Chris Crain WashingtonBlade.com May 15, 2006
Ever since Howard Dean went on Pat Robertson's TV show last week and inaccurately proclaimed the Democratic Party platform called for "marriage between a man and a woman," the party chair has received a chorus of condemnation from gay rights groups and even gay Democrats.
Howard Dean's Democrats were for gay marriage before they were against it. Sound like any other Democrats you know? Patrick Guerriero, the Log Cabin Republican president, was predictably caustic, quipping that, "Howard Dean puts his foot in his mouth so often that he should open a pedicure wing in the DNC."
That was actually charitable, given that Dean's pronouncement on "The 700 Club" wasn't another of his famous slips of the tongue; he's said it too many times after being told it misrepresents the party's official stance, which is to leave the issue to the states to resolve.
Instead, it was a deliberate misstatement that was the latest in a series of disses by Dean that should convince even the most ardent gay partisan that the Dems, tasting a return to power after six years on the outs, aren't about to let gay rights stand in the way.
Do Dean's Dems loathe gays? Let us count the ways:
n Last year, Dean eliminated the gay outreach "desk" within the Democratic National Committee, angering some of the party's most reliable gay donors and breaking a promise from his own campaign for the post of party chair.
n In February, the DNC released its "Annual Report to the Grassroots," which omitted any mention of gay and lesbian outreach, a reversal from the prominent treatment given to the constituency in previous reports.
n Last month, Dean fired the only person in the party bureaucracy responsible for gay outreach and fundraising, one week after his domestic partner, another longtime party activist, went public with criticism that Dean and the Dems were doing nothing to fight ballot initiatives aimed at amending state constitutions to ban gay couples from marrying.
Since the "700 Club" appearance made headlines in the mainstream media, Dean and the DNC went into damage control mode. But even there, the effort is limited. Dean agreed to be interviewed on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, but still refuses to be interviewed by the gay press - agreeing only to an interview with the Advocate, no doubt familiar with that publication's reputation for hard-hitting questions like, "Boxers or briefs?"
Dean first achieved fame among gays in 2000, when as Vermont's governor, he signed that state's landmark civil unions law. When he announced his run for the White House, almost no one paid attention at first - except gay Democrats, who organized all but one of Dean's fundraisers outside of Vermont in all of 2002 and the first quarter of 2003, according to a Washington Post report.
That early support helped catapult Dean from nowhere to frontrunner in the primaries. But did he deserve such enthusiastic backing? The reality is that the state of Vermont was under court order in 1999 to offer civil unions or marriage, and Dean fought "tooth and nail" to keep gay couples from legally marrying.
So it should come as no big a surprise that as party chair, Dean views gay Americans as just another constituency, smaller in numbers than the potential evangelical converts he courted on "The 700 Club." To Dean and the party leaders who preceded him, legal equality for gays is just another special interest, to be pandered to or ignored, as the political exigencies of the moment might require.
But Dean is miscalculating the gay issue for two important reasons: First and foremost, gay Americans are fighting for their own civil rights, unlike their counterparts on the right, who are pushing to limit someone else's freedoms. One reason America's history reflects social progress by minorities despite hostility from the majority is that the minorities are far more motivated than their foes, not to mention the "mushy middle" that doesn't feel strongly one way or the other.
So by dissing gay issues, Dean abuses what could be a powerfully motivated constituency for his party, as his own presidential candidacy attests. Instead, as the party controversies of the last year demonstrate, gay Americans won't accept second-class treatment.
Second, by treating gay civil rights like just another "special interest" to be alternatively pandered to or ignored, Dean and the Dems only contribute to their party's worst image problem: as a do-nothing party without clear positions, principles or a plan.
The party's 2004 platform on gay marriage is a mushy statement of compromise that only a committee could love: not taking a position on whether gay couples should marry but instead leaving the matter to the states. Now Dean says the party backs heterosexual-only marriage. Sounds like John Kerry voting for financial support for the war in Iraq, before he voted against it.
And it's not just the party's platform that confuses its party leaders. Take, for example, the issue that rankled Paul Yandura, the longtime party activist whose partner was fired from his DNC post after Yandura slammed Dean for not mounting opposition to state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage.
After weeks of promising "a plan" to fight these measures, used by Republicans to motivate evangelicals, Dean and the Dems have produced nothing. In the May 3 statement announcing the replacement for Yandura's partner, Dean again promised the party would fight these "hate-filled ballot initiatives."
"Hate-filled ballot initiatives"? You mean the ones supported just two short years ago by John Kerry and John Edwards, the party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees? Just what is the Democratic Party's position?
[It's worth noting that Yandura, now so angry with Dean, was Edwards' paid gay liaison in 2004, despite his candidate's position on these initiatives, not to mention his support for parts of the nefarious Defense of Marriage Act.]
As big a mess of things as Howard Dean has made, he is not to blame for acting like what he is: a politician putting his myopic view of his party's political interests ahead of principle. Instead, the finger-pointing by gay rights leaders ought to be into the mirror, for accepting so long the argument that the success of the gay rights movement is inexorably linked to the success of the Democratic Party.
There's no question that gay rights legislation stands a much greater likelihood of passage if the Democrats control Congress - though history suggests otherwise. But that doesn't mean that gay rights leaders should sacrifice the movement at the altar of the Democratic Party.
And despite angry press releases issued this week, that's what we see, time and time again, especially at the Human Rights Campaign, whose leader Joe Solmonese came from Emily's List, a partisan Democrat group.
As a Senate vote nears on a federal amendment banning states from marrying gay couples, HRC is once again - as it did two years ago - emphasizing the DNC's talking points over making the case for gay marriage itself. That strategy is short-sighted and unnecessary, given no observer thinks the amendment has any legitimate chance of passage. HRC doesn't even poll members of Congress on whether they support marriage equality for gays.
Like a battered spouse, HRC accepts the Democrats' apologies and takes their marching orders. If gay Americans are looking for someone to blame for Dean and his Dems, look no further than the gay rights groups that continue to do his bidding.
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