News - Glavin pulls a boner

Because of his right-wing politics, a great many people don’t care for former Southeastern Legal Foundation President Matt Glavin. In fact, some of his enemies consider him to be something of a jerk. But that’s a simplistic assessment of a complex man. During his rise to prominence in right-wing circles, Glavin has randomly sought the political affections of whomever he chanced upon in hopes of building support for his insincere and frivolous legal assaults upon President Clinton’s law license. Pole-vaulting over every legal hurdle, Glavin exploded on to the national scene with his lawsuit to yank Bill Clinton off the Arkansas bar. The suit, still pending, is a bane to Democrats, many of whom believe that Glavin’s only real intent was to stroke his own ego.
As Glavin whacked away at the pillar of right-wing justice, he also thrust himself into the local limelight when he cruised into court and won a suit against Fulton County’s minority set-aside program. He also sued the city of Atlanta seeking to overturn its affirmative action program, continuing a relentless campaign of legal flagellation. Up until last week, Glavin’s constant and chatty presence protruded into the local media, a talking head spurting venomous blather at every opportunity.
Over the last few years, Matthew Glavin made enemies by the fistful as a result of his partisan abuse of the legal system. Many people eventually grew tired of his giddy preoccupation with jacking President Clinton around. His popularity, which had already taken a beating following his decision to pound on affirmative action, sagged even further as he mounted support for the effort to jerk gay Boy Scout leaders off the staff of that venerable organization. He appeared, to many, to epitomize self-indulgence and media manipulation.
But Glavin vigorously and repeatedly tugged upon right-wing heartstrings with his firm grip on the local press and his direct-mail fundraising efforts, erecting a moralistic, high-minded facade that helped raise his own public profile ever higher, climaxing with his being recognized as a national spokesman for the hard right.
And therein, sadly, lies the rub.
Shocking friend and foe alike, Glavin was charged back in May with public indecency for allegedly masturbating in public at the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area on Medlock Bridge road in North Fulton County. An undercover federal police officer reported that Glavin fondled him after he encountered the activist pleasuring himself.
And it wasn’t the first time that Glavin had been caught choking his chicken in the same park. In 1996, Glavin quietly pleaded “no contest” to charges of public indecency after being caught in an identical situation, which makes the former Southeastern Legal Foundation president’s strange compulsion for exhibitionistic autoeroticism all the more curious.
Glavin promptly resigned his position on the afternoon the charges became public, citing the need to “protect my family and the foundation.” He “adamantly denies” that he masturbated in public or fondled a male undercover police officer, refusing to comment on the 1996 incident.
A spokesman for the Southeastern Legal Foundation told television reporters shortly after the Glavin scandal erupted that its legal harassment of liberal causes will continue without interruption. But several prominent right-wing activists say that Glavin’s newly won media image as a homosexual public masturbator may impact the foundation’s ability to raise funds and carry out its mission — which, when one thinks about it, is really nothing more than the partisan legal equivalent of public onanism.
But whatever may happen to the Southeastern Legal Foundation, Matt Glavin will not be remembered for his legal machinations. Indeed, he wasn’t a lawyer at all — he simply played one on TV, much to the self-pleasure of partisan Republicans everywhere. No, in the end Matt Glavin will instead be remembered as a minor-league right-wing gadfly and legal nuisance who lived in a deviant glass house and threw stones at others.
He’ll be forever infamous as the rabid Clinton-hater who got caught whacking off in a public park.