At 7:16 p.m., I'm in the Dawg Pound, the basketball gymnasium for the Morrilton High Devil Dogs, here to watch them host the Little Rock Christian High Warriors. This gym has been here at least since I was in high school,* and it's my first time inside. It's beautiful, in a Hoosiers sort of way. I got here in time to take a 33:36 walk.
*the building has not been there since I was in high school. A girls coach told me she graduated in 1979 and that it wasn't built then. I failed to ask anyone else about it when the game was over, but several people said they're building a new gym in the next year or two, which seems nuts to me
Paragraph(s) of the day from A Different Closet
NOEL KELLEHER
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A prominent gay rights activist told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday that a candidate for the U.S. Congressional seat in Missouri’s first district has maintained a lie throughout his campaign.
Stephen Larder, who resigned as director of Social Advocates for Gay Advancement Midwest on Jan. 18, said Keith Ingram is not homosexual, as Ingram has claimed since early in 1985, nearly a year before he announced his intention to run as a Democrat for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives occupied by Ronald Hardman since 1969.
“It’s far past time for the truth to be exposed, before further damage to the gay rights movement is done,” Lardner said.
Ingram vehemently denied Lardner’s allegation. “It’s based on nothing more than my supposed lack of stereotypically gay characteristics,” he said. “[Lardner] should be ashamed of himself.”
Ingram said he is “involved in a relationship with [SAGA founder and President] Bobby Green.”
Green said Ingram moved into his downtown condominium on Monday, which Larder said was no more than a ruse.
Ingram’s climb to his current status began when he knocked unconscious St. Louis Cardinals All-Pro defensive back A.J. Carmichael after a confrontation at Busch Stadium following a football game on Nov. 24 of last season. Carmichael was videotaped as he verbally bashed Ingram with a barrage of epithets based on Ingram’s well-documented declaration of homosexuality. Carmichael shoved Ingram against a row of lockers, after which Ingram rose from the floor and landed a punch that knocked Carmichael unconscious and broke his jaw. Millions watched replays of the event on television.
Ingram, then a sportswriter for the Post-Dispatch, subsequently was interviewed on several nationally televised broadcasts and was featured on CBS’s news program 60 Minutes. He resigned his position at the Post-Dispatch and joined SAGA on Jan. 3.
Lardner travelled last December to Little Rock, Ark., where Ingram was employed by the Arkansas Gazette before he began work at the Post-Dispatch in June of last year. While in Little Rock, Lardner interviewed several former associates and intimates of Ingram’s, including his ex-wife Julie Hopper, and Gazette copy editor Jay Quattlebaum. They both said they told Lardner in December that they did not believe Ingram was homosexual, but both recanted Monday.
Hopper said she divorced Ingram, on Nov. 10, 1982, after she learned of an affair involving Ingram and Quattlebaum.
Quattlebaum said his relationship with Ingram continued until Ingram moved to St. Louis in June of last year. “If someone asks me to tell them something that’s none of their business, then I don’t feel obliged to tell them the truth,” Quattlebaum said. “And my involvement with [Ingram] was none of [Lardner’s] business.”
“I didn’t tell him that Keith [Ingram] wasn’t gay,” Hopper said. “I did tell him that I didn’t think he ‘acted’ gay, which I think kind of offended him [Lardner]. The fact is, my ex-husband is gay. That’s why he’s my ex-husband. But regardless, I certainly didn’t go into the details of our divorce with Lardner or anyone else.”
Lardner said something must have compelled Quattlebaum and Hopper to alter the stories, and that he suspected it might have been the influence of billionaire California real-estate developer Lance Dornfeld, a significant supporter of Ingram’s political campaign.
Dornfeld was on board his private jet when it flew out of Love Field in Dallas for Little Rock’s Adams Field on Monday morning. Dornfeld flew from Little Rock to Lambert International Airport in St. Louis on Monday afternoon.
“I was in Little Rock on private business,” said Dornfeld on Monday night, speaking from a mobile telephone. “I have never met either of the people that he mentioned and have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Lardner first spoke of this matter in a meeting at the Post-Dispatch, which began at 9 a.m., Monday.
“I find it a fantastic and unimaginable coincidence that [on Monday morning] I talk to [the Post-Dispatch] about this, and that by Monday evening all the stories have changed, and that [Ingram] has moved in with Bobby Green,” Lardner said.
Hardman, reached at his office in St. Louis, said he had no comment, though he did say, “I don’t personally care whether or not my opponent is gay. It doesn’t make any difference to me. The only thing that matters to me is whether or not he’s telling the truth.”
Green said Lardner might have been motivated by envy.
“I know that [Lardner] has long aspired to hold public office,” Green said. “He told me more than a year ago that he wanted to become the first openly gay man to be elected to Congress, and it’s been clear to me since last winter that he has been terribly jealous of Keith Ingram, and that’s too bad. Stephen Lardner had a great future with SAGA and within our movement and perhaps still does, but he’s certainly put it in jeopardy now.”
Lardner, after he was told of Green’s comment, said he was not jealous of anyone.
“All I want to do is stop this fraud before it does perhaps irreversible harm to our movement,” Lardner said. “I will do anything I can to stop it.”
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