Juan Reyes, a former aide to Rudy Giuliani, has taken his campaign to a semi-hilarious, desperate low by sending out homophobic mailers which attack New York City Councilman Eric Ulrich and his wife for having dinners with gay men, and being nice to lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. It's darkly funny in a sense because resorting to homophobia in a gay-friendly city like New York--where officials just this summer lauded gay marriage for boosting its economy--just doesn't make any kind of sense politically. And perhaps seeing the humor is just a way to avoid thinking about the homophobic Republicans that Reyes is courting in tomorrow's New York GOP primary. In the mailers, Ulrich is described as a "gay-friendly, cosmopolitan Republican who mocked religious Americans" (picture below if you don't believe us--and the mailers are available here  and here if you still can't believe it). 

And the mailer, as Capital Tonight reports, goes on to say that Ulrich and his wife are "frequent dinner companions" of an openly-gay Democratic councilman, that Ulrich has gay people on his staff, and that Ulrich is "cozying up" to Speaker Chris Quinn. Clearly, the message Reyes wants to send is that "don't vote for this guy, he's friends with gay people and employs them." If Reyes really believes in something this idiotic, we can't say, but as The New York Times reported, blasting incumbent Republican New York State Senators and officials over their support and votes in favor of gay marriage last year has become an issue and point of attack in the Republican party. And that's led campaigns into to a contest of who can come up with the most homophobic tasteless material creating mailers like the ones against Ulrich, and the tasteless ones (right) against Republican State Senator Mark Grisanti (who also voted for gay marriage). "[The ads] are so patently ridiculous they have no place in a modern day election," said Human Rights Campaign VP Fred Sainz in a report by the New York Daily News. "These chuckleheads are campaigning for the Fred Flintstone award." 

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Alexander Abad-Santos