a moderate into a knee-jerk liberal  whose knee jerks most liberally when it’s near a conservative’s crotch.

I thought of Santorum, run out of office in 2006, when I read Wofford’s announcement about finding love at the age of 90 with a man 50 years his junior.

I’m sure he’s appalled.

Wofford said the unlikely love caught him completely by surprise.

Only twice in his long life, he said, has he felt such a passionate pull. The first time was when he met his wife; the second was Matthew.

“At age 90, I’m lucky,” he said, “to be in an era where the Supreme Court has strengthened what President Obama calls ‘the dignity of marriage’ by recognizing that matrimony is not based on anyone’s sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love.”

Good for him.

Me, I feel lucky to be in an era where voters are becoming less concerned about who’s screwing who as long as our politicians stop screwing us.

Related . . .

A real Pennsylvanian considers Rick Santorum

Santorum’s right: Man marrying dog in Wisconsin

Candidates families playing “staring” role in campaigns

GOP loves Clinton, 20 years too late

Where have you gone, Ross Perot?

Questions: Who is Edmund Pettus & how is Harrison Ford?

A real Pennsylvanian considers Rick Santorum

This will surprise readers familiar with my liberal leanings, but one of my political heroes is a beloved Republican. He was a common sense U.S. Senator with a southwestern Pennsylvania home not far from my own.

There are three clues in the previous paragraph that ought to make it clear I’m not talking about Rick Santorum.

He’s not beloved, he has no common sense and when he was a U.S. Senator he wasn’t anyone’s Pennsylvania neighbor.

If you love the Republican Party or want it to be a fair counterweight to its Democratic opposites, then I have some good news for you: The Rick Santorum ascendancy peaks today.

I’m confident in this prediction for two reasons: One historic, the other personal.

Historically, it has to do with the current nervous breakdown of the once Grand Old Party.

In the past four months sober majorities of Republicans have momentarily inflated the poll numbers of Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, Donald Trump and Herman Cain to frontrunner status.

Christian conservatives are just continuing their pursuit of the next non-Romney -- and how a voting demographic so enamored with one savior can always be so restlessly seeking another is mystifying.

So the Santorum bubble is on pace to begin deflating today as sensible Republicans, if any remain, understand how toxic he is to independents. He’s like Mel Gibson without any of the fun parts.

He doesn’t believe believe in evolution, contraception, global warming, public education, or the idea of having sex without procreative purposes.

I can appreciate anyone who believes life begins at conception, but I can’t conceive how anyone doesn’t appreciate, by God, what it’s like to do a little living.

The very idea of the federal government telling families what to do about personal health care issues infuriates him. I wonder if that’s what he told Terri Schiavo during his highly publicized 2005 visit to her death bed.

Seven years later it seems Santorum is again engaging in conversation with the brain dead.

Anyone who thinks his smirking brand of self-righteous demagoguery will work on a national level is living in the ‘50s -- the 1850s.

It galls me every time he trots out his alleged southwestern Pennsylvania roots to an audience (his family spent time in both Virginias before settling here).

This is a proud working class region where common sense politics usually prevail over the kind of partisan bitterness Santorum began promoting as a first-term congressman in 1991.

The final straw for most Pennsylvanians came in 2004 when Santorum, by then a full-time Virginia resident, sought to chisel $67,000 in home schooling tuition reimbursements from the Penn Hills School District.

One problem: the home he schooled his kids in wasn’t even in Pennsylvania. It was in Leesburg, Virginia, near where he now lives in a $2 million mansion.

After that even Pennsylvania Republicans stopped defending him. He lost his last election by 18 percent, the largest losing margin for an incumbent Republican senator ever.

Still, Santorum acts like we Pennsylvanians have spent the last 20 years yukking it up with him at the Steeler tailgate parties.

Who does the guy think he is, John Heinz?

That’s the Republican hero previously mentioned. I was a local reporter in March 1991 when Senator Heinz was in town to cover a Gulf War memorial service.

I caught him outside and asked if he had time to answer some questions for the local paper.

“Shoot,” he said.

I shot until my inquisitive reportorial gun went click.

I asked him about the service, the war, George H.W. Bush’s re-election chances, and if he knew anything about the local county commissioner race (he did).

I asked about the Pirates prospects, turnpike fare increases, the new Clint Eastwood movie and if he’d ever seen The Stones play live (he had).

I remember it as one of the most engaging and wide-ranging conversations I’ve ever had. It lasted about 30 minutes, a one-on-one lifetime with a U.S. Senator.

Less than a month later, he was dead. A mid-air collision over a Pennsylvania school yard killed Heinz and seven others, including two first grade girls playing on the ground.

His death changed the arc of Pennsylvania Republican politics for the next 20 years. Had he not died, he’d still be our senator or maybe president.

Who knows?

Maybe it would have prevented the ascendency of someone as vile and divisive as Rick Santorum, a man who doesn’t believe in recreational sex, yet is still finding new ways to screw with millions of unsuspecting strangers.

Santorum's right: Man marrying dogs in Wisc!

I guess I owe Rick Santorum an apology. I was among those who ridiculed him in 2003 for saying gay marriage would lead to man-on-dog sex and other bestial recreations.

The outraged gay community responded with a subversive lexicological campaign so vicious I dare not repeat it here (just google “santorum.")

But lo and behold, it is in fact happening.

Man is marrying dogs in Wisconsin!

And not just any man.

It’s Elvis!

Let me clear that up. Dogs are marrying other dogs and an Elvis impersonator is presiding over the puppy nuptials.

It’s all part of the silliness at the Wisconsin State Fair, a veritable corny-copia of wacky events, competitions and homespun entertainment sure to appeal to anyone that’s ever dreamed of trying their luck at some cow plop bingo.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” says state fair spokeswoman Kristen Chuckel. “It’s pure Vegas. Elvis will marry the couple and sing to them. There will be champagne bowls, formal attire, doggie-maids and doggie-men. There will be special dog tags and the pups will get doggie bone bouquets.”

I found out about it as I was researching a story about oddball state fair stunts and competitions -- outhouse racing, butter Space Shuttles, cricket spittin’ contests, etc.

Of course, I’ll feature the doggie weddings because it’s the perfect example of silly fair fun. Bravo.

But I was curious from a personal standpoint.

I have a dog I’d like to marry off.

But I suspect he’s gay. And I’ve been reluctant to broach the subject with the cheerful spokesperson out of fear she might laugh at me.

And who wants to be laughed at by a woman named Chuckel?

Being the parent of a dog I suspect is gay is a challenge for any traditional parent.

I had one other dog that -- and I know this is politically incorrect to say -- was perfectly “normal.”

Yep, Casey liked the bitches, and please don’t let that urban-sounding phrasing confuse you into thinking Casey was a rapper.

He was a sweet and beautiful Golden Retriever with zero street cred.

But he was all boy. He loved to screw and did so with gusto, neighborhood dogs and their owners’ legs right up until outpatient surgery rendered it a physical impossibility.

Snickers isn’t like that at all. He’s part pug, part chihuahua, a parental pairing that sounds like the screwball premise for some canine rom-com.

He’s a purse puppie, the kind Paris Hilton uses as a fashion accessory.

He’s 1 year old and I still mistakenly refer to him with female pronouns. I can’t believe we’re the same gender.

French poodles could bully lunch money from Snickers.

That I suspect he’s gay couldn’t possibly change my feelings for him. I’m sure I’d still despise him if he were as mucho as the Old Spice dude.

And he’s high-strung and yippy. He’s entered an infuriating shoe-chewing phase, ruining one of my church loafers after he pried open to door to the closet.

Casey wasn’t like that at all.

Casey was the kind of dog you’d enjoy lounging in front of warm fires.

Snickers doesn’t lounge in front of warm fires. He starts them.

So I want him out of the house.

But has the Wisconsin legislature approved gay canine weddings?

Should gay dogs in Wisconsin be afforded the same rights as gay humans in New York and other states?

Of course, the point is moot until Snickers can come to grips with his own sexual orientation. He needs to take a good long look at himself in the mirror, the one on back of the bedroom door that goes clear down to the floor.

I suspect he’ll finally admit he’s gay and might flourish elsewhere.

He won’t be the first being to come out of the closet.

He’ll just be the first to do so with one of my loafers in his mouth.

Weiner 'n' tweets

You’d think a guy eager to keep his blog fresh with timely observations about any national silliness would be all over the Weiner tweets.

But, right there, you just read part of my reluctance.

Just typing Weiner tweets feels unseemly.

I can’t get my hands around the Weiner tweets -- and I just don’t want to.

Is is a right wing prank? It certainly seems to be. Rep. Anthony Weiner -- and I’m relieved his parents didn’t call him Peter -- is an inviting target. He’s Sen. Chuck Schumer’s former spokesman, he’s a self-righteous and often whiney liberal and, hey, his name is Weiner.

Hacking his twitter account and posting a picture of his excited namesake inside his underwear would seem a natural, one I’d applaud as juvenile fun.

But I don’t know what to make of his many non-denial denials. It’s bizarre. If he wants to keep the mini-scandal percolating along he’s doing what can only be termed a swell job (I’m not touching that one either).

I know the idiot press in D.C. is loving it because it gives them an opportunity to pretend they’re witty. Indeed they are, but only to one another.

I think the rest of America just doesn’t care one way or the other.

There’s a whole lot of people out there who have no idea what Twitter even is. So they don’t care.

Then there’s a whole lot of people out there who use smart phones and Twitter to post naughty pictures of themselves for the whole e-world to critique. So they don’t care either.

Weiner’s said his political ambition is to become mayor of New York City and this will do nothing to derail that goal.

And I think he’d be a great Gotham mayor. He’s colorful, intelligent and his heart’s in the right place even when other bodily parts of him are not.

Here’s a dozen of my recent tweets from 8days2amish:

• Time doesn't fly. It drives a Maserati down the Autobahn, oblivious to the brick strapped to the accelerator.

• If some people suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome then it stands to reason that those of us who do not enjoy cheerful bowels.

• The Simon & Garfunkle song "The Sound of Silence" is 3 minutes and 4 seconds of titular contradiction.

• Hawaiians complaining about high gas prices. What? Has Hawaii run out of hammocks?

• Just wondering: will the change from incandescent to compact fluorescent have any effect on light years?

• Not only is Buddy Guy a blues legend, he also has one of the greatest names in history. Who wouldn't want to be friends with a Buddy Guy?

• Older gentleman friend told me he'd be unable to meet tomorrow because of scheduled colonoscopy. "Bummer," I said and wished I hadn't.

• Avid spankers are the only people on earth whose ambition involves repeatedly hitting bottom.

• It took a while, but today I finally saw a watched pot boil.

• Rick Santorum saying John McCain doesn't understand interrogation is like saying Eskimos don't understand snow.

• I think Obama Mideast speech would have more soulful impact if delivered dressed like Nat X, the old Chris Rock character from '90s SNL.

• Maybe the Rapture did occur and there were only like five or six Christians deemed worthy of saving.

• My great dread for the future is all the kids will think it's quaint when we say, "I remember when all the TVs had just 1,000 channels."

• Rhode Island isn't even Rhode Isthmus.

• Red Sox play White Sox tonight. I'll root for neither team. I don't cheer for underwear.

• It's better to be cool than cold, yet most people strive to be hot rather than warm. It's all very mercurial.

• Spouses who fake sleep to get out of either household chores or late night sex are bulldozers.

• Butcher tried to sell me cured ham. Told him I wanted ham that'd never been sick. He looked at me like I was crazy. He must've had sick ham.

• Enjoy a relaxing Sunday! That's not a tweet, but the sentiment is twue.