Playing Catch Up: the GOP and Gay Rights
In late February, conservatives from around the country gathered in Washington DC to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. Guests were treated to a bevy of high profile conservative such as potential presidential candidates Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio. The conference even found room for Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independent Party. One group, however, was conspicuously (and expectedly) absent: the Log Cabin Republicans, the main right-wing LGBTQ advocacy group.
“[He’s] got the toughest job in the world, or one of them.” That’s Fred Karger talking about Greg T Angelo, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. Karger knows a bit about tough jobs. Back in 2012, he became the first openly gay Presidential candidate of either major party when he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination. Karger and other gay Republicans face hostility from both ends of the political spectrum: they often clash with conservatives over LGBTQ issues, while the rest of the LGBTQ community brands them as traitors. Karger noted that when he ran for the presidential nomination he “hit a lot of roadblocks and obstacles with the LGBT community” stemming from the fact that Republicans have passed most of the major anti-gay legislation in recent years. Angelo and his group have faced criticism for not being conservative enough, often due to the group’s support for gay marriage.
The conservative opposition to gay marriage is, from an ideological standpoint, bizarre. Conservatives supposedly value government staying out of the private lives of citizens. Gay marriage is apparently an exception to this rule. Even from a family values perspective, opposition to gay marriage is nonsensical. As Angelo points out, “if you support family values you should support marriage equality…you have committed same-sex couples who want nothing more than to settle down in monogamous long-term relationships with the person they love [and] start a family.”
The arguments against gay marriage employ logic that can most charitably be described as questionable. Take the claim that the government should not recognize gay marriage because gay couples can’t produce children. This argument is absurd on two levels. Firstly, its logical extension would mandate that the prevention of sterile couples from getting married. Second, and more importantly, it ignores the fact that gay couples can in fact have children through the use of a surrogate. In that case, the couple is having a child that otherwise would not have been had, thus achieving the explicit purpose of having the government give benefits to married couples: maintaining a stable birth rate.
Unfortunately, all of this leads to a disturbing but unsurprising conclusion: the GOP opposition to gay marriage and gay rights is not based on facts or ideals but rather on bigotry. People like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee continue to have power due to the fact that their anti-gay rhetoric strikes a chord with many within the party. Often, they mask their homophobia under the guise of religion. Angelo argued that “no community is seeking to discriminate more right now than people who have ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’.” Things are so bad for the GOP when it comes to gay rights that the best many Republicans can hope for is that the Supreme Court settles the issue of gay marriage this summer, thus preventing it from becoming a major issue in the next presidential election cycle. Karger expressed this view, saying that “when the Supreme Court decides marriage at the end of June in favor of marriage equality for the country then I think the issue will really be behind us.” The GOP was so backwards that Meghan McCain, an outspoken social moderate, didn’t even realize that she could be a Republican until she worked for two years on her father’s campaign.
What often gets overlooked in discussions about the GOP and LGBTQ rights is just how deeply the LGBTQ community has been hurt. It is not simply that the GOP has passed discriminatory legislation. It is that the GOP has turned the LGBTQ community into one-issue voters. As Angelo is fond of noting, issues like healthcare and taxes greatly affect LGBTQ Americans. But for most LGBTQ Americans, civil rights trump all of these issues. As a result, the left can rely on steady support from the LGBTQ community without actually having to do anything for them. They simply have to not be as bad as the Republicans, certainly far from a Herculean task. As a result, the LGBTQ community can’t really be accurately represented: the only economic policies it gets are left wing, the only health care policies it gets are left wing, and so on. Sports personality Steven A. Smith made similar point about African-Americans recently when speaking at Vanderbilt University. He expressed a desire for all black Americans to vote for Republicans in an election: “you (African-Americans) have labeled yourself “disenfranchised” because one party knows they’ve got you under their thumb. The other party knows they’ll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest.” This same phenomenon can be observed in the LGBTQ community. Unlike other groups, LGBTQ Americans do not see policy tailored towards them because their votes are not up for grabs.
It is certainly true that the left has often misrepresented the GOP stance on many LGBTQ issues. The RFRA that was passed by Indiana will not legalize discrimination, if the identical laws currently in action in places like Washington DC are any indication. It is also indisputably true that the Democrats have been responsible for anti-gay legislation of their own. History, even recent history, is full of examples of anti-gay legislation from both parties, such as Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act, which he signed into law in 1996.
But these facts are not an excuse for current Republican policy. The Party can’t succeed by simply noting the flaws of others. It was Southern Democrats who pushed back against the Civil Rights bills, but that fact has no effect on how African-Americans vote today. The Republican Party can’t define itself by the failures of others. The GOP needs to take a hard look at its stance on gay marriage and realize that it is wholly incompatible with its actual principles. It is time to move past the bigotry and past the hate. And hopefully, the GOP will not do it because for cynical reasons, as a means of gaining the youth vote. Hopefully, the GOP can see that from a true conservative standpoint, standing up for gay rights and gay marriage is the right thing to do.