I received an email yesterday from Joystick, one of my Conservative readers. He feels that in the case of Mr. Guckert/Gannon and Mr. McClellan, I have unfairly confused sex with free enterprise and the markets. I defer to his judgment on this, as I have no especial expertise in either of these matters and Joystick would appear to be intimately acquainted with both.

Mr. Fuse-

As a fellow Conservative, I feel I must point out that Mr. Guckert/Gannon has apparently hinted in interviews that he is NOT, in fact, homoSEXual. I think you do him a grave injustice in claiming that he is homoSEXual.

Please remember that a very great number of us straight heterosexual Conservative men have, on occasion, found it necessary or useful to offer personal services to paying gentlemen. This is always — for us traditional Conservative Republican men — a BUSINESS proposition; it has nothing at all to do with morality, or for that matter, emotion. As you well know, the highest moral values are one with business values. This is what makes us Republicans!

Now as to Mr. McClellan: Please don't smear him with the same lavender brush. We Conservatives have had to survive by helping each other out whenever a fellow Conservative needs a helping hand. Clearly Mr. Guckert/Gannon's business (first, the personal-service web sites; later, his new news-correspondent job) required assistance, and Mr. McClellan has the good fortune to be in a position to assist. The reported visits to Texas gay bars are easily explained: he was simply researching one of the potential markets of Mr. Guckert/Gannon's web-site business. Besides - Mr. McClellan is MARRIED, for heaven's sake!

It is true that we straight heterosexual Conservative men who offer personal services to paying gentlemen frequently are called upon to provide these services to married men. Again, it is a business after all, and discrimination would be bad business. Servicing these depraved unfortunates is a purely business transaction; and the fact that these customers are so clearly depraved is proof in itself that Mr. McClellan (a fine and upstanding REAL man - the opposite of depraved!) could not have been relying on Mr. Guckert/Gannon's services personally.

But even if he HAD called upon Mr. Guckert/Gannon in that business capacity, this should not reflect unpleasantly on Mr. McClellan. Such a lapse is not uncommon, even among sincere born-again believers. The important thing is that in such a case we Christians FORGIVE transgressions in another Christian. We are compassionate! Were he an unbeliever, a sinner unwilling to seek forgiveness, or someone so beyond redemption (such as a committed homoSEXual --- or a liberal) — well, such people are beyond our forgiveness and must rely on God's own punishments.

I hope you will reflect on your casual assumptions about these fine gentlemen. Perhaps you will find guidance in the reported recommendations of some perspicacious Democrats, who are pushing their colleagues to avoid the so-called "gay angle" and who would encourage dropping the frenzied conversation about this irrelevant teapot tempest.

I know you, as a fellow Conservative, will agree.

Sincerely,

Joystick

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