I’m a huge fan of Sunday talk shows. From the “The Georgia Gang” in the morning to ABC’s “This Week” in the early afternoon, I love shouting at the TV over coffee and eggs.

Between that and the Sunday New York Times, I’m glued to the sofa for hours.

During my time spent with TV and newspapers, I’ve seen and read Ken Mehlman defend Republican policies countless times.

I’ve heard him promote the legislative agenda of the GOP.

He defended a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to heterosexual couples just to get the base to the polls on election day.

On Wednesday, Mehlman came out to the world as gay.

Mehlman was the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

This made him the most powerful non-elected Republican in the party.

Mehlman is a lawyer. A good one, he has a Harvard Law degree.

Watching him argue, I thought: I hate the man for his conclusions, but he makes his conclusions.

He makes them extremely well.

From 2005 to 2007, Republicans marched to his drums.

A gay man ran the Republican Party for years.

Today, I applaud Mehlman, as should you.

Good for you, Ken! Get out of that closet!

But the applause is bittersweet.

There have been people willing to speak truth to power.

For every man or woman who was too afraid to tell his friends and family what their sexual orientation was, someone — activists or politicians — was ready to speak for the fearful.

But Mehlman didn’t do that. He was scared. He wanted the job.

He freely admits that he lied to friends and family when directly confronted about his sexuality.

It’s a sad day in America when competent people have to hide who they are and what they  think for fear of retribution.

Many public school teachers have been fired because of relatively tame Facebook pages. Now, unions recommend that no teacher should have one.

Meller

God forbid your child is taught by a well-educated, unpaid and overworked 20-something who was caught drinking with her friends in front of a camera.

And Muslim-Americans? Do you think that they want to announce their religion to white, middle-class, conservative Christian males?

Reading the opinion pages of The Red & Black, you’d think that Muslim students would give this campus a wide berth in the future.

Who cares about who you are? It’s what you do  that makes all the difference.

Or in Mehlman’s case, what he didn’t do.

Or in President Bush’s case, what he knew and didn’t care to know.

Bill Maher outed Mehlman on Larry King Live in 2006.

So what did President Bush know, and when did he know it?

I’d like to think that President Bush knew that Mehlman was gay, or at least had suspicions.

He probably didn’t care. As a politician, it should have been more important to him that Mehlman performed well as the RNC chairman.

And, dare I say it, we should all take a page out of President Bush’s book.

Let’s care about how good a job a person can do, not who they are.

Let’s care about how people treat their friends and family.

Let’s build our communities so that they are more inclusive, rather than excluding the competent people with whom we disagree.

Some people don’t want to be inclusive. They have books that tell them that some people must be cast aside for the good of all people.

But the rest of us are going to need more than a few lines in an old book to understand why.

Our government, politics and economy have failed us — both the working public and the students at this University.

When they talk about the “Lost Generation” in the newspaper, those writers are speaking about you and me.

At this present rate, you’ll have no job, no place to live and crippling debt when you graduate.

So let’s try not to exclude our best and brightest for reasons such as homosexuality.