The Republic of T.

There are some interesting details about Newt Gingrich’s response to ex-wife Marriane’s explosive revelations.

How Clintonian of him. (more…)

I’ve been having some fun with the Republican presidential candidates lately. It’s funny, how much these guys get right — when they attack each other, that is. But I haven’t had nearly as much fun with a couple of candidates as I could. Until now.

Yes, it’s too easy. Certainly, it’s low-hanging fruit. But this is politics. There’s no such thing as a shot so easy that you shouldn’t take it. So, let’s go there. And let’s start with Newt Gingrich.

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“Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?” is a favorite in our house. And last night we watched the Dina Matos-Jim McGreevey story.

I know that they can only fit so much into the format of a 30 minute show, but…

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Well, there goes the rest of the news cycle.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York will heed calls from across the political spectrum and resign over a sexting scandal that he lied about before admitting his involvement, a Democratic source with knowledge of the congressman’s plans said Thursday.

Weiner has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference in his home district, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she planned to issue a statement on her Democratic colleague after that.

“He is going to make an announcement,” Pelosi said. “I am not going to predicate any remarks on a decision that we haven’t heard yet.

Some House colleagues from New York offered their farewells to Weiner even before any official announcement.

“There is life after Congress for Anthony Weiner and I hope he devotes himself to repairing the damage he caused to his personal life,” said Democratic Rep.

Not that we didn’t see it coming. Nancy Pelosi cut him off at the knees, and then the president pulled the rug from under him.  (more…)

Weinergate is stretching into a scandal that will probably keep the 24-hour news cycle churning during breaks in the Casey Anthony trial. The political implications are still being hashed out not the least of which being that as the scandal broke, Weiner was on the verge of exposing a conflict of interest concerning Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. [Via Jack & Jill Politics.] (Shades of Eliot Spitzer?)

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any stranger, Long Dong Silver comes galloping in to save the day.

I could say more, but there are a couple Weiner-related questions that interest me today.

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The first is a Slate Magazine poll, which asks “Which scandal-plagued politician would you least want to be married to?”

Seriously? These are the choices? Staying single isn’t an option? “All of the above”? I have to be married, and it has to be to one of these guys?

Hmmm.

Couldn’t you give me at least one more option? Like “I’d sooner eat glass?” No?

Ok. If I had to be married to one of these guys, and had pick the one I’d least want to marry, it’s a toss-up for the one I’d least want to be married to. It comes down to Schwarzeneggar and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I think, if you put a gun to my head and said I had to marry one of the two of them (better make it a bazooka, because I might consider taking a bullet instead), I’d be only slightly less repulsed by Arnold than DSK. Then again, one’s pressed charges against Arnold. Yet.

I’ve already said my piece about John Edwards: Pretty is as pretty does.

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Once your eyes are opened, you want to close them again. The closer you look, the worse it gets. You want to avert your eyes, as the NY Times article says people did with John and Elizabeth Edwards dined out at a Chapel Hill, NC, restaurant. You want to look away, because as we also say in the south That just aint right.

To have an affair is bad enough, as a betrayal of ones spouse and family. To jeopardize any number of political futures, and play games with the hopes of so many more people by pushing forward with a campaign knowing the bomb in your closet could go off at any moment (say, after the nomination, sometime around mid October) is another. But planning a wedding with your mistress, once your wife dies of the inoperable cancer that (by the way) shes still living with, to the point of talking locations and picking out a wedding band?

To continue the metaphor above, its like finding out that the guy you flirted with but never dated turned out to be as much of a shitheel as the ex he reminded you of (Bill, youll recall, allegedly promised Monica hed divorce Hillary and marry her once he was out of the White House), and thinking, Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one.

Politically speaking, that to borrow another southernism takes the cake. It rightly earns Edwards the title of S.0.B., and those initials dont stand for Sweet Old Boy. Thats reserved for those who earn the title but at least remain likable. Edwards no longer qualifies as a likable S.O.B.

There’s not much pretty about Edwards except his face. Sooner or later he’ll lose his looks too. Then what do you have? A walking, talking personality disorder? No thanks, I’ll just read the diagnosis. It takes less time, and it’s far less painful.

John Ensign, as with Arnold, would normally be out of the running because of his politics. At the affair to that, and running to his mommy and daddy to fix his mess

Then again, facing the bazooka I might just say, “Ok. I’ll just marry Weiner. He was fairing pretty well in the poll when I took it.

The women of Slate give their thoughts on this collection of jerks: Online affairs may be just “stupid and embarrassing,” while “men who [allegedly] abuse women” are a different strata of repugnant. Then again, Edwards and Schwarzenegger actually fathered and debatably abandoned children, while “DSK and Weiner seem to have been omnidirectional cads who didn’t form lasting attachments.” One Slate woman suggests that Weiner would love this poll: “He comes off smelling like a rose” by comparison.

At least with him it was all virtual.” Sure, the more I hear of his story the more I feel like I need a shower, but at least he didn’t actually have sex with any of the women he’s admitted to tweeting, etc.

And yet, does that mean it doesn’t “count”? Is it cheating if it’s all online?.

At Mondays press conference, Weiner clarified:

I never met these women and I know never really had much desire to, and to me it was almost a frivolous exchange among friends that I don’t think I made an important enough distinction about how hurtful it was and how inappropriate it was.

Although Weiner expressed feelings of remorse for his actions, according to a 1998 MSNBC survey addressing online sexual relationships,” 64 percent of participants said that they were in a committed relationships while engaging in online erotic chat and 87 percent still said that they did not feel guilty about online flirting and chat and instead seeing it as a form of entertainment akin to reading Playboy.

With another public figure enmeshed in yet another political sex scandal, questions have circulated in the media as to whether sexts and online chats constitute cheating. When watching Weiners press conference on a slowed speed, it is evident the Congressman formed the word relationship before quickly changing his term for the nature of his interactions to communications, Slate reported. Weiner may have been trying to suggest his behavior constituted flirtation rather than hard-core infidelity, this emotional disconnect does not necessarily exist for the spouse of the person engaging with an avatar lover.

I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s something that needs to be decided between couples. Maybe couples need to work out their own rules. After all, there are plenty of people in open relationships, and it works well for all parties involved, probably because they’ve worked out their own “rules” in advance. Rules like, “Online is OK, but meeting someone is not.” Or “Not in our house, and not in our bed.” A married couple can have a understanding, like “Do what you want. Just don’t bring anything home, and don’t embarrass me.

But I’m leaning towards thinking it does count and that it is cheating, even if it’s “just online.” Hear me out. I think it’s a problem of language, and our understanding of what constitutes infidelity catching up with what our technology makes possible.

As William Saletan points out, Weiner stressed the point that he had not met any of these women or had sex outside of his marriage. But the congressman kept referring to them as “relationships.” That makes sense. He exchanged pages of text messages, and his communications with one woman involved not only “hundreds of messages” but graduated to a phone call which revealed the Weiner had spent some time learning about her.

The relationship between Broussard and Weiner only ventured out of the digital world once, she said, when a man identifying himself as Weiner called by phone from a number associated with Weiner’s New York congressional office on the afternoon of May 18.

“The day he called he just said, ‘Who in the world would be acting like me?’ laughing about it,” she said.

“You’re an internet rat, aren’t you?” Broussard said she asked him, to which Weiner just sort of giggled.

Then, she says, the conversation got personal. “He heard her [Broussard's daughter] in the background, I think, and he said, ‘Oh is that –’ and then he said her name, and I said, ‘yeah, it’s her birthday,’ and that kind of freaked me out because you had to pilfer through my Facebook to find out her name.”

After they hung up, Broussard said she called the number back to see if it was actually him. A Weiner office receptionist answered, she said. Broussard provided a record of the call to ABC News.

That’s why I tend to agree with Saletan that these are relationships, in what is a reasonably updated understanding of the term.

…Weiner did meet these women. In his opening statement, he called them “women I had met online.” Later, he referred to some of them as “women that I met on Facebook.” This is the reality of social networking: Our introductions to people in cyberspace often feel like genuine encounters. We have met them in the new sense, if not in the old one.

Weiner’s concession was more than semantic. When a reporter accused him of sexting complete strangers, the congressman replied: “I didn’t have the sense that they were complete strangers. These were people that I had developed relationships with online, and I believed that we had become friends. But that was clearly a mistake.”

So if the question is whether Weiner sent naughty pictures to strangers, the answer is no, he sent them to peoplenot women, but “people”whom he had met and with whom he had relationships. But if the question is whether he cheated on his wife, the answer is no, because he never met these women, and he had only “communications” with them, not relationships.

…In the annals of lust and sin, Weiner is just another straying husband. But in the unfolding story of information technology, he’s a milestone worth thinking about. The trajectory of political sex scandalsClinton, Mark Foley, Kwame Kilpatrick, Mark Sanford, and now Weinerhas taken us from phone sex to chat rooms to sexting to email to Facebook and Twitter. We’re finding new realms in which to wander, meet people, and flirt. You can call these adventures whatever you want to. But we all know what they are. They’re relationships.

What makes them relationships to me is simple: an investment of time — time spent getting to know your partner, time spent communicating, building intimacy and trust. It’s not about sticking tab A into slot B, or exchanging bodily fluids. That can take a little as 15 minutes, and can be done without exchanging names or numbers. Investing time also makes the other person a higher priority than other people or things. It’s a simple matter of opportunity cost. Choosing to do one thing means sacrificing other opportunities.

Sure, there are things that take a higher priority at different times. You spend eight hours a day or more at work, apart from your significant other. You might invest time in other activities, apart from your partner, that are important; like exercise, meditation, or some other interest or hobby that is important to your personal happiness. (For me, it’s writing.) You might invest time in maintaining other important relationships with friends, family or colleagues. But you always come back “home,” where the heart — and the primary relationship — is.

It’s like the “forsaking all others” part of marriage vows. By investing time and energy in building communication, intimacy and trust, you’re choosing to be in a relationship with someone. Thus, unless your relationship includes the “understandings” I mentioned earlier, the other person and your relationship with them becomes more important than opportunities to have relationships with others. The applies to having a family with someone, as it’s an extension of your relationship — it’s a higher priority than most things.

Time invested in pursuing and building relationships with others is time taken away from, or not invested in your primary relationship. If it’s done without the knowledge and consent of your partner, then it probably is infidelity, even if it’s online.

People have entire relationships online, that are no less real in terms of time and commitment than “real-time” relationships between people who are sitting in the same room. And people have had affairs online, too, sometimes while their spouse or partner is in the same house or even in the same room, unaware that a new relationship is starting or growing right under their noses. And the person at the keyboard is making a clear choice to invest time in a relationship with someone other than their spouse.

Before the internet made Facebook and Twitter part of our lives, and we started having entire conversations via text message, “part-time” lovers used other means to communicate with each other without their cuckolded significant others knowing. “Call up, ring once, hang up the phone,” instructs the Stevie Wonder/Luther Vandross hit. “If she’s with me, I’ll blink the lights, to let you know tonight’s the night.”

The only difference is that Weiner and his other women were “never in the same room.” But virtual space is space nonetheless, when we use it for the purpose of connecting with, communicating with, and relating to others. Thus, the phone sex question is a valid one. Even when the parties involves aren’t able to press their flesh to one another, they can still achieve a level of intimacy that involves everything but touching. Indeed, they can share fantasies that they would never perhaps dream of sharing with the spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend in the next room. Besides, online relationships can move easily into “real time,” starting with just the kind of phone call Weiner made to at least one woman. It would be more honest to say he hasn’t been in the same room with any of them yet. But it could only be that he hasn’t had the chance yet.

It’s clear that at least in some cases, Weiner invested a considerable amount of time in cultivating these relationships. Especially newlywed and someone who’s as busy as members of Congress tend to be. If I were married to him, I’d have to ask why he put so much time into these relationships instead of ours.

The only difference is that Weiner and his other women were “never in the same room.” But virtual space is space nonetheless, when we use it for the purpose of connecting with, communicating with, and relating to others. Thus, the phone sex question is a valid one. Even when the parties involves aren’t able to press their flesh to one another, they can still achieve a level of intimacy that involves everything but touching. Indeed, they can share fantasies that they would never perhaps dream of sharing with the spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend in the next room. Besides, online relationships can move easily into “real time,” starting with just the kind of phone call Weiner made to at least one woman. It would be more honest to say he hasn’t been in the same room with any of them yet. But it could only be that he hasn’t had the chance yet.

It’s clear that at least in some cases, Weiner invested a considerable amout of time in cultivating these relationships. Especially newlywed and someone who’s as busy as members of Congress tend to be. If I were married to him, I’d have to ask why he put so much time into these relationships instead of ours.

Well, shit. Turns out it was Anthony’s weaner.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York said today he has engaged in “several inappropriate” electronic relationships with six women over three years, and that he publicly lied about a photo of himself sent over Twitter to a college student in Seattle over a week ago.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Weiner said. “The picture was of me, and I sent it.”

The announcement came as ABC News prepared to release an interview with Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old single mother from Texas who provided dozens of photos, emails, Facebook messages and cell phone call logs that she says chronicle a sexually-charged electronic relationship with Weiner that rapidly-evolved for more than a month, starting on April 20, 2011.

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Surreal is such an overused word, but I’m hard pressed to find one that adequately espresses the effect of “Weinergate.” There are so few synonyms for it, that perhaps it’s not the right word.

A lewd photograph of a crotch sent from the Twitter account of U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is just “a distraction” perpetrated by a hacker, his spokesman said Sunday.

Dave Arnold told The Associated Press in an email that the tweet, directed at a woman, was “a distraction” from the married New York Democrat’s “important work representing his constituents.”

“Anthony’s accounts were obviously hacked,” Arnold said. “He doesn’t know the person named by the hacker, and we will be consulting on what steps to take next.”

The photo showed a man’s bulging underpants.

It first was reported Saturday by BigGovernment.com, a website run by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. The site said the photo was tweeted to a Seattle woman.

The photo was quickly deleted.

Given past speculation about Rush Limbaugh’s penis, the only thing more surprising than him jumping into the mix is actually that Rush Limbaugh finds the controversy over Anthony Weiner’ weaner “hard to swallow.”

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Who didn’t see this coming?

Last September, megachurch preacher Bishop Eddie Long stood before his congregation at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church a week after gay sex allegations surfaced between him and four teenage boys, and he told members he was going to fight the allegations.

But Long chose not to fight in court. Instead he reached a settlement and paid off the four young men who accused the mega-church preacher of using his power to influence them into sexual relationships with him.
“You can interpret that any way you want, but usually people do not settle cases unless there is some reason to do so,” said former DeKalb County Prosecutor J. Tom Morgan.
Morgan said he is familiar with cases like Long’s.
“They had to reach a settlement if they did not want any statement by the Bishop on record,” said Morgan.

Well.

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“Better remain silent and be thought a ___________________, than to speak and remove all doubt.

So much for quiet dignity.

(With apologies to Abe Lincoln.)

OK. I wasn’t going to say anything else about the John Edwards mess. It’s gotten sordid past the point of rubbernecking, even. I just want to look away. But after reading this piece about the “quiet dignity of Rielle Hunter,” I do have something to say.
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Apparently all you need to do to be arrested for prostitution in D.C. is carry three or more condoms. Seriously.

Think you might get lucky tonight? Well, if you’re in D.C., don’t bring more than two condoms in your purse, or you could be arrested as a prostitute.

In D.C., police can declare “Prostitution Free Zones” where officers can pick up (I mean, arrest) anyone suspected of sex work. And they’ve been accused of using carrying three or more condoms as proof of intent to sell sex — rather than intent to spend the weekend getting jiggy with a guy.

This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard so far this year.

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I confess. John Edwards was, for me, very hard to resist. The man had qualities, personal and political, that I found hard to resist. That he was willing to talk openly about poverty and inject the subject into our political discourse was admirable in and of itself. It has been absent from the political scene for as long as Edwards has been.

And, in the case of the former, we are poorer for it. The ranks of the poor have grown from 12.5% of the population in 2007 to 13.2% in 2008. Since April 2007, when Edwards declared “We’ve got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty. This is not OK, not in the richest country on the planet,” the number has increased to 39.8 million. But almost no one is saying “This is not OK.”

Yes, he had a good rap. Plus, the man was pretty. The hair, the smile, the eyes, etc. Toss in the accent and Edward’s brand of earnestness, and he was a fine example of the kind of southern boy I use to fall hard for, and still could.

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Say it isn’t so.

OK. Granted, I’m a Type C personality.

The hubby and I got a babysitter last night, and went to a party at the home of a friend and former co-worker of mine, and on the way home we had a chance to do something that’s often rare for parents of a young child: talk to each other. Not about our son, or about something that needs to be done around the house. We had a chance to just talk to each other.

On my end, the conversation turned towards something that’s come up more than a few times in my life; that when it comes to personality types, I’m definitely not a “Type A” personality. In fact, I’ve often referred to myself as a “Type B surrounded by Type As”; especially here in D.C., a city which by its very nature seems to be a magnet to for type A personalities.

When I got home, it was still on my mind, so I looked around online, and found this test that would supposedly tell me whether I was a type A or not. I took it, fully expecting it would tell me I was a type B.

I got an answer I wasn’t expecting. It turns out, there’s a third: type C.

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“Too big too fail.” It’s one of the most overworked phrases in this bailout bonanza. But I’ve always thought that it sounded more like the title of a porn movie. (“See Dirk Rambo in To Big To Fail,” an advertisement might read.)

Speaking of bailouts and porn, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with Campbell Brown on this one.

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I suppose it had to come to this eventually. John Edwards is the one who had the affair, but now people are angry with Elizabeth.

It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.

But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband — a former U.S. senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee — said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.

“I think she’s complicit,” said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. “Obviously, she knew. While she’s the victim, she clearly didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up.”

She didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up? Exactly what would people have her do? Denounce her husband on national television, and then have the cameras follow her to the courthouse to file divorce papers?

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It just goes to show you can’t necessarily trust a pretty face.

I wasn’t going to say anything about this.

John Edwards has admitted to having an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, according to ABC News.

In an interview with Bob Woodruff that will air tonight on “Nightline,” Edwards reportedly says that he did not love Hunter and also claims that he did not father her infant daughter Frances, although he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff that he can’t be the baby’s father due to the timing of her birth last February.

ABC reports that Hunter was hired by Edwards’ presidential campaign to produce documentaries for his web site, and that Hunter traveled with Edwards to locations in the U.S. and Africa. According to ABC, his political action committee paid her $114,000 for her services.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff in the interview that his wife of 31 years, Elizabeth, who gave birth to four children with the former Senator, found out about the affair in 2006. Elizabeth is currently suffering from incurable cancer, but Edwards reportedly told Woodruff that her cancer was in remission when the affair began.

It burns me up that now we’ll waste at least a couple of news cycles talking about it while people dying in Iraq and losing their homes back in the U.S., but there’s something that burns me upmore

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This has already been covered in numerous other places, so you probably haven’t seen it here first. Nonetheless it reminded me of something a wise lesbian activist said to me when I was newly arrived in D.C.

The gist of it was that it’s incredibly important ­that when policy decisions are being made people from those groups affected at at the table and engaged in making those decisions. It was a statement, at the time, about the importance of getting gays & lesbians elected to public office. It’s not that someone who doesn’t belong to a particular group can’t advocate effectively for that group. But advocacy (and policy) based in the direct experiences of the people who are impacted by can often address more specific needs.

In other words, if you want a voice when it comes to making policy, you gotta get people elected. Because if you got something that looks like this:

You’re a lot more likely to end up with something like this:

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40 percent of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The “Definitions” section of the HHS proposal states,

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49 percent of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term “abortion.” Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term “abortion” only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.

And you’re liable to have policy made by people who say stuff like this.

Back in 1990, the Republican candidate for Governor of Texas, Clayton Williams, likened rape to bad weather, saying, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

When that joke came to light in June, John McCain was forced to “postpone” a fundraiser in Midland hosted by Williams. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers called the joke “incredibly offensive.”

But what Williams said in 1990 is not all that different than a joke McCain made about rape in 1986. According to the Tucson Citizen, here’s what McCain, then a two-term Congressman from Mesa, said during his run for the Senate:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’

And people who know who don’t even know stuff like this.

The bus had been rolling for a half-hour and McCain was holding court on everything from Iraq to college basketball. (“Who woulda thought? VCU,” he exclaimed upon boarding.) And then someone asked about public funding for contraception in Africa to prevent the spread of AIDS.
“I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it in the past,” he stammered as he looked to his communications director. “I’m sure I’m opposed to government funding.”

Sensing a vulnerable moment, reporters kept the questions coming. What about sex education in the schools? Should it mention contraceptives? Or only abstinence, like President Bush wants?

“I think I support the president’s present policy,” he said, tentatively.

More questions: Do condoms stop sexually transmitted disease?

A long pause.

A stern look.

“I’ve never gotten into these issues or thought much about them,” he said, almost crying uncle.

And who can’t answer questions like this.

So, yeah. Getting the right (or not right, in this case) people elected matters.

I wasn’t expecting the traffic. In fact, it was the last thing from my mind when, late last week, I read the news that Deborah Jeane-Palfrey — a/k/a “The D.C. Madam” — committed suicide. I shouted the news to my husband, over the din of Dylan’s babbling and Parker “watching” a Tivo’d television show while playing with his race cars, and then I just thought what damn shame it was.

And how I wish she hadn’t done it. I realized that some part of me was rooting for her; wanting her to come out on top, even if only after serving a few years in prison. I remember thinking, not that anyone else in particular should have been one of the two (at least) casualties in this story, but about the significance of who was on that casualty list, and whose career’s weren’t.

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I’d forgotten about this.

If a woman consents to having sex with a man but then during intercourse says no, and the man continues, is it rape?

n Maryland–as well as in North Carolina–when a woman says yes, she can’t take it back once sex has begun–or, at least, she can’t call the act rape.

That was the recent ruling by Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals in a case that may soon make its way to the state’s highest court and that has captured the attention of feminists and legal experts across the country. Advocates for victims’ rights insist it’s not just a matter of allowing a woman to have a change of heart. If the law doesn’t recognize a woman’s right to say no during sex, they say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn’t wearing a condom or has HIV. Those who are wary of these measures say they’re not arguing against having a man stop immediately when a woman no longer wants to have sex, but with how to define immediately.

Until I read this.

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It’s interesting how a story takes on a life of it’s own. It’s been a couple of years since I started blogging about Zach, the kid in Tennessee who came out to his parents only to get sent to a “reparative therapy camp.” The story went from a handful of bloggers covering it to The New York Times covering it.

Investigations were launched. The camp was shut down for a while. Then there was as lawwsuit. Then a settlement. Then the camp closed. Sort of. I stopped following the story closely once Zach left the camp and returned home. But now and again I read about developments like the lates one, which I learned of via Box Turtle Bulletin.

John Smid, the guy who was running the place when Zach was there, has resigned.

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