INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Log Cabin Republicans

With the Republican National Convention coming, it will be interesting to see what kind of message the GOP sends to independent and Republican voters who happen to be gay. There’s little doubt the president will use the national media coverage to again push for a Federal Marriage Amendment banning same-sex marriage (and possibly civil unions).

What will be even more interesting will be the response from the Log Cabin Republicans, the main organization for gay Republicans. I hope they don’t just roll over and say something like, “We deeply regret the president’s misguided position on marriage, but we’re behind him 100 percent! Vote Bush-Cheney!” To every gay Republican voter out there except the most dyed-in-the-wool Log Cabin Republicans, that kind of sentiment will seem hollow and phony.

For a long time, the Log Cabin Republicans have had the thankless job of trying to change the Republican Party from the inside, by educating its leadership about the hopes and needs of conservative Americans who just happen to be gay, lesbian or bisexual. They have doggedly stood by this method in the face of ridicule from both the right and left.

There is something to their position. If the GOP believed they had no gay constituency, what would be the incentive to listen to the gay point of view?

Gay voters are a minority. Working within the party apparatus gives gay Republicans access to Republican leaders that cannot be duplicated by the Stonewall Democrats, and this has been important during a decade of Republican majorities in Congress. Without the LCR, the GOP leadership certainly would be less exposed to the points of view of gay voters.

The problem with this method is that it has limitations. One can only work within the party to the extent that the party (or its leaders) will allow. For years, the LCR has endured the heartbreak and embarrassment of having countless numbers of Republican candidates return its campaign contributions.

The most recent insult came earlier this summer when the state GOP committee in North Carolina barred the state chapter of the LCR from having a presence at their state Republican convention, and refunded their money. The Republican National Committee responded by announcing that all state Republican committees are independent, and make their own decisions about whom to include in their state conventions. They also pointed out that the Log Cabin Republicans are an independent organization, not officially affiliated with the Republican Party.

Both points are true, but a bit of a cop-out. Imagine what would happen if the state Republican committee in, say, Massachusetts or Vermont decided that the Christian Coalition wasn’t welcome at their state convention. I’m sure the RNC would take a much different position in that situation.

The challenge facing the LCR is to somehow not become irrelevant in the face of such ignominious treatment from their own party. Also, there are too many gay voters who otherwise lean Republican in their political opinions, but for whom the LCR is a bit of a joke. The term “gay Republican” has been made to seem an oxymoron.

The Log Cabin Republicans have always had the difficult task of defending themselves to the gay community at large, which seems to think that all gay people should be single-issue voters all of the time, and should only vote for Democrats who support gay rights. Aside from the fact that not all Democrats favor gay rights, and not all Republicans oppose them, this over-arching attitude in the gay community is much too narrow.

Most of the time, voters should support candidates who agree with 90 percent of what they personally believe, because you will never find a politician who believes 100 percent of what you believe. Gay voters who oppose “tax the rich” fiscal policy, are wary of too much gun control and favor free trade and less government regulation should not be expected to support a Democrat solely based upon his or her position on gay rights.

Having said that, I must also say that there are times when the 10 percent disagreement outweighs the 90 percent agreement, when the 10 percent is so fundamental to your personal welfare that you simply can’t overlook it. That is precisely what the Log Cabin Republicans have never seemed to acknowledge, and that is why they now teeter on the brink of irrelevance.

The closest the Log Cabin Republicans have come to taking the GOP to task for its anti-gay positions was in 1992, when they refused to endorse the reelection of President George H.W. Bush after a Republican National Convention that was painfully anti-gay in its rhetoric.

Now we have a Republican congressional leadership that refuses to allow a vote on moderate gay rights legislation like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is co-sponsored by some Republicans. We have a Republican president who has actively pushed for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and even defended sodomy laws before they were struck down.

To remain relevant today, the LCR has to be willing to temporarily abandon the party if it will not change. Imagine if they not only didn’t endorse President Bush, but actually endorsed someone else for president! Changing the party from within only works if the party is willing to be changed, and if it is not, it has to be made to understand that it loses the support of its gay members. Tough love. It’s a matter of relevance.