The MSM Loves Gay Weddings---Unless One Groom's A Republican

The New York Times demonstrates breathtaking bias once more in a "news" article:

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

"I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners," he said.

He declined further comment on the wedding, which was in December.

Some of Mr. Finkelstein's associates said they were startled to learn that this prominent American conservative had married a man, given his history with the party, especially at a time when many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have campaigned against same-sex marriage and proposed amending the Constitution to ban it. Mr. Finkelstein has been allied over the years with Republicans who have fiercely opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and has been the subject of attacks by gay rights activists who have accused him of hypocrisy. He was identified as gay in a Boston Magazine article in 1996.

There's a lot to pick at here, but let me just hit a couple of highlights:

1. The "wedding" happened in December. It's April now. How's this news?

2. How is it relevant that a political consultant who supports gay marriage tried "to demonize [opponents] as liberal"? "Demonize" is an awfully-loaded term, don't you think? Anyone not think Andrew Cuomo et al are liberals? Why is The Times suddenly afraid to embrace the liberal label, apparently viewing it as McCarthyite to so call someone? Very odd.

3. Is demonizing someone as gay as bad as demonizing them as liberal? If so, why the neutral "identified as gay" terminology when Boston Magazine "outed" him in 1996, a McCarthyite practice if ever there was one. The Times didn't like it when Bill Clinton was "outed" as a liar and adulterer by other press outlets, yet they seem curiously neutral when it comes to the private sexual lives of GOP operatives.

Must be their support for Jesse Helms.

Pretty youronic of The Times, don't you think?