Tea Party Lawmaker Faked Gay Sex Scandal to Hide Affair

[Civil War Man]

Posted here because it seemed too silly for N&P.

Secret audio recordings made public Friday by the Detroit News revealed a tea party lawmaker in Michigan tried to fake a gay sex scandal with a male prostitute in order to cover up his affair with a married, female tea party state lawmaker.

The newspaper reported that state Rep. Todd Courser (R) asked an aide to send an anonymous email to GOP activists alleging that Courser had been spotted having sex with a male prostitute "behind a Lansing night club."

The ruse was reportedly designed to create false accusations that were so over the top that Courser's affair with fellow freshman lawmaker Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R) would seem "mild by comparison," according to the paper.

The whole thing was blown up, however, by secret audio recordings created by Courser's then-aide, Ben Graham, and obtained by the Detroit News. Graham reportedly refused to send the email and was later fired. (The newspaper noted that Gamrat also recently fired an aide, who was unwilling to help hide the relationship between the two legislators.)

In the recordings, according to the Detroit News, Courser could be heard asking Graham to send the anonymous email and get "nasty about it" with accusations that the lawmaker was addicted to porn and was a "sexual deviant."

Courser reportedly suggested in one recording that he would release the email so that "anything else that comes out after that" would seem tame in comparison and that he needed a "controlled burn."

An email was eventually sent and was “received by Republicans,” according to the newspaper, but it wasn't clear who sent the email.

Gamrat declined to comment to the newspaper. Courser confirmed to the publication that it was his voice on the recording, but told a reporter and photographer to leave his office when he was asked whether he wrote the email to “get ahead of revelations of an affair,” according to the report.

The Detroit News reported that both lawmakers are married with children. They are also allies who have pushed legislation that would have required religious leaders sign off on marriage certificates, a move that would have potentially created a road block for same-sex couples in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision, according to the newspaper.

Posted without comment, because there's really nothing I can say that can adequately describe this story.

[Soontir C'boath]

Listen kids, sanctity of marriage is being able to have affairs and getting away with it, ok? Good.

[SpottedKitty]

Another one for the category, "The Onion couldn't make this one up"...

[Iroscato]

Double plot twist - he's actually a rampant homosexual anyway.

[Raw Shark]

They were just so passionate about their work to defend the sanctity of marriage that they got all fired up and had to bang one out once in a while, so they could stay on point defending the sanctity of marriage instead of being all distracted and shit. Totally healthy and practical.

[Broomstick]

I'm gobsmacked that someone thought faking a gay sex romp with a boy for hire was somehow a politically viable alternative to uncovering a heterosexual affair....

Also - they forgot to note that requiring a religious type to sign off on marriage certificate would also prevent those damn dirty apes atheists from marrying.

[Bedlam]

I'm gobsmacked that someone thought faking a gay sex romp with a boy for hire was somehow a politically viable alternative to uncovering a heterosexual affair....

Also - they forgot to note that requiring a religious type to sign off on marriage certificate would also prevent those damn dirty apes atheists from marrying.

I would guess the thinking was that it would be easier to disprove the gay sex rumour, and once that was done he would have a certain amount of armour against any other allegations for a period because obvious this was someone running a smear campaign against him.

[Broomstick]

True, but within my lifetime even a rumor that a politician was gay could be career-ending. If one came up, one possible solution might be a frantic faking of many, many heterosexual escapades. Things have totally flipped around since I was a teen.

[Bedlam]

True, but within my lifetime even a rumor that a politician was gay could be career-ending. If one came up, one possible solution might be a frantic faking of many, many heterosexual escapades. Things have totally flipped around since I was a teen.

It may be that he was so sure that no one would think he could possibly be gay that he'd thought it would be an easy rumour to quench (In addition it's possible he planned to throw the staffer he had to start the rumour under a truck 'We tracked the story back to staffer X who was just about to be fired for corruption, he claimed his boss told him to do it but there's no evidence), maybe to would crush someone else's career but those others were probably gay anyway, I'm clearly straight so no one would believe such lies.

[Simon_Jester]

The part where the obvious way for Our Politico to quash the fake rumor is to burn the intern who spread it... may help explain why he refused to spread the rumor in the first place, now that I think about it.

True, but within my lifetime even a rumor that a politician was gay could be career-ending. If one came up, one possible solution might be a frantic faking of many, many heterosexual escapades. Things have totally flipped around since I was a teen.

Moreover, it is through no effort of the Republican Party's that this has been the case... and especially not the efforts of people like the guy who is now trying to profit from the current state of affairs.

[General Zod]

It gets better.

Both Courser and Gamrat have said they won’t resign in the wake of the scandal. Courser blames former staffers and the Lansing Republican establishment for trying to destroy his political career. He said a fake e-mail he anonymously sent to Republicans across Lansing in May, saying he was addicted to drugs and pornography and paid for sex with men behind Lansing bars, was an attempt to smoke out a person who was supposedly blackmailing him in an effort to get him to resign or risk having the affair and cover-up revealed to the public.

So apparently the whole thing was a mole hunt?

[Iroscato]

Oh wow.

[Simon_Jester]

It takes a certain degree of... lunatic fervor... to start engaging in such mole hunts. Assuming that this recent thing is true.