When Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts came onstage during the Republican National Convention, I happened to be standing 10 feet away from Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick. Mary, there to see both her mother and her father address the convention that night, was sitting in a row designated for the vice president's family, a few rows up from the floor of Madison Square Garden. To Mary's left was her partner Heather Poe, whose relationship with Mary is an affront to 'civilization,' at least according to the convention platform's discussion of relationships. On Mary's right was her sister Liz.
I was doing remote interviews for my radio program, chatting with Republican senators who'd voted against Mary Cheney's basic rights and Republican delegates who view her kind as evil incarnate. That same day the Chicago Tribune had run a front-page story quoting an interview I'd conducted with the erudite and kooky Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes, in which Keyes told me that Mary is a 'selfish hedonist' and that her father may not want to hear the truth but 'it can be spoken.' Thanks to my colleague Corey Johnson, who brought the tape of the interview over to the Tribune, Keyes' remarks caused the Illinois Republican Party to melt down, while Sen. John McCain admitted that the Republicans had just lost Illinois—as if they ever had a shot against Barack Obama. (I actually found Keyes to be a breath of fresh air, speaking on behalf of the heart and soul of the party during the weeklong masquerade event.)
Now here was Mary sitting in the audience as Romney, the guy who unsuccessfully fought same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, compared gays to the Nazis, talking about how his 'parents' generation [stepped forward] when fighting on the beaches of Normandy during World War II' and how people needed to step forward now to fight this new scourge. Of course, if anything conjured up visions of fascism it was Romney and the conventioneers themselves, as many in the crowd wildly responded to his words with all the zeal of a Nuremberg rally.
Mary and Heather sat there motionless and quiet, perhaps hoping they wouldn't soon get hauled off to a camp. Mary leaned over to sister Liz as the applause reached a crescendo, frowned and made a remark, which I'm imagining might have been, 'Holy fuck!' But what should Mary expect from Liz? Earlier in the day, when Liz was asked on CNN what she thought of Keyes' statements about her sister, she'd professed shock and horror that the interviewer even dared to bring it up—and then offered no response, lest she insult the religious right.
Mary hadn't shown up for the first two nights of the RNC. However, she did attend the convention on Thursday night for George W. Bush's speech, in addition to the third night that featured Lynne and Dick. But when it came time for both the Bush and Cheney families to appear onstage at the end of the convention, Mary and Heather were nowhere to be found.
Thus is the life of a gay Republican in George W. Bush's Republican Party—a lot of self-loathing, and a lot of dodging the press and the spotlight. When Arnold Schwarzenegger repeated his 'girlie men' comment on night two, I was standing next to Congressman Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and was outed as gay—for a second time—last year, in the Broward/Palm Beach New Times. He retained his fake smile but clearly winced. Then he completely freaked as I approached him for a comment.
'Can't talk now!' Foley exclaimed, running up through the Florida delegation like a swamp rat slithering into the Everglades. 'But congressman,' I yelled, 'I just want to talk to you about your being gay and a Republican.' Several big-haired delegates within earshot seemed to go into cardiac arrest, just as some had back in '96 when I had similar encounters with Foley.
For the rest of the night—and the next two—Foley literally ran from me whenever he saw me and suddenly seemed to have a woman on his arm at all times. It wasn't until I cornered him on a packed escalator that he was forced to finally respond, as I asked him about his thoughts—as a gay man—of Republican Congressman Ed Schrock of Virginia having been outed on the internet by gay activists angry about his vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Schrock had resigned after Mike Rogers, a D.C. activist, posted what Rogers said was an audio tape of Schrock leaving a phone personal ad on a gay sex line.
Foley didn't deny being gay himself, and said of Schrock that he feels sorry for him but that Schrock had 'made his decision.' Perhaps what Foley meant was that Schrock should just have stuck it out since the media—as in Foley's own case—are too weak-kneed to pursue these stories with any passion and will just let you get away with your hypocrisy and double standards, particularly, it seems, if you're a Republican.
Then there was California Congressman David Dreier, who was on Arnold Schwarzenegger's transition team and who came to the convention to pump up his boy Arnie. Dreier, in his 50s and unmarried, sat down with me for an interview and proceeded to give a rim job to the Gropenator until I steered the conversation over to Dreier's support of the Marriage Protection Act. It's a heinous piece of legislation that the House passed which would prevent people from challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, a law legal experts said would be unconstitutional. Dreier, starting to sweat just a little bit, pointed out that he is against the Federal Marriage Amendment, even as he tried to explain why he voted for another piece of antigay legislation. When I asked Dreier, who is in the middle of his own re-election campaign, about his sexual orientation and the long-held rumors about him, he twice refused to clarify whether he was heterosexual or not.
'I'm not going to answer that,' Dreier said. Now he is up on Mike Rogers' outing Web site, www.Blogactive.com, which promises more details about the congressman in coming days. Like Mary Cheney, Mark Foley and the rest of the gang, he'll surely be ducking and running for cover from now until Nov. 2.
Signorile hosts a daily satellite radio program on Sirius OutQ 149. He can be reached via his Web site, www.signorile.com .
