Handicapping a Cautious Field Shades of lavender among 2004 Democratic presidential contenders
By ANDY HUMM
With George W. Bush praising Senator Rick Santorum as "an inclusive man" in the wake the Pennsylvania conservative's extreme anti-gay proclamations, even the Log Cabin Republicans are going to be hard-pressed to support the President for re-election. Most LGBT Americans are hungrier than ever for an alternative in 2004 and the candidates for the Democratic nomination are not disappointing them, though there are differences in both the records and promises of the men and woman running.
Now is the time that the Democratic hopefuls are making hard decisions about how far they will go in supporting the LGBT communities, which will in turn make choices about how hard to push them beyond the 2000 Democratic platform that endorsed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and recognition for gay and lesbian families including "an equitable alignment of benefits."
The front-runners from Congress--Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and John Edwards of North Carolina, and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri--all received 100 percent ratings from the Human Rights Campaign in the last term, though the last Congressional session was not one that featured any deeply divisive LGBT issues. And former Governor Howard Dean has won an enthusiastic gay following for signing and promoting the civil union law in Vermont, the first in the nation.
Kerry can boast that he was one of 14 members of the upper house to vote against the infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996--and the only one facing re-election that year. His opponent, of course, was pro-gay Republican Gov. William Weld who was not about to make it an issue, but it was certainly a vote that took some guts for someone with presidential aspirations. Even the late, sainted Paul Wellstone, a fiery liberal, cast a vote for DOMA, as did then Rep. Chuck Schumer. Hillary Clinton is a DOMA supporter and her husband signed it into law.
When a story on Kerry appeared in 1998 insinuating that he did not support teaching about gay families, he angrily responded, "I have never said that gay people cannot or should not be parents" and insisted that his support for lesbian and gay rights is "unequivocal." He supports civil unions, but not same-sex marriage.
Joe Lieberman is more equivocal about lesbian and gay rights. He voted for DOMA and, when questioned about government sanction of same-sex couples in the 2000 Vice Presidential debate, gave a weaker answer than Dick Cheney, father of out lesbian Mary Cheney. The Republican said, "I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into," incurring the wrath of the religious right. (His administration, of course, has done nothing to advance same-sex partner rights.) Lieberman in that same debate said his mind "is open to taking some action that will address these elements of unfairness while respecting the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage."
In a Boston Globe survey last week, Lieberman stopped short of endorsing even civil unions.
Lieberman was warmly welcomed as the keynote speaker at the 2000 Human Rights Campaign (HRC) dinner in Washington. His website, however, has no easily located information on his stands on LGBT issues.
Edwards, in his first term, has less of a record to explore. Like Kerry and Lieberman, he is a Senate sponsor of ENDA. The fact that he is from North Carolina and has a 100 percent rating from HRC is remarkable, making him appealing to Democrats who think they can only win with a candidate from the South, as has been the case for the last forty years. Edwards is making a militantly moderate presentation during this campaign, short on specifics. He, too, is hesitant about civil unions. All eyes will be on what he rolls out when he keynotes the HRC dinner in Atlanta later this month.
Gephardt was another incumbent who voted for DOMA in 1996, but that's about his only vote at odds with community goals. The Globe reported that Gephardt has a lesbian daughter. While he calls civil unions a matter of "basic decency," he does not say how he explains to his daughter that she should not be allowed to marry a woman.
Gephardt has been outspoken about his dismay at Santorum's recent anti-gay comments, as have Kerry, Edwards, and Dean.
For someone who held such a visible leadership post, Gephardt is oddly low in the polls. As a Midwesterner, though, he has an advantage in the early Iowa caucuses.
And then there's Howard Dean. He forcefully came out for not going forward with ENDA unless transgendered folks are included--the only candidate to take such a stand. He talks about his support for civil unions wherever he goes, including to non-gay specific audiences, as a way to demonstrate he is independent, principled, and progressive. He was, after all, facing election right after he signed the gay union measure, albeit under the gun from the Vermont Supreme Court to fashion an equitable remedy for same-sex couples.
Dean bills civil unions as equal to marriage, but he is only partly right. Yes, Vermont gives gay couples access to all the rights that it can, and he now says he supports federal recognition of civil unions, but by failing to simply open marriage to us, he denied us a clear shot at a constitutional challenge to DOMA. Unless gay and lesbian relationships are recognized by the federal government and by other states, they lack the full benefits, including portability, that sex discordant marriages enjoy.
Civil unions are just starting to win recognition elsewhere, such as in the wrongful death suit brought by John Langan against St. Vincent's Hospital this year, and there is no question that same-sex marriages would be resisted in at least 36 states that have passed mini-DOMAS. But Dean's lack of support for same-sex marriage on the specious grounds that it is a religious institution undermines his message of equality for all, and parrots one of the central tenets of the right wing opposition to gay marriage rights.
Just two of the Democratic hopefuls unequivocally support full and equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. Civil rights activist Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, the leftist Congressman from Ohio, are the only ones who believe that people of the same sex are entitled to civil marriage. When I asked Sharpton in 1997 if he would, as a minister, go so far as to perform same-sex weddings, he said, "Step outside. I'll do you right now."
The Reverend is right on, not to mention hilarious, but he is not going to win the nomination unless a massive Putney Swope mentality overtakes the electorate. Neither is Kucinich, who is also noteworthy for his vigorous opposition to the war in Iraq (a stance popular in the LGBT community) and the fact that he displays the HRC equality logo on his office wall (and has a 100 percent rating from the group). Nor is Carol Moseley-Braun, the former Illinois Senator who also stood up on the DOMA vote seven years ago.
There are good reasons for supporting Sharpton, Kucinich, and Moseley-Braun. The delegates that they bring to the convention can move the party's platform in a more progressive direction, including on LGBT and AIDS issues.
There's also probably little worry Florida Senator Bob Graham, with a 71 percent rating from HRC, will become the nominee in Boston next year. In the 107th Congress, he was marked down for not being an ENDA sponsor and for voting against California Democrat Dianne Feinstein's resolution calling on the Senate to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy.
But even Graham is stronger than Bush on LGBT issues. In case you need reminding, Bush still supports excluding open gays and lesbians from the military, a position no Democratic hopeful does. The President has nominated a string of anti-gay, fringe right judges to the federal bench with a clear eye on satisfying the religious right. He is also paying off conservative groups by stacking the U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on human rights and reproductive issues with people straight from groups like the Family Research Council, joining with the Vatican and many Muslim nations in shooting down even the most moderate advances on women's rights, LGBT rights, and population control. He has made a few appointments of out gay people, but his record is infinitely inferior to his predecessors on that score.
And while Bush's new international AIDS proposal is seen as a small step forward, it is far less than what the moment demands to arrest the pandemic. This is the man who as Governor of Texas endorsed the state's sodomy law, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, as "a good statement of traditional values." He hasn't changed his mind on that and most LGBT voters haven't changed their minds about him.
While even some among the 25 percent of LGBT voters who went for Bush in 2000 may have seen enough to turn away next year, it is less certain how gay issues will play out in the general public. Right now, the Democratic candidates are good-to-great on LGBT issues and Bush is trying to avoid overtly anti-gay statements while catering to the anti-gay policy demands of his right flank.
Stanley Kurtz, writing in the conservative National Review, said that if the Massachusetts high court recognizes same-sex marriages this spring, this issue will become the "mother of all culture battles" that could very well be to Bush's advantage. He notes that while moderate voters are against sodomy laws, they "don't feel very comfortable with the idea of gay marriage either."
Lots of LGBT politicos get involved with presidential campaigns to position themselves for a job in a new administration. Many also realize that there is much more at stake in the 2004 election. The entire community can play a role by asking the hard questions now of these candidates instead of waiting to be disappointed by them. If we want them on our side when the culture wars heat up, we'd better get them there right now.