Hillsborough County's most quote-worthy commissioner, Ronda Storms, was on the Bay News 9-St. Petersburg Times talk show, Political Connections, a few weeks ago and said — if elected to the Florida Senate — she would try to reverse the state's policy allowing gay couples to serve as foster parents.

"I don't support putting at-risk children in homes that I think are at-risk themselves," Storms was quoted in a Times article on April 23.

That drew an e-mail in protest from Scott Taylor, a public relations man who doesn't have a high public profile but whose correspondence on human rights issues are known to media types. Taylor copied a bunch of reporters and editors on his e-mail to Storms demanding an explanation from her as to exactly how gay couples are "at-risk."

"Your statement … is, at the very least, ignorant; at its worst, it's dangerous," Taylor wrote to the Hillsborough county commissioner. "In any event, it's inflammatory and demands an explanation, not to mention an apology."

To date, he has received neither from Storms.

Taylor also took issue with Political Connections host Al Ruechel and Times political editor Adam C. Smith for not challenging Storms on her assertion.

That criticism did get a response — a pointed one from Ruechel that came complete with capital letters for emphasis.

"Hi Scott,

"That statement is neither inflammatory or dangerous: IT IS HER OPINION!!!!!!! It is the OPINION of many in the Christian community that gays and lesbians cannot provide the kind of environment that a child needs to become a well adjusted adult. That is merely an opinion. We can find anecdotal data to support and contradict that statement. We didn't follow up because we didn't want to focus our entire interview on that subject though we did address it at some length."

Ruechel, the station's senior anchor, then asked Taylor ("I would encourage you, no beg you") to come on the show's SoapBox segment to give his viewpoint.

By way of background, Ruechel is a devout Christian, as a worship and music leader at Grace Christian Fellowship in Largo, where he composes and performs his own original Christian music.

He told me this week that he was very surprised that Taylor forwarded his answer to other media members, since it carried a confidentiality statement at the bottom of it. The longtime Bay area anchor, in fact, asserted that Taylor broke the law by doing so and said he preferred his e-mail not end up in this story.

"I'm not a public official," he said. "That is a private conversation."

Ruechel explained that he has no on-air agenda and didn't follow-up on Storms' statement for two reasons: the show ran out of time and it was merely Storms saying something she's said before. He said Taylor never responded to his offer to appear on air and appears more interested in having a "grudge match" with Storms than discussing the issue.

Confidential or not, Ruechel's e-mail didn't sit well with Taylor, who responded and copied the media again.

"It's also the 'opinion' of some in the community that women are less competent than men, that black people are lazy, or that Muslims are murderous, religious zealots," Taylor wrote. "Would it not be considered 'dangerous' or 'inflammatory' if a public figure were to make those statements in a public venue? Would you, as a journalist, allow such statements to go unchallenged without any kind of follow-up questioning?"

(Ruechel told me that comparing racist assertions about blacks to this issue about gays was "apples and oranges.")

Taylor closed his message by calling Ruechel's reasoning "specious and baseless."

"It is the OPINION of many in the Christian community that gays and lesbians cannot provide the kind of environment that a child needs." — Bay News 9's Al Ruechel.

That finally drew out Ronda, who finally weighed in with: "The word for the day in the liberal community is 'specious.' I just don't know how you all pull if off … do you send mass e-mails around with word assignments or is it by word of mouth? Just curious."

The whole episode made me wonder: Just who the hell is Scott Taylor?

It turns out that Taylor is an accidental activist. A 43-year-old gay man and the owner of a public relations firm, Taylor said he has purposely kept his profile low and never planned on becoming a voice for gay rights.

"Gay issues, in quotation marks, have never really been at the top of my list of concerns," he said from his office last week. The environment and historical preservation were more important to him when he returned to Florida from California three years ago with his partner, settling in the Seminole Heights neighborhood in Tampa.

He didn't consider himself an activist or political — until Ronda's move last year to ban recognition of gay pride events. Since then, he has published two op-ed pieces in the Tampa Tribune and written one on gay rights for Creative Tampa Bay's website.

"It's people like her who make being gay in this environment political," Taylor said. So whenever he hears or reads about someone being intolerant toward gays, he feels compelled to challenge them on it. And he wants the media to challenge them as well.

"I completely understand where [Ruechel] and Ronda are coming from," Taylor said. "I was raised in a Pentecostal fundamentalist home. I know she looks at my comments as probably marks of honor. She's a good Christian soldier, and good Christian soldiers are persecuted."

Finally, Taylor acknowledged that he had thought about adopting when he was living in California.

"I know that I would be a wonderful father," he said, somewhat wistfully. "I'm responsible. I'm professional. All of those kind of dreams were dashed upon me moving here. The truth is yes, I did have a dream, but those dreams were dashed.

"So I've got two dogs and two cats."

SPECIOUS WATCH: Is Ronda right? Has the vast liberal cabal universally adapted specious as Word of the Week? Storms gave me two more examples: County mayor advocate Mary Ann Stiles called Storms' argument against the plan "specious" in an April 14 Times article; and Kathy Castor's use of the term to describe Storms during a dust-up the two commissioners had the week after that.

Further, in recent months Sierra Clubber Darden Rice used "specious" in a letter to the editor the past weekend in describing rationales for drilling off Florida's Gulf Coast; Republican (in name only) Sen. Arlen Specter called President Bush "specious" in a Washington Post article about Bush's domestic wiretapping program; a Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch op-ed writer called all TV-radio pundits "specious;" and a San Francisco Chronicle critic called spinmeisters "specious."

Hmmmmm. Give us your favorite overused political words at blurbex.com, and I'll put them in a future column.

Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com, by telephone at 813- 739-4805 or on our blog at www.blurbex.com.

This article appears in May 3-9, 2006.