Badpuppy Gay Today

Friday, 09 May 1997

Brian O'Leary Bennett, for 12 years former Congressman Bob Dornan's trusted aide, has announced that he is gay. Bennett, who, like Dornan is an adherent of the Roman Catholic faith, agonized over his orientation and stuck with the anti-gay congressman through long hard-working years, he says, because he himself had not come to terms with his orientation.

When Dornan decided in 1995 that he would run in the Republican primaries for the presidency, he asked Bennett to serve as his campaign manager. But Bennett had met another man and had fallen in love. He turned down Dornan's request, he says, because he feared a scandal should his private life get public notice.

His closeted existence, said Bennett, caused painful psychic difficulties. "It was eating me up inside," he explains, noting that for a long time he hoped to overcome his homosexuality. "Whatever these feelings are," he told himself, "I can beat them."

Rick, an African-American who has requested last-name anonymity in an interview with a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is the gay-identified man who came into Bennett's life, turning the Roman Catholic political aide's confusion into self-awareness and happiness. He explained how Bennett's coming out has been only one part in a series of steps toward greater self-esteem that Bennett has experienced.

"I love him," Rick told the Times, and "I'm really proud of him for the steps he's taken to confront his fears."

Bennett believes that he would not have been able to come to such self-realizations while working in former Congressman Dornan's office. The one-time congressman's attacks on gay men and lesbians formed a major part of his political rhetoric."Every lesbian spear-chucker in this country is hoping I get defeated," he said during his 1992 campaign. (See GayToday Archives, People, April 21)

That hoped for defeat materialized in November, 1996, when Dornan was ousted by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. The ex-congressman has not been able to effect a graceful exit (see GayToday Archives, World, February 20) though Los Angeles Times polls in his Orange County, California district show that if the election were held today, Sanchez would beat him again by a much wider margin (49% to 36%). He continues to insist that his defeat was engineered through fraud.

Bennett says he talks with Dornan still and that he has asked the former congressman, on more than one occasion, to cut down on his anti-gay tirades. "Poppy," he said, "For all these years I've stood by you and heard all those horrible things out of your mouth about people like me. You've called us pedophiles, sodomites, molesters. Those things hurt, and I want you to stop it. I wouldn't ask you to change your views. I'm saying get rid of the meanness. Get rid of the hurt in promoting your position."

According to Bennett, Dornan promised that this is what he would do.

But, when asked about his gay long time Chief of Staff, Bob Dornan told the Times that "the cutting edge of homosexuality is not Brian Bennett, who loves his religion and his faith. It's the others, who demand of us what they cannot give themselves--dignity and self-respect. Brian thinks this is a gift, and I think it's an ax. I believe the twain shall meet one day."