National Stonewall Democratic Federation Responds to Column, "When Democrats Do
Bad Things"
National Stonewall Democratic
Federation, July 7, 2000
733 15th Street, NW Suite 700A
Washington, DC 20005
For Immediate Release Contact: Daniel McGlinchey
(202)
246-8523
In his recent column ("When Democrats Do Bad Things") condemning the gay
rights movement for insufficiently criticizing Democrats when they fall short, Dale
Carpenter displays an impressive instinct for half-truths.
When then-Governor Ann Richards signed a revamped penal code in Texas that retained a
ban on sodomy that had been on the books for over a century — not, as Carpenter
suggests, one that was enacted for the first time — Carpenter states that gay leaders
said nothing because she’s a Democrat. Carpenter ignores the fact that the Austin
Lesbian-Gay Political Caucus made public a resolution condemning the "ignorance and
bigotry" that preserved the sodomy law, and that the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of
Texas and other gay groups organized a protest at the state Capitol to condemn
"second-class citizenship," while still other gay activists threatened to
withdraw support for Richards, who the following year lost her gubernatorial race to
George W. Bush.
Carpenter says that if George W. Bush had signed such "a hideous law," gay
activists would have shut down the streets in protest. Well, George W. Bush never had the
chance to sign such a law, but he did one better: while campaigning for governor, he
promised to veto any attempt to overturn it legislatively (while Richards, in turn,
declared that she would sign any legislation that sought to repeal it). The response? Gay
Republicans recently flew to Texas to tell Gov. Bush their stories and declared their chat
"historic," even though Bush in their meeting refused to renounce any of his
anti-gay positions.
Another of Carpenter’s wishful inaccuracies is that the gay establishment excused
Clinton for signing the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The National Stonewall
Democrats think Clinton was wrong to sign DOMA. His ads touting his support for the bill
to conservatives were reprehensible, and we’re glad his campaign pulled them in
response to swift, strong criticism from national gay organizations. However, the support
Clinton received from gay organizations was based on his strong record on a wide range of
other gay issues, including his support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, his
executive order banning the use of sexual orientation as a factor in denying security
clearances, his commitment to appointing openly gay and lesbian people to his
Administration, and the unprecedented attention he gave to the AIDS crisis.
Carpenter’s claim that those who support imperfect Democrats suffer from some sort
of battered wife syndrome shows how much he misunderstands the political world. In gay
politics, you always have to consider the alternative. In the current presidential race,
it’s George W. Bush, the Republican candidate who actively supports anti-gay sodomy
laws, doesn’t think gays are fit to be parents, supports the ban on openly gay people
in the military, opposes hate crimes legislation and gay and lesbian employment rights,
and withholds support for domestic partnership benefits for gay and lesbian people.
He’s the exact opposite of Al Gore on every one of those issues.
Indeed, if gays in either party are guilty of being overly forgiving of their
candidates’ flaws, it is the Republicans. When Gov. Bush allowed the Texas Republican
party to deny gay Republicans an official presence at the state convention, one gay
Republican leader in Texas excused him, claiming it was the fault of the Republican party,
not Gov. Bush, who is in fact the leader of the Republican party in the state. Despite the
fact that Bush remained stone silent in the face of this exclusion, a national gay
Republican group chose not to criticize Bush, and instead praised him for not attending
the convention — even though Bush sent his wife to the convention to speak along with
a videotaped statement in which he expressed deep regret that he couldn’t attend the
convention because he was campaigning.
When asked about the prospects of ever being able to support George W. Bush, Log Cabin
Republicans summed it up like this, "When you look at these Republican candidates,
you have to consider not just the policy and not just votes and not just what they said
today or last week or even what they’re saying behind the scenes. You have to look at
the whole picture." An incredibly mystifying statement, but there you have it: with
homophobic Republicans, if you ignore their voting records, their policy positions, and
their public statements, they actually might be quite good on our issues. According to
that logic, Playboy without the pictures would be a literary magazine.
I agree with Carpenter that we should not "look at partisan labels before deciding
what to say or do," and I also welcome Carpenter’s view that we should not
"sacrifice gay equality on liberalism’s altar for the sake of other issues [we]
care about," so long as he equally repudiates such a sacrifice on the altar of
conservatism.
Therefore, as the two national gay partisan organizations gear up for the November
elections, I trust Carpenter will hold both to the standard of offering endorsements, in
any given federal race, only to the candidate from either major political party who is
more committed to the fight for public policies to end prejudice. We welcome the
challenge.
Daniel McGlinchey
Political Director, National Stonewall Democratic Federation
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