Conservative Babylon

The bad news: Gay-basher-for-pay Arthur Finkelstein has a new job at another right-wing think tank…

The good news: …in Hungary.

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Claims to fame: GOP lobbyist & strategist; homosexual gay-basher-for-pay; hypocrite extraordinaire

Nickname: The Godfather of Dirty Politics.

But we just call him: Fink.

Moral apex: Orchestrated the venomous attack-ad campaigns of über-conservative homophobes Jesse Helms (R-NC), Launch Faircloth (R-NC), Bob Smith (R-NH), Don Nickles (R-Okla.), et. al., and worked in one capacity or another for Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, George Pataki, and many other Republicans-with-a-capital-R, as well as not-exactly-liberal Israeli politicians Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Avigdor Lieberman.

So? So, he’s gay.

If Boston Magazine hadn’t already outed him in 1996, we would have figured it out by the time he ‘fessed up to the New York Times (months after the fact) that he had married his longtime partner (their relationship has endured some 40 years, and they are raising two children together) in Massachusetts, in December of 2004.

What he’s up to now: Last we heard, he was running a PAC (Political Action Committee) called “Stop Her Now,” focused solely on defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2006 re-election as U.S. Senator from New York. Obviously, his efforts failed.

Memorable observations:

Finkelstein has made millions demonizing liberals and liberal policies, running attack campaigns against Mario Cuomo, Jack Reed, and Paul Wellstone, yet depends on the spirit of full equality championed by liberals, who have fought for the rights of the gay community to have equal marriage and parenting rights, to create the family he wanted, the family his clients would never allow.

I’m glad Mr. Finkelstein and his husband have that family. I wish he and other disingenuous pricks like him wouldn’t make their names and fortunes trying to prevent others from having the same.

— Shakespeare’s Sister
April 9, 2005

He went to Massachusetts and married his longtime male partner and then he comes back here and announces this. I thought one of two things: Either this guy believes his party is not serious, and is totally Machiavellian in his position, or there’s some sort of self-loathing there. I was more sad for him.

— President Bill Clinton, on Finkelstein’s
announcement of the anti-Hillary PAC
April 12, 2005

Apparently Finkelstein believes 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.” Exactly what we’ve been saying all along!

So it’s kinda strange that Finkelstein should spend twenty-five years working for people like Jesse Helms — a man who was well known for such delightful comments as “there is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy” and “the homosexual movement threatens the strength and survival of the American family.” Actually… it’s not that strange. He’s just a massive, massive hypocrite.

— Top 10 Conservative Idiots
Democratic Underground
April 18, 2005

Suggested Nevi’im reading for Mr. Finkelstein:

And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.

— Jeremiah 9:3

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