Jesse Helms. The U.S. ambassador to Canada. Hard-core sex.
This is the story of what happens when a bigot puts on a suit and tie and starts to walk around like he knows what he's talking about. It's the story of what happens when a media-hungry citizen gets smart and when the press corps gets lazy. It's the story of Brian Camenker, and it's a story that says something disturbing about how easy it is to get a little press coverage nowadays. It starts almost a year back, at a workshop for gay and lesbian youth at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
At the workshop, Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Department of Education counselors asked students to write down questions about homosexuality that they were too afraid to ask in public. The counselors then answered the questions, some in explicit detail. At the time, neither the counselors nor the students knew that they were being secretly recorded by a member of the Parents' Rights Coalition, a conservative lobbying group run by Camenker. After the PRC released the tapes to the public, two of the state workers who participated in the workshop were fired. The conservative press snidely dubbed the so-called scandal "Fistgate," in reference to one particular sexual practice that the Tufts group discussed.
Fast forward to February, 2001. President George W. Bush, in a move sure to win the support of most Bostonians, nominates the one Republican in all of Massachusetts, Gov. Paul Cellucci, as U.S. ambassador to Canada. On Feb. 13, the Boston Herald reports that "an explicit sex workshop for kids conducted by state health and education counselors last year could haunt" the governor's confirmation. The Herald reports that Camenker, upset that Cellucci refused to meet with PRC representatives after "Fistgate," has started lobbying North Carolina senator Jesse Helms to block Cellucci's nomination.
The Herald is quick to point out that "children as young as 14" attended the workshop and that kids were encouraged "to discuss anal sex... with much of the program devoted to homosexual experimentation." The Herald fails to mention that the workshop was specifically designed for gay kids, or that Camenker, who is threatening to send the tapes to all 100 U.S. senators responsible for confirming Cellucci, has been legally banned by a Massachusetts Superior Court judge from doing so.
I may not like Camenker, but I'll give him this: He's media savvy. The guy knows how to get his name in the paper. Search the archives of The New York Times or The Boston Globe and you'll find him, calmly criticizing a first-grade teacher who came out to his class, waxing eloquent on why sex education should not be taught in public schools. In major publications Camenker rarely comes across as an extremist, he's just a bit more conservative than most. He stays away from words like "gay" and "sinful," rarely mentions religion and is often referred to as "a concerned parent" or the director of "a parents' organization." A paper like The Herald would never quote a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a neo-Nazi on why Paul Cellucci shouldn't be confirmed, but they'll quote Camenker, over and over and over again.
That's because Camenker knows how to tone down his rhetoric when the big newspapers come knocking. He understands that if he rants and raves, if he comes across as overtly homophobic, he'll become less quotable. His stock will go down.
I've met Camenker before. We're from the same city, and in high school a friend and I did a number of stories on him for our school newspaper. That was way back before "Fistgate," before Camenker thought anything of his "stock." At the time, Camenker told us that any information on homosexuality we got from the Newton Public Schools was "scientific quackery and lunacy." He said that English teachers overemphasized the Holocaust-"[I'm Jewish but] I want my little girl to learn English in English class." He also said that history teachers should stop teaching students about the contribution of women to industrialism-"In a lot of people's opinions, women in [mills] are reasonably trivial."
When I called him a few days ago to tell him I was writing about the "Fistgate" incident, Camenker initially offered me a few benign comments. But once he realized that I wasn't writing for national publication and that his remarks would probably not get re-published in The New York Times, old angry Camenker once again reared his ugly head. "Y'know, Lucas, it flips me out," he told me. "It's like dealing with Nazis. Everything the [gays] do is at least partially a lie. If you talk normally, they just stomp you. Y'know, these gays are, these people are vicious, nasty people."
It makes no sense to ignore Camenker-he's there, he's a reality, and if he ever does anything newsworthy the press has a responsibility to cover it. But to make Camenker look like your run-of-the-mill conservative is deceptive. The only thing that separates him from a "real" bigot is his clothing, his zip code and his ability to tone down the rancorous rhetoric when he wants a little media attention.
Lucas Schaefer is a Trinity freshman and associate editorial page editor of The Chronicle.
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