The Right Piles on Coakley

The extreme right has pulled out the specter of "Fistgate" as part of their attack on Massachusetts senatorial candidate Martha Coakley, who is running in a special election to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

In the annals of far-right lore, "Fistgate" refers to the 2000 "Teach Out" conference that was conducted at Tufts University by several Massachusetts state employees, under the auspices of the conference and of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), an advocate for safe schools and for GLBT youth that was, at the time, headed by former Massachusetts teacher Kevin Jennings.

An anti-gay activist named Scott Whiteman infiltrated the event and secretly recorded some of the proceedings. The tape was played on local radio, in violation of the event's promise to GLBT teens that their questions and concerns would be treated respectfully in a safe and confidential environment. The group with which Whiteman was affiliated, the Parents' Rights Coalition (which has now become anti-gay group MassResistance) then sent an affidavit to then-district attorney Martha Coakley, accusing the presenters at the event, and GLSEN, of "corruption of minors," as a Dec. 28 posting at the MassResistance Web site recollects. The Dec. 28 posting--which includes the warning that, "We deal openly and graphically with the Culture of Death"--demands, "Why were Jennings and his cohorts not prosecuted for 'crimes against chastity, morality, decency and good order' (MGL [Massachusetts General Law] Ch. 272--which also still includes sodomy as 'the abominable and detestable crime against nature')?"

Complains the posting, "Then-District Attorney Martha Coakley (now Democrat candidate for Ted Kenney's U.S. Senate seat!) didn't even bother to respond to Parents' Rights Coalition's (now MassResistance) request for a criminal investigation after the 2000 GLSEN event." (Neither did Coakley level wire-tapping charges, though others urged that such charges be brought.)

MassResistance and other groups from the far-right fringe have referred time and again to "Fistgate" in attempts to tar Kevin Jennings, who is now an Obama appointee with the Department of Education, and pressure the president to fire him. To date, the president has stood by Jennings, whose efforts have helped create Gay-Straight Alliances in schools throughout the country and established an annual "Day of Silence" during which GLBT students and their allies can make a point, in a dramatic and non-disruptive manner, about the lack of voice of GLBT youth.

Right-wing pundit Anne Coulter has also come out against Coakley, though with a more substantive and credible objection to the Democratic senatorial candidate. In commentary posted Dec. 9 at anti-gay religious Web site WorldNetDaily, Coulter recounts the bizarre and extravagant claims that small children made about day care owners Gerald, Cheryl, and Violet Amirault.

"The allegations against the Amiraults were preposterous on their face," writes Coulter. "Children made claims of robots abusing them, a 'bad clown' who took the children to a 'magic room' for sex play, rape with a 2-foot butcher knife, other acts of sodomy with a 'magic wand,' naked children tied to trees within view of a highway, and --standard fare in the child-abuse-hysteria era--animal sacrifices.

"There was not one shred of physical evidence to support the allegations," continues Coulter, going on to note that, "Not one parent noticed so much as unusual behavior in their children--until after the molestation hysteria began" and the children were drilled with repeated questionings by therapists. The Amiraults were convicted, despite the lack of evidence. "It's one thing to put a person in prison for a crime he didn't commit. It's another to put an entire family in prison for a crime that didn't take place," Coulter declares in the op-ed piece, adding, "Coakley wasn't the prosecutor on the original trial. What she did was worse."

Coulter recounts that when Gerald Amirault came up for parole, Coakley--at the time a district attorney--worked, successfully, to keep him in jail. "Martha Coakley allowed her ambition to trump basic human decency as she campaigned to keep a patently innocent man in prison," Coulter declares, going on to write, "Anyone with the smallest sense of justice cannot vote to put this woman in any office. If you absolutely cannot vote for a Republican on Jan. 19, 2010, write in the name 'Gerald Amirault.'"

Also during her tenure as district attorney, claims a blogger in a Nov. 23 posting at Associated Content, Coakley acted in a manner apparently quite the contrary to her bid to keep Amirault locked up, failing to prosecute child-molesting Catholic clergyman John J. Geoghan, who had been accused by three young brothers from Waltham, MA. The boys, who were in elementary school at the time, said that Geoghan had touched them improperly.

"Coakley didn't prosecute," the blog posting said. "Rather she decided to let this disgusting pedophile get a year of probation which garnered no media attention. There were no formal charges and no criminal record for the priest." Instead, Coakley arranged a deal in which Geoghan avoided charges in exchange for submitting to psychiatric assessment and was not allowed contact with children for one year unless he was under supervision.

"She never followed up with the Boston Archdiocese regarding if there had been any earlier complaints against the priest," the blog asserted. "The public at the time had no idea that the archdiocese had thousands of documents regarding abuse complaints against Geoghan made by dozens of people going all the way back to the 60s!"

The blog noted that Coakley had, at that time, also been a candidate in a special election for a senatorial seat.

In 2002, the blog noted, Coakley did prosecute Geoghan, winning a conviction on charges that the priest had fondled a boy at a swimming pool. Joseph Druce, a white supremacist, murdered Geoghan in prison in August of 2003.