The anti-Tea Party left are having a field day over the discovery that a violently anti-gay bigot was heading a Montana Tea Party group.

One of the favorite headlines is "Tea Party president jokes about murdering GLBTQ people." (Right. As if this clown is the president of the Tea Party itself!)

Then there's "Montana Tea Party Leader Endorses Violence Toward Gay People."

And to convince the recalcitrant few who have any doubts about those awful Tea Partiers, try "If you still think the Tea Party isn't a bunch of violent bigots...."

What's being downplayed in the haste to indict the entire Tea Party movement as a bunch of bigoted homophobes is the undeniable fact that the board of the Big Sky Tea Party in Montana voted to expel the bigot who joked about hanging gays as decorations. Moreover, they did so quickly:

Montana Human Rights Network organizers said they became aware of the Facebook posting on Friday after a couple of Montana political blogs reprinted the exchange. Organizer Kim Abbott said her organization immediately called for Ravndal's removal and for the Big Sky Tea Party Association to clarify its position.

Two days later, Ravndal was gone.

"We think that they moved swiftly, they condemned the anti-gay rhetoric," Abbott told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "We're especially happy about the unequivocal statements that the tea party will not welcome this type of inflammatory, bigoted behavior into their party, and we hope they stick to it."

I have been going to Tea Party meetings and events since July of 2009, and the vast majority of Tea Party people I have met -- whether organizers or rank-and-file members -- do not endorse anti-gay bigotry at all. (Parenthetically, this would make the Tea Partiers less bigoted than the Montana State GOP, which recently declared in its platform that homosexuality should be a crime in Montana. I think that by any reasonable standard, wanting to put gays in prison is anti-gay bigotry.)

Now, while Tea Partiers I have met have not been anti-gay, it is important to remember that the gay issue -- pro or con -- is not and never has never been a Tea Party issue. Yet seemingly of nowhere, it has recently erupted up with such intensity that I'm wondering about the timing. Might Glenn Beck's recent remarks about gay marriage have something to do with the present uproar?

As I keep saying, gay activists on the left and their dedicated anti-gay counterparts on the right have a common goal.

They want anti-gay bigotry on the right.

So, if that is the common goal, Beck's remarks must be a bitter disappointment.

Especially to poor old George Soros who has launched a major new effort to portray the Tea Party as a bunch of violent bigots.

* Soros's new anti-Tea Party website is prominently featuring this story with a huge headline at the top, of course.