You may recall a few months back when I noted how Tom Coburn, then only the front-runner for the GOP nomination for the open Senate seat in Oklahoma, cancelled his subscription to Poz magazine in a huff over a cover that showed 80 nude HIV+readers for the magazine's tenth anniversary. Coburn allegedly didn't want that kind of thing in the waiting room of his medical practice, but if you believe he was actually paying for Poz to let his patients read it, you're insane. If he even had a subscription at all, it was so he could dig up dirt to use against gay people from the magazine's pages.

How does he really feel about gay people in Oklahoma? According to the Oklahoma Gazette (via Atrios, via AMERICAblog), here's what he told Rogers County Republicans last year:

The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power. ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda.

The arch-conservative man who wants to represent a city whose Federal building was blown up by arch-conservative terrorists thinks the greatest threat we face is from same-gender couples who want the same rights as opposite-gender couples. And to defend this hatred, he throws out red herrings of abortion rights (which same-gender couples, by definition, don't really need) and multiple sexual partners (something that, by definition, is not part of the biggest gay rights debate of the decade, marriage rights).

Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK4) told the local (Canadian County!) GOP that voting for John Kerry is like voting for Hitler, and that if John Kerry wins, Osama bin Laden wins. Now we are reminded that Coburn, talking to another county GOP group, said equally hate-filled right-wing-wacko nonsense to rally the faithful.

It seems to me that a progressive organization might be well-advised to start secretly sending operatives to any county GOP meeting in any state where a Republican elected official or candidate is speaking to see how much more of this kind of off-the-record hatefulness is going on behind the scenes, all while the national party pretends its one of inclusion and honest ideas.