Will Michele Bachmann’s Husband Come Out of the Closet?

This is the latest joke in Washington: If Michele Bachmann is elected to the White House, the U.S. will have a female president and a First Lady.

For some time now, this story has been fueling not only the satirical talk shows, but also the networks: Is Marcus Bachmann gay?

In the past, this question wouldn’t have been asked. The issue of homosexuality, whether it pertains to the husband of the conservative, high-ranking Republican candidate or not, is indeed a private matter.

But Michele Bachmann and her husband have made homosexuality (a satanic behavior according to them) one of their campaign themes and Marcus Bachmann runs a clinic in which he administers “therapies” to “convert” his gay patients and to “cure” them (You need a lot of quotation marks when talking about the couple). Although Bachmann denies it, ABC News has conducted an investigation and broadcasted a film, which, with the use of a hidden camera, shows how a gay patient is pressured to change his sexual orientation. All of this would be laughable if Michele Bachmann wasn’t top of the polls in the State of Iowa, five points ahead of Mitt Romney.

Jon Stewart, the extremely influential host of the political satire program, The Daily Show, put his foot in it. In front of the millions of viewers who follow his show every day, he suggested that Marcus Bachmann was a hypocrite to condemn homosexuals when he himself is gay. According to Stewart, everything in Michele Bachmann’s husband’s behavior raises suspicions, starting with the way he speaks, which is so caricatured that people say it comes directly from Some Like It Hot.

Andrew Sullivan, the influential journalist at The Daily Beast, himself a militant homosexual, has also taken up the accusation. And all of a sudden, the American blogosphere is discussing nothing but this.

The gay website, gaydar.net, has offered Marcus Bachmann a lifetime membership card. In short, Michele Bachmann is in the process of discovering that: 1. Being a candidate in the presidential election is no picnic and exposes her to the scrutiny of the American media in every way. 2. Hypocrisy ends up turning against the hypocrite. 3. This hypocrisy could very well end her campaign after other blunders and medical problems — blinding migraines — which force her to take several days off work per month — a problem when you’re the commander in chief. But perhaps a lesser one than having a gay husband in the closet.