Is gay Republicanism more than a political oxymoron? Tafel and other conservatives say the struggle for equal rights is too important to be vested solely in one party. They argue that overwhelming allegiance to Democrats leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by liberals who take them for granted. It also hampers the effectiveness of progressive, pro-gay Republican officials. They view their fight as part of a larger struggle with the religious right for the moderate soul of the GOP. “We’re a terrorist group with button-down collars and Gucci loafers,” says Marvin Liebman, a longtime GOP fund raiser and an architect of the modern conservative revival, who came out in 1990.
Until recently it took tragedy to thrust gay Republicans from the closet. Gay-bashing attack dogs Roy Cohn and Terry Dolan weren’t exposed until AIDS sent them to their deathbeds. That may be changing. The Log Cabin Federation, named after Lincoln’s championing of individual rights, is still small-just 4,500 open members nationwide. But leaders say the presumption that all gays are politically left of center is a stereotype fueled by liberal arrogance. Their voter-registration drives at gay-pride events in recent years show that between 38 and 40 percent of gay and lesbian voters describe themselves as Republican. Of the estimated 1.25 million gay and lesbian voters in California, Log Cabin says 350,000 most likely voted Republican in the 1988 presidential election.
For the few gay Republicans in the open, politics can be lonely and cruel. Liebman, 69, a founder of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an influential conservative group, says that with few exceptions (most notably National Review founder William F. Buckley), the friends of a lifetime now ignore him. “They’re in denial,” he says. “At social events they’re cordial and polite, but I really don’t exist for them.” In “Coming Out Conservative,” an autobiography to be published this fall, Liebman explains that he abandoned the closet because of a growing intolerance on the right. After his announcement, the YAF executive director received a call from the head of Students for America, another group he had helped organize, to deliver the message “So, I hear that your founder is a faggot.”
Gay conservatives had hope that George Bush would ease the chill. He invited gay leaders to the White House for the signing of a hate-crimes bill that protects disabled citizens, including those with AIDS. Earlier this year campaign chairman Robert Mosbacher (who has an openly lesbian daughter) met with representatives of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the AIDS Action Council. But as Patrick Buchanan pressed his primary-season challenge and pressure from the right grew, the modest opening quickly closed. Both Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle have stepped up their comments marginalizing gays. Some gays suspect they’re being set up as the Willie Hortons of 1992, embodiments of middle-class fears about moral decay. Asked last week how he would respond to a hypothetical gay grandchild, Bush said he would love the child, but that the gay lifestyle is “not normal.”
While Clinton has embraced gay and AIDS-related issues, conservatives are skeptical of his sincerity. Tafel says his Arkansas record reflects little commitment to gay civil rights. “Bill Clinton has just discovered the gay community,” he says. But Democrats reply that Bush and Ronald Reagan have had 12 years to sign gay-civil-rights legislation, and have failed to do so. “It only takes the stroke of a pen by a president to change 50 years of discrimination in the military,” says David Mixner, a gay member of Clinton’s national executive committee.
Gay Republicans are not completely bereft of allies. Massachusetts Gov. William Weld has appointed openly gay Republicans to top jobs, including the chairmanship of the state’s civil-rights commission. Rep. William Green of New York also is a Log Cabin supporter. Movement members regard them as the beginning of a base that will help in the struggle for acceptance. It will be a lengthy one. As long as the party of Lincoln is also the party of Helms, Schlafly and Buchanan, it is likely to remain a forbidding place for American gays and lesbians.
