Filed under: Scandals, Sassy, The New Republic, Gay, BHDC, Weekly Standard, Matt Sanchez
Matt Sanchez, an American Marine reservist and Republican political activist, says that he’s the ”first to admit that I want to be heard, read and taken seriously.”
But it’s been quite difficult for Sanchez to achieve that goal. As we told you last night, Media Matters reported yesterday that The Weekly Standard used him as a source in an article debasing The New Republic’s reporting on Iraq without disclosing a few details about their source.
Namely, Sanchez had previously been under investigation by the Marines “over allegations that he bilked private donors out of $12,000 for a deployment to Iraq he never made and that he apparently once worked as a male escort.”
Sanchez also performed in the 1990s under the names Rod Majors and Pierre LaBranche in gay porn films with such sordid titles as Jawbreaker and Man to Men. He made the disclosure in March after courting a whirlwind of controversy upon attending a Republican gathering in Washington and receiving a prestigious award – and later posing for a picture with Ann Coulter at the same event.
Upon these admittedly unique disclosures, many liberals and even some non-liberals called into question Sanchez’ authority to comment on political issues. MSNBC notably aired an edition of Countdown with a major segment highlighting Sanchez’ pornographic past.
Sanchez is now arguing that the spotlight on him to date has largely been unfair and biased, telling Big Head DC that “it’s mostly the gay jihadist that really care about this stuff, normal people tend to have a life they look forward to living.”
“Of course I stand by my comments to the Weekly Standard,” he said via e-mail. “Media Matters is desperate to smear me, I’m not even sure who runs that site. If I’m not afraid to embed with units patrolling the streets of Baghdad in some of the worse neighborhoods, why in the hell would I be afraid of one-handed keyboard warriors, pecking away at sticky keys.”
Sanchez, despite recollection of his gay porn days, also insisted to us that some clarifications need to be made about his past:
Fact: The Marine investigation has been dropped.
Fact: I did not escort, but there’s a lot of people online who would like for me to have been an escort.
Fact: I’m not gay. Mary Carey does tons of female labia licking and yet she doesn’t get the whole lesbian title. Gee, could this be sex discrimination?
Fact: The only people who constantly throw up the “gay porn” label are gay men. Do a Google search and you’ll find mostly disgruntled homosexuals crying hypocrisy, although I don’t understand why.
After receiving that response from Sanchez, and having read past interviews with him in which he insists he’s straight because he’s had relationships with females, we decided to ask whether his pornographic past has affected perceptions about him not only from the liberal and/or gay side of the political spectrum.
“Gee, you have tons of questions about my sexuality,” Sanchez responded. “Conservatives have been overwhelmingly accepting. It’s the liberals and ESPECIALLY the gay jihadist who feel indignant and self-righteous.”
Sanchez also falsely asserted many times over that Big Head DC’s editor must be gay for raising such questions. He also said this site is “trying to smear” him, and “that slandering me as a male prostitute could bring about a legal complaint.”
Sanchez, no doubt, was being quite serious, but the question remains: Can anyone take him seriously?
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