Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Catania Fiasco Marks 'The Day After Tomorrow' for Gay Republicans

by Wayne Besen

For more than a decade gay Republicans ignored imminent warnings of dangerous climate change in the GOP. Signs of impending doom date as far back as 1992 when firebrand Pat Buchanan declared a cultural war at the GOP convention. Would it take something dramatic like tidal waves submerging the upcoming GOP convention in New York for gay Republicans to see the dangerous atmospheric shifts in their party?

Last week, the great cataclysmic storm finally barreled ashore with consequences that may prove to be "The Day After Tomorrow" for gay Republicans. Republican party Chair Betsy Werronen refused to certify D.C. Council member David Catania's election as a delegate to the GOP convention. She is punishing Catania because he said he might not vote for George W. Bush after the president announced his support for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.

This disaster signifies the party is finally over for gay Republicans. They are now in a mess so big Halliburton couldn't even clean it up with a Dick Cheney no-bid contract. The message to gay Republicans is clear: Behave or face banishment from the GOP's mythical "big tent".

Catania's Republican credentials are flawless. He is a dutiful, life-long member of the GOP who was designated a "Maverick" - a prominent title bestowed on people younger than 40 who raise at least $50,000 for the Bush campaign. Nonetheless he was branded disloyal and blacklisted. This consummate insider suddenly found himself locked outside on the back porch with no key. His ouster is alarming because most gay Republican realists know that if Catania's out, they must be too.

The fallout was swift with moderate Republican city council member Carol Schwartz courageously resigning as a delegate to the GOP convention. We can expect Catania's demise to snowball and cause further dejection and defections among other fair-minded Republicans.

It is no surprise that the storm hit now. Bush's political mastermind Karl Rove has repeatedly said that a key to reelection is mobilizing the estimated 4 million evangelical voters he believed stayed home in 2000. To woo this right wing base, Rove knows he has to stir up emotions and exploit red meat wedge issues such as same-sex marriage. Catania's protests got in the way of this election strategy, so Catania got steamrolled.

While Rove's strategy has an upside, it is also risky. First, There is no guarantee that those supposed 4 million evangelicals who allegedly stayed home last time would now come out to vote. If they couldn't get motivated in 2000 to vote for a born again, anti-choice, pro sodomy law candidate, what makes Rove think he can motivate them to the polls now to vote for a President mired in Iraq controversies?

Meanwhile, in 2000 an estimated one million gay people voted for Bush. These are proven voters who will likely be at the polls in November. The singular goal of the Log Cabin Republicans should be to persuade all one million gay Bush voters to cast protest votes against the president.

At the very least, these votes can help counteract any additional evangelical voting gains. At best, the targeted evangelicals will again stay home and Rove's strategy will backfire, as gay Republicans - particularly in crucial states like Florida and Pennsylvania - help swing the election and show their voting power.

Let's be honest. If Bush wins gay Republicans are doomed. The political establishment will interpret victory as proof that gay bashing pays. The right wing will take credit for Bush's reelection and further disenfranchisement will occur.

If Bush loses, however, it may be construed that his gay bashing and embrace of the extreme right boomeranged. So, the only way gay Republicans can get an invitation back into the party's mainstream is to prove that gay baiting is politically ineffective by helping to send Bush back to Texas.

Unfortunately, a few gay Republican leaders are still in denial. For example, Carl Schmid, a widely respected gay GOP activist, has said he will replace Catania and cast his ballot for Bush at the New York convention. He justifies this by saying he thinks, "It's important for a gay person to be there and to speak out." Schmid is well intentioned, but he should ask himself, what's the point of "speaking out" to a party that isn't listening? In a sign of solidarity, he should immediately step down and work to defeat Bush.

The problem with gay Republicans is that they are often naively sentimental. Under the rusty, antiquated GOP banner of "stay out of my wallet and my bedroom" you can often hear them harkening back to days of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Someone forgot to tell these folks that Lincoln and Roosevelt are as long gone as their philosophies in the modern GOP. These men whose faces grace Mt. Rushmore have been replaced by graceless archconservatives that would change the name of the national monument to Mt. Rightmore, if they could.

The bitter Catania episode makes it crystal clear that the only way gay Republicans can save the soul of the GOP is to temporarily leave the party. Today's storms are nothing compared to the ice age to come if gay Republicans help propel Bush to victory in November.

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