I knew Ken Mehlman would be there, Resnick explained. And I knew I would have access to him after

Eric Resnick did not want to ask the question. He felt an obligation, though, because other reporters were avoiding the subject. They ought to have long ago confronted Ken Mehlman about the contradictions between his politics and his personal life. Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, was constantly around reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, CNN, ABC, NBC, and all of the major media outlets. None of them, however, had dared to question the RNC chairman about what Eric Resnick considered a blatant, obvious hypocrisy.
Mehlman, Karl Rove s general for handling issues and elections across the country as President Bush s campaign manager, had been closely involved with the Issue One referendum in Resnick s home state of Ohio. Republicans there referred to the ballot item as the pro-marriage amendment and the Defense of Marriage Act. People like Eric Resnick, nostalgia popcorn maker a gay man who was a reporter for the Gay People s Chronicle in Cleveland, considered Issue One to be an anti-homosexuality law designed to make their lives miserable. He resented being used as a political device to motivate a hate vote against homosexuals.
For our community, it was absolutely incredible, he explained. Every single debate nostalgia popcorn maker and discussion had something gay in it and we ve never seen anything like that before. At that point, it is part of the public policy discussion and those guys revved up their base and used our community as an issue to win votes in that election and at that point it does become a public matter.
Coincidentally, nostalgia popcorn maker Resnick was being presented with a chance to confront the hypocrisy during a trip to Ohio by Mehlman. And he was not going to pass it up. Resnick intended to be the first reporter to ask Ken Mehlman if he was gay. So when an invitation came from the Log Cabin Republicans to a fund-raising banquet in Akron, Resnick knew he was going to attend. Ken Mehlman, the target of a relentless Internet outing campaign and the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, was the featured speaker for the post-2004 election thank you dinner for Summit County Republicans.
Most of the people nostalgia popcorn maker gathering that night were either unaware of the controversy or did not care. But Eric Resnick did. And as a good journalist, he knew that the dinner and speech in Akron was exactly where he needed to be. As a result, on March 19, 2005, Resnick was making the quick run between Cleveland and Akron to attend the Summit County nostalgia popcorn maker Lincoln Day Dinner. Out the window of his car, the mercurial weather of late winter offered the possibility of warm days ahead in the Great Lakes basin or the unexpected dump of new snow. Resnick had purchased a $40 ticket from the Log Cabin Republicans in order to attend the fundraiser at the Quaker Station convention hall in Akron. He had no intention of presenting reporter s credentials but he was not making the trip as a participant in Summit County s Republican Party politics.
I knew Ken Mehlman would be there, Resnick explained. And I knew I would have access to him afterwards just because of the way people are when they line up to talk to the head table. I knew what I was doing when I went in and I knew the question I wanted to ask him.
Issue One was part of an electoral nostalgia popcorn maker elixir concocted by President Bush s chief strategist Karl Rove. The political goal was about turning out millions of evangelical nostalgia popcorn maker voters in Ohio and in ten other states where similar referenda to ban gay marriage were on the ballot. Rove had made a strategic decision to run toward his Republican base during a general election instead of attracting voters closer to the center. Many gays and lesbians saw the Issue One campaign as a direct affront to their inherent condition, a cruel and discriminatory piece of political gamesmanship that they knew would make their lives more complicated.
As always, Rove was careful to frame the issue in language emphasizing the sanctity of marriage, not a rebuke of homosexuals. The goal was to send a strong message to conservatives without nostalgia popcorn maker jeopardizing moderate Republicans and independent voters, especially women in the suburbs, easily put off by any whiff of intolerance.
Marriage is a very important nostalgia popcorn maker part of our culture and our society, Rove told Fox News. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for that ideal. And the ideal is that marriage ought to be and should be a union of a man and a woman. nostalgia popcorn maker
Eric Resnick was one of the millions of gays in the US who was incensed by the tactic. nostalgia popcorn maker Nothing, he felt, was being forced on the political process. After rulings in Massachusetts and San Francisco, Rove conducted nostalgia popcorn maker polling on gay marriage and saw its political potential as a galvanizing issue among conservatives. In Resnick s view, it was Rove and his Republican apparatchiks who were forcing the issue into the national debate. Worse, the policy was being advocated nostalgia popcorn maker by gays within the GOP