Cory Booker Is Ambiguously Gay For Gay Votes, Says His Tea Party Opponent

Steve Lonegan seems like a character right out of a bad Saturday Night Live skit — and no doubt someday soon he will be. The New Jersey Tea Party Republican is the former mayor of a tiny town called Bogota — population 8187 — which spans less than one square mile. He’s also the state director for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity.

When Lonegan won the GOP Senate primary, his first media stop was a visit to Bryan Fischer — the vile spokesperson for the anti-gay hate group, American Family Association. And Lonegan has been making the media rounds this week, and enjoying his verbal assaults against his Democratic opponent for New Jersey’s special U.S. Senate election in October. Newark mayor Cory Booker has a sixteen-point lead on his opponent in the historically Democratic stronghold, but Lonegan believes what he sees as his libertarian principles will win him the Senate seat.

He couldn’t be more wrong.

In a Washington Post profile, Booker referred to a potential, hypothetical spouse as a “life partner” and said it’s “wonderful” some people think he’s gay, adding he wants “to challenge people on their homophobia.”

“I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay,” Booker told the Washington Post, “and I say, ‘So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.’”

Booker, in a follow-up with a local New Jersey paper added, “We need to understand that race, religion, sexual orientation, all of these things are not germane to a person’s ability to lead the state of New Jersey.”

Of course, Lonegan, who is 57 and a Roman Catholic, responded.

“At first, Lonegan said he didn’t care about Booker’s lifestyle. But in an interview with Newsmax, Lonegan took a shot at Booker,” NJ.com reports:

“Maybe that helps to get him the gay vote by acting ambiguous,” Lonegan said.

“It’s kind of weird. As a guy, I personally like being a guy. I don’t know if you saw the stories last year. They’ve been out for quite a bit about how he likes to go out at three o’clock in the morning for a manicure and a pedicure,” Lonegan said.

“I don’t like going out in the middle of the night, or any time of the day, for a manicure and pedicure. It was described as his peculiar fetish … I have a more peculiar fetish. I like a good Scotch and a cigar. That’s my fetish but we’ll just compare the two.”

So, according to Lonegan, it’s “weird” to want to battle homophobia and to make people question their pre-conceived notions? Is someone not a “real guy” if they don’t “like a good Scotch and a cigar”? Is someone “ambiguous” if they use the term, “life partner”?

Is Lonegan for real? Perhaps he should try running for Senate in a red state, where anti-gay comments are more de rigueur.

Booker decided to fight fire with fire.

“It’s just disheartening to hear somebody, in this day and age, in the United States of America, say basically … that gay men are not men, they’re not guys,” Booker told the Huffington Post today. “It’s shocking to one’s conscience in this country, where we believe that the content of one’s character, the courage in one’s heart, the strength of one’s sense of purpose, the love that one has for others and their service, is what defines them. And instead he’s challenging the masculinity of millions of Americans.”

“The thought that what defines manhood is the drink that you drink or the cigar that you smoke — I think that he just really misses the boat on what it means to be a man in America,” Booker added.

“It’s just really unacceptable and goes against everything I was taught about this country and what we stand for,” Booker concluded. “So that kind of callous, bigoted, disrespect to gays and lesbians — it just shouldn’t be tolerated.”