Abstract

Gay GOPers Crash Party

This editorial looks at the Republican gays and lesbians. Being a gay or lesbian Republican isn't easy. At the Republican National Convention, the Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP's largest gay and lesbian group, is working to resolve this tension by making the party more inclusive, along with fellow moderate groups Republicans for Choice and the Republican Youth Majority. Even as the Bush-backed Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution tanked in the Senate and Vice President Cheney voiced his disapproval of such federal meddling in marriage, the platform committee wasn't playing gay ball. Kerry is against limiting marriage at the federal level but supports a state constitutional amendment in Massachusetts that would ban same-sex marriage, a move that helped slide the issue through the state legislature and has paved the way for an ugly statewide referendum in 2006. Bush's campaign is now finding that the Administration has not only alienated a million gay and lesbian Bush voters from 2000 (as many as 60,000 in Florida alone), it has set off a debate among secular conservatives from Alan Simpson to David Brooks at a time when every Republican has to be on the same page.