So the Senator wants to cash in a few favors. Angered by the refusal of the White House to go along, he has taken his baseball home and refuses to play any more. He is angry because President Clinton employed a rarely used tactic, the recess appointment, to install James Hormel as the Ambassador to Luxembourg. Thing is, Ambassador Hormel is openly gay, and this offends Senator Inhofe. So in a move fraught with irony, Senator Inhofe has placed his homophobic agenda ahead of everyone else's agenda and is blocking nominations for the Secretary of Treasury and Ambassador to the United Nations.
Conservatives love to get on their moral high horse and fight a battle over principles.
Lost in the fog of battle is any sense that there may be other equally valid beliefs that are entitled to be heard. It is no doubt beyond Senator Inhofe's capacity to accept the idea that a gay person has the same rights that a God-fearing Christian like him does. The good Senator would no doubt be incensed were he to be deprived of a chance to serve his country because he is from Oklahoma or because he is white or because he is a male or because he is heterosexual. But I think he really believes that gayness alone defines a person, that being gay is sufficient reason all by itself to warrant treating someone differently. I don't know what kind of job Ambassador Hormel will do as a representative of America.