Subject: Gays and the GOP-NGLTF Op Ed
From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 11:23:18 -0400

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National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
EDITORIAL

Contact:          Beth Barrett       (202) 332-6483 ext. 3215
                      [email-masked]   

2320 17th Street NW   Washington, DC   20009
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October 24, 1995

Dear Editors/Publishers,

  Attached is an opinion/commentary about the controversy concerning Sen. Bob
Dole and the campaign contribution of the Log Cabin Republicans.  The piece
is by John D'Emilio, director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).   Many articles and commentaries have already
discussed the hypocrisy of the Dole decision, given Log Cabin Club's general
support for most of the Republican agenda and Dole's previous contrary
decisions around accepting donations from other organizations.   D'Emilio's
piece focuses attention on what this incident indicates regarding the
Republican party's current ability to welcome gay people into its ranks.

  I hope you will consider running the piece in your publication's op-ed or
commentary area.  Photos available upon request.`

  Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[The following opinion/editorial is by Dr. John D'Emilio, director of the
Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).  Based
in Washington, DC, NGLTF is a progressive organization that has supported
grassroots organizing and pioneered in national advocacy since 1973.
 Permission is granted to reprint with attribution. 

 For weeks now, the media has been filled with stories about Senator Robert
Dole's campaign for President and its relationship to Log Cabin Republicans,
the gay Republican group.  Dole returned their $1000 campaign contribution,
claiming he could not accept money from a group so at odds with his political
philosophy.  Log Cabin successfully countered with facts and documents
demonstrating that the Dole campaign actively solicited its help and its
money, with full knowledge of Log Cabin's stand on such issues as gays in the
military and gay marriage.  Dole has now changed his story again, blaming his
staff for poor judgment in returning the contribution.

 The whole controversy has been a publicity bonanza for gay Republicans and a
public relations disaster for the Dole campaign.  It also highlights the
intense battle being waged for control of the Republican party as right-wing
religious radicals capture control of the party machinery in more and more
states, and moderate Republicans with political ambitions scramble to win
extremist support.  And it raises questions as well about where the gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender community should be putting our political
energy, especially as we approach a presidential election year.

 The Log Cabin Republicans articulately advance the position that, except for
the extremist rhetoric of the radical right, the Republican party could be a
welcoming home for gay and lesbian Americans.  In this view, the fierce
anti-gay rhetoric of the Republican's 1992 Houston convention was the
aberration, whereas the Contract with America, silent on such "divisive"
issues as abortion and gay rights, offers a sound basis for national policy.

 The argument doesn't persuade me.  First of all, Houston was about more than
the hate-filled rhetoric of Pat Buchanan.  The Republican convention as a
whole ratified a platform for the party, and it was fiercely anti-gay.  "We
believe," it said, "in traditional family values and in the Judeo-Christian
heritage that informs our culture."  It opposed efforts to include "sexual
preference" in federal, state, and local civil rights statutes, and it came
down against the legalization of same-sex marriage and against laws to permit
gay men and lesbians to adopt children or provide foster care.  In the area
of AIDS prevention, it called for education that stressed abstinence and
marital fidelity, and rejected condom distribution as a prevention measure.
 Taken together, these planks are pretty comprehensive in their homophobia.

 Then there's the Republican agenda in Congress, expressed through the
Contract with America.  True, it doesn't pander to anti-gay extremists, but
it is still hurtful to the gay community.  The Republican version of budget
balancing, for instance, is a disaster.  Budgets can be balanced in all sorts
of ways.  In the Eisenhower era of the 1950s, the budget was balanced, but
largely through a progressive tax structure with levies of up to 90% on the
income of the very rich.

 In this post-Cold War era, Gingrich's Congress proposes large military
budgets, low taxes, and steep cuts in spending related to human and community
needs.  This kind of budget-balancing will adversely affect such things as
services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender  youth, substance-abuse
programs offered by gay community centers, and federal grants to gay artists
and scholars.

 Even when this Republican Congress seems to be with us, as in support for
re-authorization of the Ryan White Care Act, it takes away with the other
hand what it gives with one.  Efforts to gut Medicaid will be a disaster for
our community, since Medicaid provides four times as much money to care for
people with AIDS as does Ryan White.  And what about the Republican role in
the scuttling of health care reform last year?

 And the public statements of today's most visible Republican standard
bearer, Newt Gingrich, have been loving towards his own family and hostile
towards the rest of ours.  While acknowledging his love for his openly
lesbian half-sister, he has simultaneously said "it's madness to pretend that
families are anything other than heterosexual couples," has opposed laws
banning discrimination against gay people, and has advanced Right Wing
misinformation about "recruitment" of gay youth, saying, "I think frankly you
have had clearly what is in effect recruitment in so-called counseling
programs.  So I'm very cautious about the idea that you want to have active
homosexuals in junior high school and high school explaining that they have
all of these various wonderful options."

 Finally, what the arguments of gay Republicans miss is that their party is
becoming the majority party precisely because of the extremism of the radical
right.  Groups like the Christian Coalition are providing the dollars, the
recruits, and the passion that have made Republicans competitive in state
after state.  Without them, moderates might run the Republican party, but
Republicans would remain the minority that they were for the last half
century.  And, as the extremists become better and better organized,
moderates like Dole engage in the necessary contortions to appear acceptable
to this dynamic extremist wing.

 I am very glad that Republicans who are gay are at long last coming out of
the closet.  I am glad that they are doing battle inside one of the largest
anti-gay institutions in the United States, since homophobia should never go
unchallenged.  Where I part company with them is over the claim that more of
us should become Republican.  That isn't good either for the gay and lesbian
community, or for the country.

The NGLTF Policy Institute is a resource center which gay and lesbian
organizations, activists, and advocates can rely upon for research, issue
analysis, publications, and videos that will support their work.  Born on
November 8? ($1) is an NGLTF publication which provides further analysis of
the records of Republican Congressional leaders on gay and lesbian issues.
 To order this or any other NGLTF publication, please call (202) 332-6483,
ext. 3215 or send email to [email-masked].

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