A history of political gay-baiting

Last month, former Republican National Committee chairman Kenneth Mehlman came out of the closet, saying he'd taken 43 years to get comfortable with this part of himself. "Encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong commitment to each other to get married" is consistent with GOP policy, he added. In a better world, conservatives would see the light, beg for forgiveness, and declare that gay-baiting was no longer a legitimate strategy for either party. But the fact is that gay-baiting, whether fine-tuned to the point of near-subliminality or outrageously transparent, continues to fit comfortably into the modern political discourse....

As underhanded campaign tactics go, baiting carries almost no consequences for the baiter; he or she can claim ignorance of anything but the literal meaning of the words being used to insinuate something very different. Baiting is adaptable to a wide variety of media—speeches, off-the-cuff comments, press releases, political ads. And given the Internet, it's more spreadable than ever. The most salacious or absurd baits easily go viral, often helped along by blog posts from people honestly decrying it....

And so, without further ado, Slate's taxonomy of American political gay-baits:...