A few weeks ago Howard Dean told me that, oddly, I was the only interviewer to ask him about a passage in his new book, You Have the Power, in which he recounts how Bill Clinton told one of Dean's supporters that Dean 'had forfeited his right to run for president.' The reason for Clinton's alleged claim? Because Dean had signed civil unions into law in Vermont, something Clinton believed would prevent him from ever getting elected. The fact that few in the media asked Dean about this glaring account in his book—in a year in which one presidential candidate has used the issue of same-sex marriage against another—says a lot about our clueless media, which is suddenly telling us that the presidential election turned on 'moral values.'
It also obviously says a lot about Bill Clinton, though not much we didn't know already. The gay issue has always been complicated for Clinton, traumatized as he was when the right seized the gays-in-the-military issue—and his own sexual practices—and often operating from then on in an irrational manner on gay issues. Newsweek claimed last week that Clinton had advised John Kerry during the campaign that he should come out in support of the various antigay state ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriage, to which Kerry supposedly replied, 'I'm not going to ever do that.'
Kerry not only did the honorable thing, he was smart not to take the advice. That strategy would not have worked for the Democrats, not in 2004, and Kerry's loss might have been greater had he followed it, perhaps dampening turnout among a substantial part of his base. ( Clinton, by the way, saw a dramatic drop in turnout among the four million or so gay voters in 1996 after he signed the Defense of Marriage Act and did not gain any conservative 'values' voters—who gave more of their vote to Bob Dole that year than they did to George W. Bush in 2000—and Clinton never won with a majority of the electorate; he snagged a few red states mostly because Ross Perot ate into the Republican candidate's base a bit. Let's not forget that Al Gore, who supported more pro-gay initiatives than Clinton, including partnership rights, won the majority of the popular vote in 2000. )
The entire 'moral values' story of the 2004 election has been greatly exaggerated by the corporate media. Not so coincidentally, it fits exactly with what the Republicans would like everyone to believe. They'd like the Democrats to erupt into a civil war and would be thrilled to see the Democrats act on an impulse to now move to the right. And certainly the Republicans would like to perpetuate the image of Karl Rove as 'boy genius,' though Bush won reelection by the smallest margin of any incumbent since Woodrow Wilson and of any wartime president in history.
Dick Meyer at CBSNews.com notes that the exit polls that claim 'moral values' trumped every other issue—from taxes to terrorism—were vague and exceedingly misleading. People were given a list of items to check off, with 'moral values' on the list but not exactly defined. Anything could be considered 'moral values,' including Bush's attitude toward Osama bin Laden ( 'evil' ) . And if the other issues on the list were less specifically broken down, they might have topped 'moral values.'
'If, for example, one of the issues on the list was a combined 'terrorism and Iraq' [ instead of each listed separately ] , it would have been the top concern of 34 percent of the electorate and nobody would be talking about moral values,' Meyer observers. 'If 'taxes, jobs and the economy' was on the list as one item instead of two, it would have been the topper at 25 percent. If, say, abortion rights, gay marriage and moral values were both on the list separately, the numbers would be very different.'
That could be why, throughout the entire year, same-sex marriage was listed at the bottom of the list of issues important to the election, in just about every poll among all kinds of voters.
That's not to say that gay-bashing from the Republicans was not at an all-time high. In Kentucky, Sen. Jim Bunning won reelection—even though he seems to be suffering from dementia—by having his surrogates call his opponent 'limp-wristed.' Right-wing Republican extremist Tom Coburn warned of 'rampant lesbianism' in high schools and won a Senate race in Oklahoma. Jim DeMint said that gays should not be given jobs teaching in the schools and took a Senate seat in South Carolina.
Similarly, the Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee used fear, hatred and religious dogmatism shamelessly against John Kerry, whose campaign rarely if ever responded. While Karl Rove energized Christian-right groups to get out the vote, using same-sex marriage and a whole host of issues—and using the Republican National Committee and its front groups to send out mailings and conduct telephone push polls that claimed that Kerry supported same-sex marriage—the Democratic Party worked to keep the issue quiet. They ducked and ran for cover. But as a certain cowboy says, you can run but you can't hide.
Rather than distancing themselves from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, for example, Democrats should have lauded him for taking a moral stand, however much they may disagree on civil unions or same-sex marriage. Bill Clinton may not have supported same-sex marriage, but he did support gay rights and was vocal about it during his 1992 campaign. He garnered more of the gay vote than the more circumspect Al Gore and John Kerry—more than 75 percent—and certainly got the support of many others among the base who saw supporting civil rights as a priority. Taking a page out of the Republican playbook, Democrats should have sent out equally targeted and hard-hitting mailings focused on the Republican Party's attempt to change the Constitution of the United States and turn a minority group into second-class citizens, hitting the issue head on rather than running from it.
That said, the 'moral values' exit-poll story was overblown. What got lost is the fact that the vast majority of people polled—62 percent—support giving legal sanction to gay relationships ( same-sex marriage or civil unions ) , including many in the red states. Even in states in which the antigay ballot measures passed, the margins by which people voted against them were much greater than they'd have been only a few years ago, including in Michigan, where 41 percent voted against the measure. In Ohio, a lot of people turned out to vote for president but didn't vote on the initiative, which lends credence to the argument that the amendments didn't necessarily draw out voters in great numbers.
There are a lot of issues the Democrats are going to have to examine before 2008. But scapegoating gays, Gavin Newsom and the Massachusetts Supreme Court is just too easy. Not to mention that it's playing right into the Republicans' hands.
Signorile hosts a daily radio program on Sirius OutQ 149. He can be reached via his Web site, www.signorile.com .
