Friday, July 24, 1998

Gay bashing risks moderates' support

By Morton Kondracke

Don't Republicans ever learn? In 1996, they lost the presidential election and nearly lost the House by seeming intolerant, chiefly toward immigrants. Now they're at it again with homosexuals.

In 1996, after the GOP congress denied welfare benefits to legal aliens and California Gov. Pete Wilson tried to kick the children of illegal aliens out of school, Latino support for the GOP dropped to 21 percent nationally, its lowest level ever.

President Clinton's support among Hispanics jumped from 61 percent in 1992 to 72 percent in 1996. His support among Asian Americans went up by 12 percent. Clinton carried not only California, but Florida, too.

Support also fell among Asians and Hispanics for GOP congressional candidates. It's hard to make a direct link, but polling shows that until Clinton campaign finance scandals broke a week or two before the election, the GOP was in danger of losing the House.

The situation with gays isn't exactly parallel. They aren't a large voting bloc like Latinos. Yet when party leaders go out of their way to vilify any minority group - especially in the process of pandering to the religious right - they risk alienating moderates, who do represent big numbers.

And pandering certainly seems to be what's happening. The religious right - with the canny Ralph Reed, formerly head of the Christian Coalition, now replaced by firebrands Gary Bauer and James Dobson - has been demanding anti-gay action as the price of its support for GOP candidates this year.

Bauer calls for expulsion of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, from the GOP and said Texas Gov. George W. Bush's reputation as a conservative would partly depend on whether he were "adamant enough against same-sex marriages and inclusion of homosexuals" in the GOP.

In Washington, party leaders have been lining up to make it clear they don't like gays. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott likened them to alcoholics, sex addicts and kleptomaniacs. His deputy, Sen. Don Nickles said their behavior was "immoral." House Majority Leader Dick Armey said they were "sinners."

Beyond rhetoric, Lott has been holding up the nomination of gay San Francisco businessman James Hormel to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. Next week, the House is scheduled to vote on Rep. Joel Hefley's amendment backed by Armey and House GOP Whip Tom DeLay to nullify Clinton's executive order including gays among the minorities protected from job discrimination in the federal government.

Amid all this, Bauer, Dobson and other right-wing groups stirred the pot with full-page newspaper ads last week declaring homosexuals "can change" from the path of "sexual sin" and that the groups were offering this observation not out of intolerance but "love," "respect" and "compassion."

Polls and students of public opinion like Boston University sociologist Alan Wolfe suggest the GOP is playing with fire. Wolfe, author of the hot book One Nation, After All, says homosexuality is the exception to the U.S. middle class' almost pathological unwillingness to make negative judgments about anything.

Some of the 200 suburbanites he interviewed in-depth for the book were willing to use words like "perverted," "sick" and "sinful" about gays - but about no other group.

On the other hand, he said, even these people don't want to be seen as intolerant, preferring the formulation now widespread in the GOP that they "hate the sin but love the sinner," which Wolfe thinks is transparent and won't fly politically.

A Gallup poll in late 1996 indicated only 19 percent of Republicans and self-described conservatives believe homosexuality is inborn, while 53 percent believe it is the product of a person's upbringing. GOP gay-bashing could appeal to this base.

On the other hand, among independents, 33 percent believe it's inborn and 37 percent, subject to change. Moreover, 84 percent of the population believes gays ought to have equal job opportunities.

The calculation of GOP leaders seems to be that in a low-turnout election, making a "moral" stand against gays could energize the party base and help hold the House.

On the other hand, when that stand is opposed not just by Democrats, but Republicans like Sens. Orrin Hatch, John McCain and Gov. Bush - all of whom say they welcome everyone in the GOP and believe all persons are entitled to respect - it highlights the cultural division in the party.

For this midterm election, it may be that moderates won't turn out in sufficient numbers to punish the party for gay-bashing. But the long-term tide in this country is toward "live and let live." The GOP is on the wrong side of history.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

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