On Sept. 5, Steve Yuhas hosted a talk show on AM radio titled, “USS Midway’s Gay Sex Party Scandal.” On his show, Yuhas claimed that the party, Momentum on the Midway, a fundraising event for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), is actually a giant gay sex party set to take place on the USS Midway in San Diego.

OK, Steve, thank you for going public with your very colorful and adventurous gay sex fantasy. And yes, it may indeed be yours and probably every other gay man’s dream to have hundreds of men on a 1001-foot aircraft carrier, participating in wild orgies, but what the hell are you talking about?

Yuhas, an openly gay staunch Republican, who has made it his life’s work to criticize and demonize the GLBT community, made a series of insulting and ridiculous accusations about the event, namely labeling the event a huge gay sex party. Forget that SLDN is an active nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to GLBT service members, which is highly respected in both the gay and straight communities.

“Steve Yuhas has simply made something up to create a story,” said Art Kelleher, a San Diego board member for SLDN. “The ‘Momentum’ party is a VIP reception for major donors and a dance party for everyone else. The party he described is a far cry from the event that we have worked on and planned for the last few months. His comments have not hurt the event in the least; actually, it may have even helped the event by giving us more publicity.”

Even more sickening are the comments he made during the same show about an HIV-positive creative writing workshop offered by The Center. Yuhas said that the class was likely scheduled in the afternoon so that these HIV-positive men would have their evenings free to go out and continue the same sexual behaviors that helped them contract HIV in the first place.

If that isn’t infuriating enough, Yuhas has been an advocate against same-sex marriage and has written numerous articles declaring his position. “The problem that gays face with respect to marriage is that they don’t place as much stock in the importance of the union as most people do,” Yuhas writes. “There is no reason for gays to marry. Gay people don’t even know how to date each other with monogamy, let alone enter into a union whose sole purpose is to provide stability to society and to raise children.”

If you have heard his radio show, or have followed any of his work, it is obvious that he can’t be taken seriously. If he wasn’t such a complete jackass, you may even feel sorry for him. Yet, It makes you wonder, what has happened to Steve to make him such a self-loathing, vile individual? Instead of providing constructive criticism for the GLBT community or working in some way to better it, he has resorted to making bitter, vicious accusations founded on his hate for the community and himself.

In an attempt to understand Yuhas, we gave one of our columnists, Michael Kimmel, a licensed psychotherapist, an anonymous profile of Yuhas, his work and his behavior towards the GLBT community, and asked Kimmell why someone like this would spew such hate and lies.

According to Kimmell, as we come out, age and mature, little “bits” of homophobia that may linger in our psyches are sometimes hard to identify. First off, people who are self-confident and secure in who they are (gay or straight, Republican or Democrat) have little need to insult and criticize others. This person obviously doesn’t feel okay with who they are. Otherwise, what is their motivation to denigrate and slander the actions and members of the community they claim membership in? Secondly, if you hate yourself, you will probably deny that hate and project it onto others – particularly if you hate a specific part of yourself (e.g., being homosexual). This idea of “projection” is a core concept of Freudian psychology: you project your problem onto other people because you aren’t aware of what’s going on within yourself. And perhaps more obvious, is it possible that this person wouldn’t get near as much attention if they were an advocate of our community? Critics and media commentators can’t earn their livings that way: They need to raise the controversy quotient. Stabbing your own community in the back is one way to get attention. The straight community (who oppose the GLBT movement) will love you and the gay community will editorialize you as kin to Satan, which, if you come from the narcissist school of “any publicity is good publicity,” works just fine.

Steve Ralls, director of communications for SLDN, attempted to call into the Yuhas radio program to discuss the Momentum Party on the Midway and set straight any misconceptions about the fundraiser. However, once he got though, Yuhas skated around Ralls’ phone call and eventually hung up without giving Ralls a chance to comment. So, we say Yuhas doesn’t have the balls to go head to head with us. We challenge Yuhas to a debate – one of our representatives against you, live and unedited, on your program to discuss the issues, whether that’s same-sex marriage, the Momentum Party, and/or the GLBT Pride festival and allow your listeners to hear both sides of the issues and see how you measure up. Do you have the balls, Yuhas, or are you a coward?