This week: raronauer catches up with Mike Rogers, the editor of BlogActive and PageOneQ. Mike Rogers is known for outing closeted politicians who vote for anti-gay legislation. Also, he has his own Wikipedia page. To be honest, having a Wikipedia page is one my greatest ambitions.

So what's the deal with BlogActive?

BlogActive is my out of work, volunteer activity in the community where I work to report on individuals who are in the government and hypocritical about gay and lesbian rights. Meaning that regardless of their parties, that they are both anti-gay in their political work and are closeted. So I work to expose that kind of hypocrisy that has no place in government.

So who are your sources for the site?

They're as varied as any reporter. That would be impossible to answer just because there are so many people who come to me. A lot of people find me through the site. In some cases, there are political campaigns, in some cases, they're folks who've worked for these guys and think they're horrible. In some cases, they're people who are saying, "why are you going after this person and not that person?" And I'm like, "really, they're gay?"

Are the people who come to you people who feel like they've been wronged by the politician they're outing?

On a greater societal level, yes, that's exactly what it is. The problem becomes an issue when these guys realize what [these closeted politicians] are doing is hurting the very community that they are apart of. In that circumstance, folks get frustrated, and that's why they come forward to say, "This is wrong." It's the hypocrisy that sends a lot of people over the top.

Don't you feel your part of this cycle? In a way, you're punishing these politicians for being gay by outing them.

Not necessarily. I don't know if it's punishing them or helping to bring things to a new reality. In some cases, my work has led to some incredible self-revelation and politicians who I've been in touch with have come out on their own free will. And other politicians who've been outed, Steve Gunderson and Jim Colby, their voting records went from pretty dismal to really good.

And even Jim McCrery, who was outed as far as back as 92 by The Advocate: He's leaving office, not because of the gay thing, but one of his final votes in Congress in his entire career as a conservative congressman, was for ENDA. Reporting on this stuff, does affect people, and they realize they'll have a legacy. The truth always comes out with this stuff. They usually start to do what's right. Larry Craig is just a psychological mess.

You were one of the first people to report on Larry Craig. How did you feel when all the other revelations came?

I was vindicated a great deal. I felt as if it was a great validation of my work. I feel it was exactly the role blogger can play in the story like that. Lay the ground work, give tools to the next guy in the media, hope that they credit you, and then watch the story take on a life of its own. Obviously in this case, it's one of the biggest political stories of the year.

Do you think Larry Craig should have resigned?

That's a tough question. I think that Larry Craig should be held accountable to the fact that he deceived the American people. He's such a mess psychologically that he probably doesn't belong in the U.S. Senate. Does anybody believe that he didn't do it? 28% of America think he's being honest. And I've always thought there were more closeted gay men than would admit it. I'm like if, 28% of people believe it, maybe they're doing the same damn thing.

You were one person who enacted a chain reaction that led to Larry Craig almost resigning. What do you think this says about bloggers in the future?

The term of "blogger" is such a loose term. To me, a blog is like a Gutenberg Press. It's a computer program that allows people to put up data in chronological order and it can be really stupid. To try to paint a stroke of "bloggers" and count my nephew's girlfriend who put up pictures of friends on her MySpace blog, to Raw Story, our site, which gets 600,000 hits a day. Can you paint those as "blogs"? I don't think so.

They're both blogs, but that's like saying the New York Times and the East Jahunga Pennysaver are both newspapers. Well, yeah, they are, but they're so different.