The Party's Over?

Consider the following lubricious quote from televangelist Pat Robertson on former Congressman Mark Foley's penchant for pages:

"Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do."

Let's just ponder that remark for a second, shall we?

Did anyone say about Bill Clinton, "Well, this man's straight. He does what straight people do"? Somehow I don't remember anyone claiming, in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, that Bill Clinton's behavior was somehow emblematic of what heterosexual males do as a rule -- so why should a different standard apply to Foley? Because he's gay?

I think a number of Republicans would say yes to that admittedly rhetorical question. According to a rambling piece in the upcoming Time magazine [full disclosure: my former employers] by Karen Tumulty, the GOP and conservative gays have had an uneasy alliance as long as the latter, well, knew their place.

Tumulty's piece in Time says:

"In many ways, that story line is the product of the strains within the party over homosexuality. It's a tension nearly as deep and tortured as those the Democrats grappled with over race a half-century ago, when they tried—unsuccessfully—to keep an uneasy coalition of Southern segregationists and Northern civil rights advocates from tearing their party apart. Even though many of the G.O.P.'s policies have been hostile to gay rights, its leaders have long followed a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy with what pretty much everyone in Washington knows is a sizable number of closeted Republicans among members of Congress, upper-level staff and top party operatives. Says Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans: "There are a lot of gay Republicans who are working behind the scenes to advance the priorities of this party."

Until now, Republicans were able to manage the conflict. And they managed it by ignoring it. That even became part of an electoral strategy dating back to the 2000 election that suggested there was nothing to be gained by moderation. In a memo he wrote to Karl Rove, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd estimated that truly independent voters had fallen to a mere sliver of the electorate. There were, Dowd concluded, not enough percentage points in being "a uniter, not a divider." The key to winning in a polarized country was mobilizing the conservative base. That year, Bush refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, choosing instead to see a handpicked group of gay Republicans, but only after the party's nomination was secured. In 2004, even as Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary was a potential symbol of the party's openheartedness, Republicans put anti-gay-marriage measures on 11 state ballots to drive voter turnout.

But the Foley scandal is making it difficult for the party to look the other way. [...] The resignations of Foley and Fordham sparked fears that other gay Republicans would also soon be forced out of both their closets and their jobs. "Kirk is the fall guy," says gay-rights activist Hilary Rosen. "It's going to be open season on gay Republicans. It's the right wing's perfect storm. They never wanted gays in their party anyway.""

If the GOP has no place for homosexuals and lesbians in their ranks, then where are they going to go? Back into the closet? I suppose it's possible, but I doubt it. I think it's far more likely that they'll end up going where the conservative Southerners like Strom Thurmond went after the passage of the Civil Rights bill in 1964 -- right into the arms of the opposition party.

Andrew Sullivan in his blog quotes David Link from the Boston Globe as saying that "Like the Catholic Church, the Republican Party in Washington guarantees its own future calamities in its enduring and steadfast habit of pretending that, unlike heterosexuality, homosexuality can be either denied or suppressed." I think that what it guarantees is a mass stampede of all but the most closeted gays from the Republicans to the Democrats.

While I don't really know whether L'Affaire Folie will have the effect of causing gay Republicans to defect en masse to the Democratic Party, it probably should. Because at this point anyone who's both gay and still a Republican should probably have their head examined.

Tom Moran