Those lying, self-loathing conservative politicians who spend a lifetime pushing homophobia and blocking gay rights.

10. Troy King, the Alabama attorney general who spent a lifetime opposing gay rights and trying to outlaw sex toys, was caught by his wife while having sex with a local homecoming king from Troy University.

9. Jim West, mayor of Spokane, supported a bill to ban gays and lexbians from working in schools, daycare centers, and some state agencies, but that didn’t stop him from having sexual relations with boys and young men from his community over a 25 year period – and even offering them jobs with the city of Spokane in exchange for sex.

8. Richard Curtis, a Washington state representative, always voted against same-sex domestic partnerships and anti-discrimination laws, but then he was caught by the police cavorting with a male prostitute whom he’d offered $1,ooo for sex. Best of all, pictures surfaced of Curtis wearing a pink negligee earlier that evening – taken by the hustler as revenge when he discovered that Curtis had only $200.

7. Bruce Barclay, the homophobic Republican commissioner of Cumberland County, PA, got busted when he was accused of rape by a twenty-year-old male sex partner. Police investigated the scene, found no evidence of rape, but did find a gigantic stash of videotapes showing sexual encounters that Barclay had had with hundreds of young men.

6. Roy Ashburn, A California state senator and a reliable opponent of all gay rights legislation. Arrested on a DUI after leaving a gay bar with an unidentified man… the usual story. At least this guy didn’t try to deny that he was gay.

5. Larry Craig, former three-term senator from Idaho, had a 0 rating from the Human Rights Campaign. You know the rest: the airport men’s room, the tapping foot, the “wide stance,” all revealed after his arrest for lewd conduct.

4. Ed Schrock spent two terms in Congress vehemently opposing all gay-rights issues, especially letting gays serve in the military, but in 2004 he was caught on tape soliciting sex from a male prostitute, at which point he dropped out of the race for a third term in Congress, never to be heard from again.

3. Robert Allen, Florida state rep, married with children, voted against all gay rights legislation, was arrested for offering to pay an undercover cop $20 to let him perform fellatio in a park men’s room. The wackiest thing about Allen’s case was the excuse he offered for the solicitation, namely that he was afraid of black people and “didn’t want to become a statistic,” so … he offered to give a dude a blow job in the men’s room. All right, then.

2. Ted Haggard of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, wasn’t really a politician, but he spent plenty of time campaigning against gay rights before being outed by a prostitute and professional masseur, Mike Jones, who revealed a three-year relationship involving sex, money, and crystal meth.

1. Mark Foley, former congressman and head of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, was caught having unlawful Internet conversations with two former pages, age sixteen and eighteen. (Other reports from pages followed.) Foley took the “poor me” approach to excuse-making, diting the sexual assault of an unnamed clergyman as a child. When at first he denied that he was gay, all of Washington guffawed: his proclivities had been an open secret for years.