ROBISON: Where’s the loyalty?

By DANIEL ROBISON
Local Columnist

August 25, 2007 07:03 pm

— Another local resident has made it to the big-time spotlight. Lately, he was all over the Internet, radio, newspapers — you name it. He was at the center of national debate; talking heads and bloggers yakked and spun prose, respectively, about his personal and professional life. Even Jay Leno made a joke at his expense — a tried and true indication that a person has hit the big time.
But this local is not famous; he is infamous. Fingered in a police report as committing a sex act on a sleeping man, president of the Young Republican National Federation and Clark County resident Glenn Murphy Jr., is now a poster child for what happens when one’s personal, professional and political lives meet at an unfortunate impasse.
Predictably, when this news broke, Murphy was unceremoniously dumped from the YRNF and any traces that he was once the leader of one of the most influential Republican organizations in the country can only be found in Internet backwaters. That is quite the strong response to an unsubstantiated allegation found in a police report. In fact, Murphy has yet to be charged with a crime.
Granted, he admits the act took place but claims it was consensual. And he’s entitled to this defense, if charged. And isn’t he considered innocent until proven otherwise?
So why did Republican national machine disown him so quickly and completely? And why have they remained mum in his defense? A once valued and trusted member of the GOP inner circle is now a discarded pariah — despite the fact he has not been charged or indicted. This reaction seems completely incongruent to the status of the situation.
But lurid details from one’s personal life, especially involving homosexual behavior, cut deeper when he or she is part of the Republican hierarchy. It’s no matter that Murphy could be innocent of the allegations; the fact that he admitted to committing the act is all Republican leaders needed to hear before they washed their hands clean of him.
What kind of loyalty is this?
From all indicators, Murphy worked diligently for many years for the GOP, helping usher in a new era of success in Clark County where Republicans had been also-rans for years. He essentially adopted the party’s mission as his own, committing his life to service for the party, which earlier this summer culminated in his ascension to the YRNF presidency.
So it’s clear that Murphy was a rising GOP honcho and was beloved enough by the party as recently as two months ago to take an influential countrywide office with a healthy level of insider status. But it’s easy to see why Murphy is no longer a Republican star. The GOP has vigorously adopted anti-gay stances on many issues that have helped them win many an election. National and local GOP candidates routinely stir voters’ fears about homosexuals for the explicit purpose of translating their emotions into votes.
So naturally Glenn Murphy, Jr. can’t be a member of this club anymore. Someone would have to ask him to leave to room before cueing the usual party-line anti-gay rhetoric, and that would make everyone feel a little awkward, wouldn’t it?
And then there’s Murphy’s official reason for leaving his position at the YRNF: he claimed that an attractive business opportunity recently arose that required he not hold a partisan political office. Fair enough, but even if this story is true, it still sounds completely bogus considering the circumstances and reeks like a little too much like the prose of desperate damage control.
So while the how of Murphy’s exit from the GOP is hazy, the why is crystal clear: there is no room for an exposed homosexual Republican leader in today’s GOP. If allowed to continue serving as president of the YRNF, no one would’ve bought his speeches condemning gay marriage, civil unions and other deprivations of rights because he would have been essentially damning himself.
But that is no excuse for how the GOP has hung him out to dry. If he’s eventually charged and convicted, fine, that’s grounds for cutting ties. But right now it seems that Murphy’s Republican friends and colleagues have abandoned him, and that’s no way to treat one of their own.
Daniel Robison is from New Albany and a graduate student at the IU School of Journalism. Reach him at robison.daniel@gmail.com

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