The GOP's gay moment?

Gay and lesbian Republicans celebrate their emerging clout. But the party's intolerant platform shows they still have a long way to go.

by Dan Kennedy

PHILADELPHIA - If the right to partake of corporate-funded booze and fancy pasta is a sign of political relevance, then the Republican gay moment has finally arrived. But if one measures gay acceptance by a more objective standard - the party's platform - then gay and lesbian Republicans remain a Buchananesque speech away from returning to the political netherworld.

To be sure, something extraordinary did happen on Monday. Several hundred gay men (and a handful of lesbians) jammed the Top of the Tower restaurant, with its panoramic views of downtown Philadelphia, in order to celebrate their emerging clout. Of the three sponsoring organizations, only one - the Log Cabin Club - was actually Republican (the others were the Human Rights Campaign, a civil-rights organization, and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which helps elect gay political candidates). But the tone was decidedly Republican, right down to the featured speaker, celebrity political consultant turned pundit Mary Matalin.

Such an event would have been unimaginable eight years ago, when the Republican Party imploded at its Houston convention. The right-wing extremists who had taken over the GOP all but expelled gays and lesbians from the party (as well as poor people, minorities, and immigrants), and would have expelled them from the human race had they the power.

"That was a terrible convention, if you remember," said Rich Tafel, executive director of the Log Cabin Club. Invoking Molly Ivins's great line about Pat Buchanan's "culture war" address, he added, "That was the year when some people said the speeches would have sounded better in the original German."

Measured against such a pathetic standard, the Republican Party has come a long way since 1992. George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism may be short on substance, but his inclusive rhetoric is a welcome step forward. No doubt he's as aware as anyone that his father's timid refusal to denounce Buchanan was one of the single biggest factors in his re-election defeat that year. And yes, Representative Jim Kolbe, an openly gay Arizona Republican (or as he mangled it during the Monday event, "an openly elected gay Republican official"), is a featured convention speaker this week, and vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter.

But let's, as they say, look at the record. Party platforms may not mean much, but the 81-page Republican document is, if nothing else, strong evidence that the forces Bush has mustered behind him remain appallingly right-wing.

"We support the traditional definition of 'marriage' as the legal union of one man and one woman, and we believe that federal judges and bureaucrats should not force states to recognize other living arrangements as marriages," reads one section. And this, regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Boy Scouts' right to discriminate against gay men: "We support the First Amendment right of freedom of association and stand united with private organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America, and support their positions." The Republicans "do not believe sexual preference should be given special protection or standing in law" - veiled language whose real purpose is to signal the party's opposition to anti-discrimination and hate-crimes laws. Just for good measure, there's some unveiled language as well, such as this: "We affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service."

Of course, Democratic nominee Al Gore is also no friend of gay marriage, and though he's promised to move beyond the Clinton administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding military service, there is no guarantee that he will do so. Still, the Democratic Party remains years, if not decades, ahead of the Republicans when it comes to gay and lesbian issues - as the Human Rights Campaign's Carl Schmid, a Bush supporter, acknowledged in hailing what he described as Bush's valiant but unsuccessful effort to remove anti-gay language from the platform.

"It reminded me of the Republican Party of the past. We have a long way to go in our own party," Schmid said.

The best line of the day came from Michael Duffy, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for state treasurer in Massachusetts two years ago who's now the co-chair of the Human Rights Commission's national board. Joking that he'd fallen short of his recruiting quota, he proposed inviting Mary Matalin into the fold. "She's very fabulous," Duffy said. "I think she'd make a great lipstick lesbian." And Matalin, though giving no indication that she would consider leaving her husband, Democratic political consultant James Carville, gamely held up the XENA RULES bumper sticker Duffy had left at the podium for her.

But though Matalin was determined to make the case that tolerance is a mainstream value for conservatives and for Republicans ("To be a real conservative is to be pro-person"), her own party's platform belies that wishful thinking.

Rich Tafel concedes that the Democrats are ahead of the Republicans, despite the anti-gay votes he recited from Gore's tenure in the House and in the Senate. "Gays have been involved in the Democratic Party for 30 years to make that happen, and the same thing has to happen with the Republican Party," he told me.

When I asked him what impact Cheney's daughter might have, his response indicated that he believes in the old feminist saw about the personal being political - especially if the Bush-Cheney ticket wins. "To see a conservative vice-president loving his lesbian daughter and her loving her father is a very important message," Tafel said.

True enough. But eight years after Pat Buchanan unloosed the forces of hatred against Gay America, the Republican Party has still managed to produce a statement of basic principles that, if not exactly hateful, nevertheless oozes intolerance.