Rove's Family History
'The Architect' explores relationship between Karl Rove and his late gay stepfather
Did political mastermind Karl Rove — who as President Bush’s top political aide helped craft campaign strategies using same-sex marriage as a homophobic political weapon — grow up under the tutelage of a gay stepfather?
That’s the claim made by James Moore and Wayne Slater in their new book, The Architect. The authors are no strangers to Rove’s territory, having written the documentary-spawning Bush’s Brain.
This new book, The Architect, examines Rove’s stepfather, Louis Rove, who died in 2004, and the younger Rove’s relationship with him. Interviewing Louis Rove’s coterie of elderly gay Palm Springs retirees, the obvious conclusion is that Louis Rove was gay.
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In a city where all national politics become local, some nationally prominent members of the local GLBT community say — to varying degrees — that this new book is relevant to the national discourse.
”It seems to me very noteworthy how many people involved in using fear and loathing of gay people in the current Republican leadership have gay family members,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in an e-mail to Metro Weekly Monday. The conservative and gay Sullivan, who lives in D.C., is a senior editor at The New Republic. ”Usually, I lean toward the side of privacy in these matters. But you cannot out a dead man; and you can expose Karl Rove’s cynicism and ruthlessness. We should.”
Local lesbian Hilary Rosen, leader of the Human Rights Campaign’s fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment, and commentator for CNBC and MSNBC, was blogging about the book on Huffington Post within a day of its release: ”The only value this story has at this point is that President Bush and his cronies look, once again, like soulless, cynical people who will do anything and sacrifice anyone, to succeed in their ongoing pursuit of political and economic power.”
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