Acceptance does not come easy for gay Republicans, but still, it is coming at the National Convention in Philadelphia. While that party's embrace of gays is decidedly less enthusiastic than that of Democrats, it is helpful to remember just how much things have changed in the GOP.
"We didn't even have rhetoric in 1992," said David Greer, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. He was not counting the anti-gay vitriol spewed from the Houston dais by Pat Buchanan. "In 1996 we only had neutrality," Greer continued. "This year we have inclusion."
Eighteen openly gay delegates and alternates are accredited to this confab, up from five in 1996. Presidential candidate George W. Bush met with a delegation of gay supporters in April. And he chose Dick Cheney as his running mate even after learning that Cheney's daughter Mary, 31, is a lesbian.
Mary Cheney was beside her father during the opening session of the Convention. And according to the online "Druge Report," the Bush campaign fully expects her to be on stage on Thursday night with all of the candidates' family members.
"It is one of the most exciting things to have taken place," said Rich Tafel, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans. "Had Bush been afraid of the social conservatives, I'm sure he wouldn't have selected Cheney. And Cheney himself could have said no if he were afraid. All of those are good signs for us, they point to a level of comfort."
"It is absolutely a godsend, to have a conservative American family, a lesbian daughter who loves her father, and a father who loves his lesbian daughter," said Tafel. "If they are in the Vice President's House, I think it is going to be a really incredible role model for people."
The surprising thing is that neither the media nor the religious right have made a big deal about it, though Mary Cheney has not exactly been made widely available to the press.
Some speculate that the campaign does not want to divert attention from the candidates. And Tafel suspects that the right is finding out, "It is one thing to attack legislation, quite another to attack a daughter and a family" while they are in the same room.
PLATFORM WOES
The Bush campaign and platform chair Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson had the greatest control over the subcommittee draft, said Carl Schmid, an openly gay alternate delegate from Washington, DC. "To their credit, it deleted most of the anti-gay statements contained in the 1996 Platform," he said.
But the rank and file members who control many state organizations, particularly in the south, as well as the full platform committee, are far to the right of the presidential ticket. They inserted strong language opposing "special rights" and gays in the military, and praised both the Defense of Marriage Act and the Boy Scouts.
The Bush team was more concerned with maintaining party unity on controversial issues such as abortion and gay rights than it was with words on paper. It chose a course of least resistance.
Its actions seemed to endorse the sentiment of columnist Jim Pilkerton, a moderate who served in the Reagan administration. He wrote, "increasingly, platforms are to politics what those 'DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW' tags are to pillows: something that's always there, even though nobody quite knows why."
"What we are going to have to live with is a Bush administration, not an administration of these platform people," said Tafel.
KOLBE SPEAKS
The announcement that unassuming Jim Kolbe ( R-Arizona ) , the only openly gay Republican member of Congress, would speak at the convention drew the wrath of far right loonies.
From that bastion of homophobia, Cincinnati, Phil Burress, chairman of Equal Rights not Special Rights, sent a letter to RNC chairman Jim Nicholson calling for Kolbe's arrest for engaging in sodomy. Burress offered no evidence for arrest other than the fact that Kolbe is "a self described homosexual," according to Burress.
Cathie Adams, president of the Eagle Forum of Texas and a member of the convention platform committee told the Fort Worth Star Telegram that Kolbe's selection "is a quotaS This is being done to pander to the homosexual agenda." She said that inviting the congressman to speak contradicted the "pro-family" plank of the platform.
"Apparently some Republicans don't feel safe in their homes with Kolbe talking about NAFTA [ North American Free Trade Association ] in prime time," wrote Houston Chronicle columnist Julie Mason. She recounted his military service in Vietnam and the medal of honor he was awarded.
Some members of the Texas delegation even began talking of sending a message to Bush in a "quiet way" by walking out during Kolbe's speech, Tarrant County party chairwoman Pat Carlson told the Arizona Republic. "I think it is appropriate if we get a speaker like that who is not representative of most of the delegate's beliefs."
But the Bush campaign was sending messages of its own. "They are not going to tolerate any shenanigans from the right, they really have been shutting them down," said Tafel. "It is really quite amazing."
Michelangelo Signorile, columnist with gay.com, said that both gays and the right have been shoved into the closet by campaign operatives.
So when Kolbe stepped to the podium, there was no walkout. A few members of the Texas delegation, seated on the floor of the arena directly in front of the speaker's dais, took off their cowboy hats and bowed their heads in prayer.
The Congressman intoned, "Through free trade, we have exported our principles, as well as our products, sharing America's freedom and democracy with the world."
He clearly is not a master orator and is not accustomed to using a Teleprompter to read speeches. Nor did his topic of foreign trade, of which he is an acknowledged expert, rate high on the scintillation meter. But Jim Kolbe did his part to earn a footnote in history.
