A reasonably good summation of why I do not, cannot, and likely will never understand the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans.
Given that it's spring of an election year, one of the most beloved of all Republican rites is in full bloom: gay bashing. It's not enough that the state republican parties have specifically told gay men and women they are not welcome in the party, or that one by one, they are trying to amend state constitutions to prohibit gay marriage (which in most of these states is already banned by law); U.S. Senate Republicans have announced that they are planning, once more, to argue the need for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
This is a debate more urgent, they suggest, than the war in Iraq, immigration, education, or terrorism.
What's different this year is that it's not just the right-wing Republicans doing the bashing. The latest news is that the most gay-friendly of Republicans, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, is campaigning for arch-homophobes Senator Rick Santorum and Iowa's gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. In fact, the few non-right wing Republicans left in the party are all out on the campaign trail, avidly supporting the most extreme anti-gay rhetoric of their fellow party members.
So once more, in response to the new gay bashing, comes the old question: Why would any gay man or woman belong to a party that has stated, over and over, as clearly as can be, without equivocation, that he or she is not welcome? [...]
Mind, these days, the Democrats are hardly much more welcoming, what with many of them waffling delicately on the "I don't believe in the Federal Marriage Amendment, but I do believe that every state should decide for itself whether or not homosexuals are humans fully deserving of human rights," point. On the other hand, they do seem to be staying away from the "If it weren't for the fact that they have such a bad history, we wouldn't mind concentration camps and forced treatment or expulsion" rhetoric of the most right-wing of Republicans. (Yes, yes, I know that it's not generally quite that vicious, except for the Westboro Baptist idiots, who seem to feel that way about everyone who isn't them. But it does come close. And when you're the one they're talking about, that's pretty much how it feels.)
Thing is, I actually do understand how someone raised to hate and loathe homosexuals, who are themselves gay and hate it -- I can understand how that person winds up in the right-wing of the Republican party. It's what they're used to; it's comforting in an odd sort of way. There are any number of gays who wind up in savagely anti-gay groups because they hate that part of themselves, and they want to be fixed, and hope that hanging out with these people will help. (News flash: it doesn't.) But those people, who try so hard to hide from themselves, they're easy to understand.
The hard ones to understand are those like the Log Cabin Republicans, who are, at least in theory, out and proud. Yet they support candidates and a party whose explicit position is basically, "We don't like you. We think you should shut up and go away." (But of course, said stated dislike will never stop the GOP from accepting their homosexually tainted moneys, oh no no no. They'll just wash it in a weak bleach solution afterward to kill off all the gay cooties.)
Note that I also don't understand why any person of any minority would support the Republicans. Their positions about women and minorities aren't nearly as explicit, of course -- it simply would not do for them to say, "We hate those black and hispanic and Asian peoples and wish they'd just go away," or "What the hell is wrong with barefoot and pregnant women? Women's place is in the home popping out those kids one after another!" They simply oppose any effort to enforce minority rights, oppose all policies that might help women or minorities especially if those policies would run counter to the interests of the moneyed classes.
And given the one-time history of the Republican Party ... what the Grand Old Party has come to is very sad indeed.
Posted by iain at April 26, 2006 05:00 PM
