PART TWO:

Sexual Abuse in the Gay Closets of Power: Is David Boren Culpable?
Michael Phillip Wright
Norman, Oklahoma
Copyright 2001
All Rights Reserved
E-mail the Author

The original article about Boren's sexual misconduct is below these links to more recent documented articles and webpages which provide a more comprehensive view of the corrupt atmosphere he has fostered at the University of Oklahoma and his close connection to the CIA and its incompetent former director George Tenet.

February 2008 Updates

I have done a great deal more research about David Boren since I first published the website about his sexual misconduct. After resigning from the U.S. Senate in 1994 following accusations in the gay press that he is a closet homosexual guilty of sexually harassing his male staff members, Boren manipulated the University of Oklahoma regents into appointing him as president. While in that position, he has led OU into a quagmire of corruption.

Below are links to some samples of my various newspaper letters and guest articles about Boren's misconduct. He is a liar. He has wasted millions of dollars in public funds over the years putting unqualified young fellows on payrolls because he lusts after them. He is also widely known as the mentor and patron of the disreputable ex-CIA director George Tenet, one of his favored young men, who began his close association with Boren in 1987.

1. guest article in Muskogee Phoenix;

2. letter in Enid News , about Boren's diabetes lie;

3. letter in Muskogee Phoenix exposing his Potomac ambitions as being at the root of his silly "bipartisan forum" at OU in January 2008.

Clarke Stroud also has been one of Boren's favored young men and was given a "vice-president" appointment. Stroud is a proud jackass who was a member of the OU "Ruf-Neks" when he was an undergraduate at OU in the 80s. In 2007 the Ruf-Neks were banned from campus activities because of hazing and binge drinking. See my article in The Sports Dominion of Virginia to read about their unsavory history and Stroud's involvement with them.

Another one of Boren's favored young men is JP Audas, who was also appointed to be a "vice president" by Boren. In June 2007, Audas was arrested and accused of beating his wife. In response to this, Boren praised him and gave him a "medical leave of absence" for a few months. This was reported by The Norman Transcript in June. In November, wife-beater Audas was welcomed back to OU with a reduction in annual salary to $184,000. In December he pled "no contest" to the criminal charge, was convicted, and given the lenient penalty of a $100 fine and five-month deferred sentence, with no jail time.

Neither Audas, Stroud, nor another OU VP named Nick Hathaway have doctor's degrees. For all of them, the highest educational certificate is a master's from OU. Inbreeding, anyone? Hathaway has an MBA. The other two were given master's degrees from easy programs which do not require a thesis. Audas was graduated from OU's "human relations" department -- an academic joke and degree mill. Boren appointed Hathaway to be a vice president when he was only 27 years old an a graduate student at OU.

See my public Facebook albums for more details, photos, and scans of documents about David Boren's history of corruption.

Documenting OU's Large Debt and Deplorable Financial Condition

Abuse & Harassment from Boren's Transparent Homosexual Closet

OU English Department Hosts Speaker Friendly to Queer Pedophilia

Former Rhodes Scholar Classmate Saw Boren in a Queer Encounter

Convicted Child Molester Honored by Patio Stone at OU

David Boren, George Tenet, the CIA, and the 9/11 Attack

Sept. 2005: OU Tolerated a Prank Terrorist Attack in the Library

Boren's Loyal Courtiers Mimic His Buffoonish Behavior

OU Football Fans Starting Fires Near Stadium

OU Slanders Italian Americans with Mafia Stereotype

Boren's Good Friend Bob Burke Is a Liar with a Shady Past

Poor Maintenance , Environmental Damage, & General Goofiness at OU

Sexist Degradation of Women at OU

Interesting Videos About Boren and OU

See the asinine video of Clarke Stroud, an OU "vice-president.

Go here to confirm that this howling maniac, Clarke Stroud, is actually an OU "vice-president.

See this Sooner magazine article for information about Stroud's strange history.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

See this website for an assessment of Boren's responsibility for the corruption of the CIA and the 9/11 catastrophe.

PART TWO:

Sexual Abuse in the Gay Closets of Power: Is David Boren Culpable?
Michael Phillip Wright
Norman, Oklahoma
Copyright 2001
All Rights Reserved
E-mail the Author

NOTE: Its better to see Part One first !

"People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road." -- Kevin Phillips, in an interview with Bill Moyers, May 2002

Why Did David Boren Resign from his U.S. Senate Seat?

With two years remaining on his term, in April 1994 David Boren (photo at right) made the surprise announcement that he was going to resign from his Oklahoma U.S. Senate seat. In 1990 he had been re-elected to this post with 83% of the vote against Republican challenger Stephen Jones. In the process of resigning Boren used his political influence to have himself appointed as president of the University of Oklahoma.

Why did he give up what seemed to be one of the safest seats in the nation? It was also one of the most powerful. He was Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. It is not in the nature of politicians to give up power voluntarily.

Boren's Desire to Be President of U.S.

Further, Boren has always had the ambition of being President of the United States. According to Oklahoma Today magazine, his father Lyle encouraged this aspiration: [1]

"If Lyle Boren had one dream," writes The Daily Oklahoman's Jim Standard, "it was that he would live to see David elected president of the United States." Certainly David Boren did everything he could as a youth and as a young man to position himself for such an achievement.

Having a high-profile Senate seat such as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee is a good way to position oneself for a presidential campaign. It makes no sense whatsover for one wanting to be President to resign from that post. Why did Boren resign?

The Boren Library That Never Was

In his public statements following his announcement about leaving the Senate, Boren tried to leave the impression that a deep affection for OU was a strong motivating factor:

"This [OU] is a great institution, worthy of being loved and cherished for itself. Worthy of a lifetime of commitment." [2]

Daily Oklahoman writer Allan Cromley reported that Boren mentioned former OU President George Cross as one of two people he believed had the greatest impact on Oklahoma. Further, Boren said his wife Molly was "well-rooted in OU." According to Cromley, Boren's decision was influenced by "a long-held feeling that teaching is a nobler and more rewarding profession than politics." [3]

There is one enormous piece of evidence which discredits the belief that Boren had a deep affection for OU as a factor in his decision to leave the Senate. At the very moment he was announcing his departure, the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond was completing architectural plans for the David L. Boren State Archives Library. [4] After Boren became President of OU, UCO abandoned its plan to build a library named for him.

Why did Boren not earlier steer the decision about the location of this library in OU's favor? Why would a man desiring to be President of the U.S. give up a Senate seat? The answer is simple: Boren calculated that the costs of retaining his Senate seat would be greater than the satisfactions of keeping it. Further, until a precipitating event emerged to tip the balance with greater weight on the side of costs, he had no burning desire to be OU's president. Having the Boren library located at UCO instead of OU was not a problem to him.

What was the precipitating event?

Accusations of Gay Sexual Harassment

Reporting on Boren's April 1994 resignation, Oklahoman reporter Chris Casteel wrote that "some of Senator David Boren's friends and colleagues here saw signs several months ago that Boren might be looking for something new to do." [5] What was happening in Boren's political life several months before April 1994?

One significant event is found in the fact that in 1993 Queer Nation activist Michael Petrelis had begun publicly to accuse Boren of sexually harassing his male staff members. Was Boren's surprise resignation from the Senate prompted by this?

For years I had heard the rumor that Boren was gay. To paraphrase the famous line from Gone With the Wind: frankly, I didn't give a damn. For anyone except an entomologist, thinking about Boren's sexual life was about as interesting as dissecting a cockroach.

Former Rhodes Scholar Confirms It

On the other hand, sexually abusive behavior by high-ranking politicians is a proper matter for public concern. The question of sexual misconduct by Boren came to my attention in 1999 after a friend showed me a copy of a book entitled The Price of Achievement, by W. Scott Thompson, a professor at Tufts University.[6] Thompson, who had held an appointment in the Reagan administration, is also gay and was a Rhodes Scholar during the same time Boren was at Oxford.

Thompson devotes two pages of his book to Boren. "I was aware that David [Boren] was gay before I was aware of my own homosexuality," he writes, "and our scout confirmed it...his homosexuality was never too far from the surface." Thompson also mentions "rumors of trouble with page boys at the Oklahoma capitol" (during Boren's term as a state legislator), and believes that Boren's surprise 1994 resignation from his US Senate seat was "almost surely prompted" by fears of "a deeper degree of outing." Thompson also mentions "reasonably well-attested stories of continued gay imbroglios on Capitol Hill."

Thompson's book inspired me to do an Internet search to see what else could be discovered. I found a July 1993 article from The Texas Triangle, a gay publication which reported Petrelis' accusations about Boren. [7] According to the Triangle, Petrelis' was claiming that Boren was the individual described only as "the Legislator" in Michelangelo Signorile's book Queer In America .[8] Male staff members employed by the Legislator, a U.S. Senator, had been promised confidence by Signorile after describing episodes of sexual harassment. Writer Bob Roehr informed readers that Signorile would neither confirm nor deny that Boren was the Legislator guilty of the misconduct.

Aggressive Sexual Advances

Based on accounts from three victims, Signorile reported that the Legislator invited male staff members to his home when his wife was away, served them alcohol, and made aggressive sexual advances. One staff member, given the pseudonym "Keith" by Signorile, was harassed on twelve different occasions before he finally resigned. Although this victim was gay, he was not sexually attracted to the Legislator.

More definite was W. Scott Thompson. With no ambiguity, he wrote that Boren was referred to "implicitly" in Queer In America . With these words, Thompson was hinting strongly that Boren is guilty of sexually harassing male Senate staff members.

Who Is "Keith"?

In the course of my research I consulted a book entitled The Gilded Dome, by Greg Kubiak, a former member of Boren's Senate staff. While reviewing Kubiak's biographical information about himself, I observed a very interesting situation: on events and circumstances where comparisons are possible, the biographical information Kubiak provides about himself matches what Signorile wrote about "Keith."

According to Signorile, staff member Keith was 32 years old in 1993, the year in which Queer in America was published. This meant he was 13 in 1974. Keith was in his early teens when he campaigned for the Legislator's first race for a statewide seat. Additionally, Keith was in high school when working as a volunteer for the Legislator's first race for federal office. All of this information about Keith matches biographical facts Kubiak provided about himself in The Gilded Dome. [9] Signorile also writes that Keith came out as gay. This is also true of Kubiak, who has been a contributor to Oklahoma City's Gayly Oklahoman. [10] Other matches are found in the facts that both Keith and Kubiak were brought up in Roman Catholic households, and both resigned from their staff positions before the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings.

Swearing on a White Bible

Regarding Boren and the Legislator, there is another event of overwhelming interest. During his first race for federal office the Legislator held a press conference to deny a rumor that he was a closeted homosexual. As any Oklahoman who followed politics in the decade knows, that is exactly what David Boren did in 1978. Taking an oath on a white Bible, he swore that he was straight. Signorile reports that the accusation of the Legislator being homosexual surfaced during the summer. The banner headline "Sex Charge A Lie, Gov. Boren Replies" appeared on the front page of The Daily Oklahoman on August 11, 1978. [11]

The match on the press conference and accusation of homosexuality would be enough to create strong suspicion that the sexually abusive Legislator was indeed Boren. But there is more. The Legislator supported the Supreme Court nomination of both Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, as did Boren. The Legislator was reported to be a married man with children at the time of the 1978 Senate race. In 1978 Boren was married to his second wife Molly Shi, and had children by a previous marriage.

Thompson writes that Boren engaged in "anti-homosexual rhetoric from time to time." Signorile writes that "the Legislator supported antigay and AIDSphobic bills by Jesse Helms and others."

Finally, Signorile writes that Keith's first assignment as a staff member for the Legislator was in his home state, and that after the Legislator's re-election Keith complied with his employer's request that he move to Washington to work for him. Kubiak reports that his first assignment for Boren was in the Oklahoma office, and that after the 1984 re-election Boren talked him into joining his Washington staff.

Boren's Keen Interest in Kubiak

Signorile writes that Keith was a "handsome, big, all-American sort of guy with gleaming eyes." Clearly, the Legislator was strongly attracted to good-looking young men, and gave them preference in his hiring practices. From information provided by Kubiak in The Gilded Dome, it becomes obvious that Boren was very interested in having him on his staff. The typical job applicant has to make the effort to contact prospective employers and sell himself. It wasn't that way between Boren and Kubiak. Boren took the initiative, and recruited him by having staff members make preliminary contacts expressing Boren's interest in having Kubiak work for him. Later, Kubiak received a phone call inviting him to see Boren in person in Oklahoma City. After a brief interview taking place in a moving automobile, Boren hired him.

Does Anyone Else's Biography Match Signorile's Legislator?

In view of all the matching events and circumstances, one may be tempted to conclude that Signorile's Legislator could be none other than Boren. Given the serious nature of the allegations under consideration, additional deliberation is justified. Signorile's Legislator was a U.S. Senator. We know this because he voted on Supreme Court nominations. Further, from information given by Signorile it can be ascertained that the Legislator won his first race for federal office in 1978. This indicates that he was one of 20 politicians elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time in that year.[12] Of those 20, how many matched the other biographical circumstances reported to be true for the Legislator? For investigating this question, I relied upon the following information from Signorile: (1) the Legislator voted to confirm Thomas, (2) he was elected to a statewide office for the first time in 1974, (3) he held other elected office before the 1974 election. Boren's biography matches the Legislator's on all three counts. If this is not true for any of the other twenty, then it would be strongly indicated that Signorile was writing about Boren.

Of the twenty freshmen Senators elected in 1978, nineteen were males. Of these, the following seven joined Boren in confirming Clarence Thomas: Thad Cochran (Mississippi), William Cohen (Maine), Dave Durenberger (Minnesota), J.J. Exon (Nebraska), Larry Pressler (South Dakota), Alan Simpson (Wyoming), and John Warner (Virginia). At this point, the task of elimination involved examining each of their biographies to see if any besides Boren matched the Legislator on all criteria. For this, the online Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress was consulted along with the senate.gov website. Here are the findings for each of the seven:

Thad Cochran. Cochran was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1972 and served three terms before winning a Senate seat. In this period, the Legislator was serving in an elected state government office.

William Cohen. Cohen also was elected to the U.S. House in 1972 and served three terms there before entering the Senate.

Dave Durenberger. Durenberger served as executive secretary to Minnesota Governor Harold LeVander from 1967 to 1971. His biographical summary mentions no elected offices before his 1978 Senate race. Signorile describes the Legislator as a "local politician" prior to the 1974 race for state office.

J.J. Exon. Exon was Governor of Nebraska from 1971-79. Before this he was operating an office equipment firm. The Legislator did not run for statewide office until 1974.

Larry Pressler. Pressler served in the Office of Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State from 1971 to 1974, and served in the US House of Representatives from 1975 until his entry into the Senate in 1979. The Legislator's first race for a federal office was in 1978.

Alan Simpson . Simpson was a member of the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1964-77. For part of this period, the Legislator was holding statewide office.

John Warner . Warner was Under Secretary of the US Navy from 1966-72, Secretary of the Navy from 1972-74, and administrator of the U.S. Bicentennial Administration from 1974-76. This does not match the biographical information for Signorile's Legislator.

David Boren is the only U.S. Senator or former Senator whose biography has no conflicts with what is written by Signorile about the Legislator. As noted earlier, W. Scott Thompson wrote that Boren was "implicitly" referred to in Signorile's book. [6]

Matching Events: the Legislator and Boren

Between what is known about Boren and Kubiak, there are fifteen significant matches with events in the lives of the Legislator and "Keith." They are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Significant Matches
Events for Legislator	Match With Boren (yes/no)
1. First race for statewide office in 1974	yes
2. First race for federal office in 1978	yes
3. Press conference to deny being homosexual	yes
4. Supported Bork nomination	yes
5. Supported Thomas nomination	yes
6. Married with children in 1978	yes
7. Groomed for office by a political family	yes
Events for Keith	Match With Kubiak (yes/no)
8. Campaigned for the Legislator in 1974	yes
9. Campaigned for the Legislator in 1978	yes
10. Age 13 in 1974	yes
11. Brought up in Roman Catholic household	yes
12. First assignment for the Legislator was in home state	yes
13. Assigned to Washington office after re-election	yes
14. Resigned from the Legislator's staff	yes
15. Came out later as gay	yes

I also would like to report that I had an e-mail correspondence with W. Scott Thompson, and he told me of having been an eyewitness to one of Boren's homosexual encounters during their Rhodes Scholar days. This happened one day when the wind blew open the door to Boren's room in the Oxford dormitory. Thompson told me that he assured his book publishers that he would be willing to testify to it.

Keith Describes Sexual Abuse from the Legislator

In his book Queer In America Signorile reports a detailed account by Keith of having been sexually abused by the Legislator. One day when his wife was out of town the Legislator called Keith into his office and invited him to his home that evening for a drink. Keith accepted the invitation on the hope that the encounter would provide an opportunity to talk about important business. He described to Signorile how he came to learn that the Legislator had something else in mind:

"I showed up at nine-thirty and he greeted me. I noticed more of a physical greeting -- not a hug per se but an arm around the shoulder, more friendly than before. In the living room, he offered me a drink. He poured screwdrivers -- extremely strong drinks. We drank and talked candidly, gossiped about office people. Within an hour, his eyes started to wander and he started to look at my crotch. I was starting to feel uncomfortable about that. He got up to make us another drink and then sat next to me on the couch. He turned off a lamp, then put his arm on my leg, on my knee, as he continued eye contact. I felt very uncomfortable about it, but I was shocked. Going through my head was that the rumors were true.

"The situation progressed speedily, as he put his hands on my crotch, trying to arouse me, telling me to relax. I was very nervous. Alcohol was having an effect on me, obviously, but I was alert as to what was happening. He tried to get my hand over to his crotch to get him off. I found a way to slip out from under his arm. I got up and said, 'It's getting late and I better not drink any more and I should get going.' He intercepted me by putting his arm around me and saying, 'You don't need to hurry off; we're friends -- nothing we share has to go out of here.' I was still heading for the door, hoping he'd just let me go. He turned me away from my path to the door and walked me toward the bedroom, which was completely dark. He steered me into the bedroom, where he took off his pants, started fumbling with mine, took mine down, and then lay me down and tried to jack me off, tried to get me to do the same to him."

After the Legislator obtained the satisfaction he was seeking, Keith managed to make an exit. Signorile described him as confused, upset, and in a state of shock.

Fear of Reprisals from Legislator Keeps Victims Silent

Why did Keith and the Legislator's other victims insist on pseudonyms and concealing the identity of their abusive employer? Keith answered this question for Signorile:

"I also knew enough about the way [the Legislator] treated his enemies to know that I didn't want to be one of them. I knew that for all the congenial appearance he put out, he was a pretty cutthroat politician and could find ways to harm people."

Kubiak's AOL Website Doesn't Mention Boren

Ordinarily one would expect a former staff member of a U.S. Senator to name the Senator when reporting his professional history. At his AOL website, Kubiak proudly reports "over 15 years of experience as a top U.S. Senate aide." He does not appear to be especially proud of his relationship to Boren, though, since the website doesn't mention him. Kubiak also reports his authorship of The Gilded Dome without informing readers that the book was based upon his experience as a Boren staff member.

Boren's Peculiar Childhood Relationship with Sam Rayburn

When David Boren was a small child his father Lyle was a U.S. Congressman and friend of Texas Congressman Sam Rayburn, who was House Majority Leader and later became Speaker of the House. Rayburn was sometimes a guest in the Boren household. In the same Oklahoma Today article mentioned earlier, writer W.K. Stratton describes his relationship with the young David Boren: [1]

He was a powerful man. And he was a lonely man. Mister Sam never married -- some might say politics was his bride -- and he adopted the families of his friends as substitutes. The wife and children of the young, ambitious congressman from Texas Hill Country, Lyndon Baines Johnson, formed one such surrogate family. The family of Lyle Boren formed another.

David Boren remembers Mister Sam with great fondness. On Sunday afternoons in Washington, this icon of power in America helped young David fashion tents in the Boren living room using chairs from the dining room table and sheets from the linen closet. They played together for hours.

Here we have. . .a boy who spent Sunday afternoons crawling around on the floor with Sam Rayburn.

One wonders why a powerful, lonely man would want to spend hours crawling around under a tent with a small boy. Perhaps those who propose cycle-of-abuse theories will find this aspect of Boren's history to be interesting.

Gay Rights Advocate Batchelder Defends Boren

In January 2000, the San Francisco gay publication Magnus published an earlier less comprehensive version of this article. [13] One of its readers, Oklahoma City gay rights advocate Nathaniel Batchelder, [14] wrote to Magnus and protested my article while defending Boren. He accused Magnus of not serving "the righteous cause of gay rights" by "publishing unsubstantiated rumors about public officials." Batchelder does not appear to accept the word of gay writer W. Scott Thompson.

While admitting to Boren's "possible bisexuality," Batchelder praised Boren as "a gifted and brilliant public servant." He also compared me to Senator Joe McCarthy while accusing me of conducting a rumor campaign. Additionally, Batchelder completely ignored the article's main concern: the problem of sexual harassment. The letter was copied to me.

Degrading the University Presidency

On Valentine's Day 2000, the OU student paper published winners of its "celebrity haiku" contest. (A "haiku" is a Japanese poetic form). [15] The winning entry was by Joseph Wagner, a senior, and implicitly referenced Boren's homosexuality. Wagner wrote:

Boren, respected, wise leader of our college Can I bathe with you?

Wondering whether Boren would be concerned about this published assault upon the dignity of his office, I decided to make sure he knew about it. Not long after it was published, I made a visit to the OU Office of Public Affairs and called it to the attention of its personnel. I asked them to inform Boren. Then I watched the media to see if Boren would issue any statements condemning this indescretion by The Oklahoma Daily. I never heard a word, nor saw a word about it in print.

Can Boren Be Defended?

Realizing that I am at risk of offending many Boren sycophants interested in denial of wrongdoing by their leader, I offer three logical possibilities by which Boren could be defended:

1. You can argue that Signorile's "Legislator" was someone else. If you choose this path, do your homework. Find another Senator or former Senator whose biography matches the Legislator's. You also need to find a male staff member of your candidate whose biographical data matches that of Signorile's "Keith." Good luck. Let me know how it goes. I'll be happy to report your findings. Be sure to supply your references.

2. You can try to discredit Signorile. Are you prepared to argue that he fabricated the material in the chapter about the Legislator? Be advised that Signorile is considered to be a credible writer by numerous publications. He has been published by The New York Times , The Nation, Newsday, New York, The New York Observer, and The Advocate. In this endeavor, you also have to discredit Random House, a reputable publisher. Good luck. Let me know what you discover.

3. If you choose to accept that Signorile's Legislator was Boren, then you are left with having to excuse sexually abusive conduct by powerful public officials. If that's what Oklahomans are willing to do, then the rest of the nation is entitled to ask the question: "what kind of people are you?"

No One Has Answered the Challenge

As of August 26, 2002, no one has contacted me to answer the challenge to defend Boren by presenting me with evidence. Where are all the Boren defenders? If no one is able to defend him, how can his continued occupancy of high public office be justified?

The Ignorance of the "Presumption of Innocence" Argument

Some Boren defenders might be inclined to argue that he is entitled to the "presumption of innocence." That is a silly argument. I am not a prosecutor and I am not bringing a charge against Boren in a criminal court. I am judging Boren the powerful politician and public official in the court of public opinion, and I have every right to do so. I believe that the evidence I have assembled against him is sufficient to justify that he be fired and denied employment in any more positions which rely upon the public trust. Anyone making the "presumption of innocence" argument on Boren's behalf is demonstrating the inability to understand this distinction.

According to Anita Hill, Boren himself displayed ignorance on this point when defending his vote for confirming Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice after she testified that he had sexually harassed her. In her book Speaking Truth to Power she comments on Boren's expression of regret about having voted for Thomas: [16]

Later Boren would express regrets about the vote but make clear his regrets had nothing to do with my testimony. Boren based his contrition on positions Justice Thomas took as a member of the Court with which Boren disagreed. Boren's new position was almost as indefensible as his argument that Thomas deserved the benefit-of-innocence standard reserved for criminal trials.

Keith Excuses "the Legislator"

After giving readers a graphic description of the Legislator's abuse of male staff members, author Signorile informs us that his victims excuse him from moral judgment about his sordid conduct. They blame "homophobia" instead:

If Gerard and Keith seem altruistic in their concern for the Legislator's life, it is because they see the Legislator as a tragic victim of society's homophobia -- just as they once were...Life as an openly gay man was never an option for him, nor was homosexuality something that he could ever face up to in his closed world, even as times changed. Tortured and ashamed, he suffers a ghastly experience in which he is compelled to deceive all those around him...and forced to abuse his power as a lawmaker.

This is jibberish and patently ridiculous. The Legislator is to blame for abusing power, and he deserves to be exposed and punished. Those who cover for him are cowards who share the blame. Clearly, Signorile admits that there has been wrongdoing. Does Signorile believe that certain kinds of wrongdoing should go unpunished? How exactly are we to go about punishing the "homophobic society" which the victims and many gay activists blame for the abusive conduct of the Legislator? Signorile partly agrees with Gerard and Keith, and calls the Legislator a "victim," but admits that he has victimized many more people.

Signorile provided a more likely explanation of why the Legislator's victims won't talk openly about his disgusting behavior is that they simply fear his power and are afraid of retaliation. For a realistic view, one merely needs to review what Keith has to say in the section "Fear of Reprisals from Legislator Keeps Victims Silent."

David Boren is wealthy and powerful. To call him a "victim" would make as much sense as shedding tears for Bill Gates.

Links to Other Interesting Information About Boren

YAHOO's Insider Trader feature: Insider

Wife Molly's large stock purchase in Central and Southwest, a Texas utility, made on the very day in which a U.S. Senate bill was introduced to provide a special tax benefit for utilities: Favor for Molly

A tax favor he did for pal Eddie Gaylord, publisher of The Daily Oklahoman : Gaylord Favor

A web page about Reform Party candidates for 2000 reports Boren's "solid record as a military hawk" and his successful record in pushing for deregulation of energy prices. It also reports his having sworn on a Bible in 1978 that he was not gay. Always a Politician

Boren Helps Koch Steal Oil from Indians

As a Senator Boren joined Bob Dole in defending Koch oil of Kansas against charges of having stolen $31 million in oil from Indian tribes. After Boren resigned his Senate seat to become OU President, Koch rewarded him contributing $150,000 to O.U.'s College of Medicine and Children's Hospital. For details see this investigative report in The Nation.

Other Criticisms of the University of Oklahoma

Under Boren's watch, OU has been sinking more deeply into the sewer of totalitarian political correctness and postmodernist irrationality. There are several examples of these tendencies at work. Under Boren, OU has become more safe for male-bashing, but only of heterosexual males: I offer two examples of this trend:

Boren's compromise of academic freedom in the midst of the bogus "sexual harassment" charge brought against faculty member David Deming: Trashing the First Amendment

The annual festival of male-bashing known as rape awareness week. This article was published in the North Carolina journal Clarion

About the Author

Go here for biographical information about Michael Wright.

Go to OU Front Page

REFERENCES

1. W.K. Stratton, "Hail to the Chief," Oklahoma Today, Vol. 49, No. 2 (1998 Year in Review)

2. Jim Killackey, "Boren Accepts OU Presidency to Cheers," The Daily Oklahoman, April 28, 1994.

3. Allan Cromley, "Boren's Career Unique for State," The Daily Oklahoman, April 28, 1994.

4. Bryan Painter, "UCO Jokes on Boren-Nigh Swap," The Daily Oklahoman, April 29, 1994.

5. Chris Casteel, "Boren Accepts OU Presidency to Cheers: Move Called Senate's Loss, State's Gain," The Daily Oklahoman April 28, 1994.

6. W. Scott Thompson, The Price of Achievement: Coming Out in Reagan Days (London: Cassel, 1995), pp. 222-223

7. Roehr, Bob, "Attempted Outing of Oklahoma Senator Provides Lesson", The Texas Triangle (July 14, 1993) pp 1,11

8. Michelangelo Signorile, Queer In America (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 170-182

9. Greg Kubiak, The Gilded Dome (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), pp. 24-30

10. Greg Kubiak, "In Our Interest," The Gayly Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), February 1, 2001

11. Ed Montgomery, "Sex Charge A Lie, Gov. Boren Replies," The Daily Oklahoman, August 11, 1978, p. 1

12. Newsweek, November 20, 1978, p. 55

13. Michael Phillip Wright, "Sexual Abuse in the Gay Closets of Power," Magnus (January 2000), p. 17

14. Nathaniel Batchelder, "Acceptance of lifestyle sought, forgiveness given freely," The Daily Oklahoman, February 11, 2000, p. 9A

15. "Valentine's Day Celebrity Haiku Contest Winners," The Oklahoma Daily University of Oklahoma), February 14, 2000, p. 8.

16. Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power(Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 334.