For many years, Ken Mehlman worked to prop up elected anti-gay bigots, including running the virulently anti-gay reelection campaign of George W. Bush in 2004.  Now that he’s finally coming out, Mike Rogers is giving Mehlman his ‘Roy Cohn Award’, his reporting from several years ago having been validated:

If I first started writing about Mehlman in 2004, why is Ken getting his Roy Cohn Award now? Because I am able to report – here for the first time — that Ken Mehlman, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee is set to come out of the closet in a column by Atlantic writer Marc Ambinder Friday morning or early next week. This will be on the heels of him being included in fundraising letter supporting marriage equality.

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The three people most responsible for the anti-gay actions of the Bush reelection campaign are Mehlman, Karl Rove and Bush. In addition to his role at the RNC, Mehlman served in the first Bush Administration as White House Political Director. In 2004 he was the general chairman of the Bush reelection campaign.

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If this move doesn’t call for a Roy Cohn Award, I don’t know what does. Ken Mehlman is horridly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past.

If it seems like Mike is being harsh, it’s because he is, and I understand where he’s coming from.  Mike goes on to explain how Mehlman could actually redeem himself:

I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for being the architect of the 2004 Bush reelection campaign. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for his role in developing strategy that resulted in George W. Bush threatening to veto ENDA or any bill containing hate crimes laws. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for the pressing of two Federal Marriage Amendments as political tools. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for developing the 72-hour strategy, using homophobic churches to become political arms of the GOP before Election Day.

And those state marriage amendments. I want to hear him apologize for every one of those, too.

I agree. Ken Mehlman cynically used his position of influence to rake in mountains of cash for himself, and he willingly did it on the backs of his gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. If Mehlman is still a Republican, I’m sure the GOProud people will embrace him with open arms, because they don’t really care if a person is anti-gay or gay-supportive. They’re pretty much in it for tax cuts and self-shaming purposes. Mehlman will fit right in, in that case. But if he suddenly wants to become a spokesman for The Gays and The Equality, he’s got a lot of explaining and apologizing to do.

NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) today called on Parents and Friends of “Ex-Gays’ (PFOX) to drop its frivolous lawsuit against the Washington, DC Office of Human Rights. PFOX claimed it launched its suit because so-called “ex-gays” are not protected under its sexual orientation anti-discrimination law.

“The ex-gay community is the most bullied and maligned group in America, yet they are not protected by sexual orientation non-discrimination laws,” said Regina Griggs, PFOX executive director.

“If so-called “ex-gays’ are now heterosexual, they are covered under the basis of sexual orientation,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “This nonsensical lawsuit is frivolous and a desperate, grandstanding attempt for free media attention. PFOX should apologize for clogging up the court system with a loony lawsuit that will ultimately be dismissed.”

TWO also disputes that so-called “ex-gays” suffer discrimination. PFOX has never offered any evidence and has long invented or greatly exaggerated potential cases. PFOX is a political organization that sells the idea that people can “pray away the gay.” It was founded by lawyer Roy Cohn’ ex-boyfriend, Anthony Falzarono, and bankrolled by the Family Research Council. It was later run by therapist Richard Cohen, who was banned for life by the American Counseling Association. The current leader is Regina Griggs, who has an openly gay son.

Anthony Falzarano – the founder of Parents and Friends of ‘Ex-Gays’ (PFOX) – was a leading “ex-gay” spokesperson in the late 90′s. His media-friendly story was quite unique, in that he claims he was Roy Cohn’s rent boy and partied each night like it was 1999.

Falzarano’s entry into the ex-gay scene in the early 80′s has always been a little murky. In one version of his tale, God told Falzarano to go straight before the AIDS crises hit. In another version, after many of his friends had passed away, God told him to become ex-gay. In yet a third version, one of his sexual conquests felt guilty after their encounter and introduced him to Christ. Obviously, these colorful versions are contradictions and they can’t all be true.

If there is one thing about Falzarano – he is not opposed to telling a good story, the facts be damned. So, his fictional book, “Such Were Some of You: One Man’s Walk Out of the Gay Lifestyle,” is sure to be entertaining and certainly much better than Exodus’ Alan Chambers depressingly trite tome, “God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door.”

Falzarano holds to the empty and unsupported belief that homosexuality is caused by a young person being molested – and he pulls bogus figures out of thin air to bolster his case. Indeed, he is known to invent new percentages on the number of gay people molested from one interview to the next. The man has no scruples and honesty is just an inconvenience in his bizarre universe.

He is also a proponent of spiritual warfare, once telling CBS News, “AIDS comes from the devil, directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.” Another time, he called hate crime victim Matthew Shepard a “predator to heterosexual men.” (Read More)