Much is being made of the news concerning Corporal Matthew Sanchez, USMC, and his past as a gay “adult entertainment” actor, and also his past as a paid male escort.

CPL Sanchez had been recognized by the CPAC (the same one that Ann Coulter had potty-mouthed John Edwards) for his actions in speaking out at Columbia University against anti-war radicals, and was given a Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award as well as a standing ovation at the Ronald Reagan Banquet (h/t to Michelle Malkin).

As always with the interwebs, much googling and poking around with the Wayback Machine can turn up the dirt on just about anyone; and CPL Sanchez is no exception. In spite of his turn-around from his life some 15-odd years ago (having served in the USMC, and now both a full-time student and full-time partner at a marketing company, one would have to try awfully hard to dispute his willingness to strive to be the best he can).

Naturally, the pictures and links to his old escort service profile, leather paraphenalia and his porn “career” surfaced like so much flotsam dredged up by those liberal champions of skullduggery and petty vindictiveness.

It seems that the radical left — which would have us believe that it works overtime to protect the LGBTs and other oppressed minorities — were also the first to heap scorn upon CPL Sanchez for his past. In his blog, CPL Sanchez admits to his past, and also that he has long since moved on from what he described as initially a progressive, liberal leaning worldview to that of a Reagan conservative, and finding his time in the gay porn/escort industry to be quite empty and unfilling.

Excerpted from CPL Sanchez’s blog:

I don’t like porn, it reduces the mind, flattens the soul. That’s not hypocrisy talking, that’s experience. If I started off with liberal leanings, being on a gay porn set should have been heaven. In porn, everything taboo is trivialized and everything trivial is projected. How does a conservative trace his roots to such distasteful beginnings? Like all followers of a cult, it’s tough to figure out when you stopped believing in the party-line, but I can tell you that by the time I finished my summer tour of the major studios, I was pretty disgusted with myself. It was an emotional low, and the people who surrounded me were like drug dealers only interested in being with the anesthetized in order not to shake off the stupor of being high. Why did I become a conservative? Just look at what I left, and look at who is attacking me to today? Let’s face it people, you’re all cynical enough to know that if I had espoused liberal causes, spoken out against the military, got a liberal award for courage and then outed with a porn-past, you’d be clamoring for my memoir, and nominating me for a diversity ticket with Barack Obama. Instead those who complain about wire-tapping reserve the right to eavesdrop on my private life for political brownie points.

Indeed, the Left is swift to punish those who flee from their “ideological plantation” - and sadly enough, one’s sexuality - or former sexuality - is yet another weapon to use mercilessly silence their opposition. Unfortunately for the Leftocrats this time, it won’t work. I think the Corporal is not a man easily intimidated, even by the “almighty Smear Machine” of the Left.

Too bad that the Left seems all to willing to turn on its would be “protected identities” to damage the right; or just as bad, trying to downplay their fringe elements much like Edwards tossing Amanda “the Toilet Mouth” Marcotte from Pandagon, and that gal from “Shakespeare’s Sister” under the bus of political convenience.

Not that I care much for those two sites or authors’ decidedly radical talking points… but a Presidential candidate is going to hire some politically wildfired bloggers to handle your press, checking out their backgrounds to see if their personal views are in line with your target consituency first might be a good idea.

But I say “Bravo!” to CPL Sanchez. I have utmost respect for someone with the grit to admit to his past, and having moved on from a “closed chapter” in his life without the whitewashing we saw from the likes of Mark Foley or Ted Haggard…

If nothing else, even if CPL Sanchez is not a Christian, the Christian attitude to have is to accept a repentant sinner with love; since he seems to have turned his back on the gay lifestyle, I think it is only appropriate that conservatives welcome him with open arms and Christ’s attitude of forgiveness.

On Michelle Malkin’s post covering this, she references a reader who quoted 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (KJV) in reference to this attitude:

9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Amen, and amen.

With Jesus, all things truly are possible, even the redemption of souls from the grasp of sin.