For the first time in the more than thirty years that I’ve been engaged in the political fight against homophobia, I am beginning to think that my political career might outlast the legal embodiment of this vicious prejudice. If this turns out to be the case, I’ll look forward to being able to transfer some of my political and intellectual energy from the defense of those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered to the vindication of another class of people who are now being attacked unfairly: political partisans.
While virtually everyone admits that political parties are necessary for the functioning of democracy in any large population, parties themselves are deeply distrusted and the adjective “partisan” is universally used negatively. It is true that there are forms of partisanship which degrade the political system. But it is also true that partisanship, properly understood, is not only a valid approach; it is in our current political climate the most effective way to fight for some very important values.
If your primary commitment in political life is combating racism, promoting economic fairness, improving the environment, defending the right of women to make choices about reproduction, or fighting for legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, then it is of course a betrayal of that commitment to start analyzing things from a partisan premise. But it is equally true, though much less often recognized, that if an objective analysis of our best opportunity to advance any of these goals leads you to a partisan conclusion, it is equally a betrayal of that commitment to forego the most effective action possible on behalf of your cause, lest you be derided as “partisan.”
These two points—about GLBT rights and partisanship—intersect. This would not have been the case as recently as thirty years ago. In the presidential election of 1976, no significant difference existed between Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter on the issue of gay and lesbian rights (the transgendered were not yet on people’s horizon, and mentioning bisexuality seemed a bit risqué). This reflected America up to that point—a country in which there was a monolithic, bipartisan consensus that prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity was only to be expected. This had begun to change, of course, after Stonewall in 1969, but social movements do not register at the national political level quite so quickly. Indeed, our movement for GLBT rights has reached the national agenda more quickly than any comparable civil rights cause.
What has transpired between the late 1970’s and now are several things that have led us to where we are today—namely to a point where the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on gay rights is one of the sharpest issues separating the two parties, and where, in consequence, the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections in November will be of enormous importance in determining the speed at which we’ll be able to overcome the legal manifestations of that prejudice. Especially given George Bush’s conscious decision to appeal to anti-gay feelings through the vehicle of a federal Constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage even in cases where the voters of a state might choose to support it, a significant Democratic victory in November will not only specifically advance our efforts to achieve legal equality, it will also mean, I believe, an end to efforts to use attacks on our rights as a way to gain national political advantage. In short, given the choices the Republicans have made this year, and the strong Democratic response we have seen in opposition to those choices, a Democratic victory in November will be very bad news for those who see gay-bashing as an effective political tactic.
Three trends have brought us to this situation. First, thanks overwhelmingly to the willingness of millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people to be honest about their identity, a large number of Americans have over the past 35 years come to understand an important fact. It turns out that most were not deeply homophobic; they just thought that they were supposed to be. For most people, the experience of learning that people close to them are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered has easily trumped the prejudices with which they were raised. As a result of so many of us coming out, a majority of Americans have learned that the homophobic feelings with which they had been brought up were sharply at variance with the reality presented to them by friends, relatives, teammates, employees, bosses, co-workers, customers, students, teachers, etc. And they have responded accordingly. The country as a whole has become increasingly supportive of efforts to make sure that we are treated fairly—although obviously that process is not yet complete.
The two political parties have reacted to this general trend in very different ways. Remember, both started from a fairly monolithic anti-gay position up through the 1960’s. I once checked the history of the Congressional adoption of stringent anti-gay immigration legislation in 1965, and what I found was that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress unanimously adopted an anti-gay provision which had been submitted by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The year 1964 was significant for us as well. That was the year of Barry Goldwater’s nomination, and of the beginning of a sharp divergence between the two political parties with regard to issues of civil rights and discrimination in a number of areas. Essentially, on the question of opposition to unfair treatment of groups based on essential characteristics of their identity, the Republicans began to move to the right while the Democrats moved to the left. These differences came out most clearly in the early stages with regard to race and sex, with the traditionally conservative—and somewhat racist—Southern Democratic wing defecting to the Republicans. Meanwhile African-American voters continued their move overwhelmingly into the Democratic Party. In addition, feminists emerged by the early 70’s as a vigorous and important constituency of the Democrats, particularly after Roe v. Wade in 1973. While Gerald Ford was still representative of an earlier, more moderate Republican Party prepared to continue the fight against discrimination in various ways, in every Presidential election since 1980 the two parties have been sharply divided on all issues involving unfair discrimination.
This division has been accelerated by the increasingly important role in the Republican Party of the most militant elements on the Right in our country, especially among those who seek to impose a very particular view of their religion on others. In part to respond to the Robertson-Falwell-Bauer wing of their Party, the Republicans had begun by the 80’s to be explicit in their anti-gay political approach. Democrats, on the other hand, have been pushed—both by the activism of people in the gay community and by the logic of a strong pro-human rights position—to become more supportive of our issues.
A year ago, the Stonewall Democrats, the national organization for GLBT Democrats, published a striking study which showed that using voting record data compiled by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Republican performance over the past decade has deteriorated while the Democratic record has improved. Fearful as always of any suggestion that they might be in any way partisan, HRC came to the Republicans’ defense by asserting that, in absolute terms, the Republicans were better on gay rights today than they were twenty years ago. Both points are accurate. That is, it is the case that the Republicans today are less opposed to fair treatment for GLBT people than they were thirty years ago, but it is also true that they are far less supportive of our rights compared to the thrust of national opinion than they were in the earlier time. The Democrats, by contrast, are not only far in advance of where we as a party were on gay issues thirty years ago, we continue to be more supportive on these issues than the national majority viewpoint.
No major political party can completely ignore national trends, and so the Republicans have been somewhat affected by the very significant movement away from homophobia that has marked American society in past decades. Of central significance for us, however, is the widely differing ways in which the two parties have positioned themselves while the country has moved to a better position. The Republican move to the right and the Democratic move to the left has manifested itself in the virtual disappearance of the old conservative Democratic wing, essentially based in the South, but it has also led to the withering away of what used to be the moderate Republican bloc, particularly strong in the Northeastern U.S. and on the West Coast. This movement in opposite directions has nowhere been reflected more sharply than with regard to gay rights. Thirty-five years ago, Democrats, Republicans, and the national consensus were all strongly anti-gay—and there was very little daylight among them. Today, the three currents have diverged. From one standpoint, all three are better for us. But from the other, more politically relevant standpoint, the one that should affect electoral choice, the Democrats have moved in advance of the national view with regard to legal equality for GLBT people, while the Republicans have moved significantly in the opposite direction relative to public opinion. The result is an extremely sharp difference between the two parties on these issues.
Over the years even the Log Cabin Republicans have had to concede this point, because the facts are so striking. For the past twenty years, the two national political platforms have been virtual opposites on gay issues, with the Democrats strongly supportive and the Republicans militantly in opposition. In Congress, voting records have diverged widely, with the Democratic percentages becoming increasingly supportive of our rights and Republicans falling further and further away. It is true that there remain some conservative parts of the country where Democratic members of Congress vote against our efforts, but they are without exception places where their Republican opponents would also vote No. In contrast, there are literally hundreds of Democratic representatives and senators who hold their seats having defeated Republican opponents who would have voted against us. The best evidence of this comes from the U.S. Senate, with its two senators per state. In the overwhelmingly majority of cases in which states have senators from different parties, the Democratic senator’s support for fair treatment for GLBT people is significantly greater than that of his or her Republican colleague. There’s a handful of states in which, over time, the senators in different parties have had equal records, but none that I have found in which the Republican has been better than the Democrat.
But even while conceding that the Democrats have a far superior record on gay rights, Log Cabin Republicans and some others have resisted the partisan conclusion. The circumstances that confront us as we go to the polls this November demonstrate clearly that this resistance has no logical or factual basis whatsoever.
The central issue relevant to our rights became the federal Constitutional amendment that would enshrine second-class treatment for us into what has generally been considered the charter of American liberties. I’m not sure what combination of political calculation and anti-gay feelings led George Bush to the extraordinary step of proposing a Constitutional amendment of this sort, but the contrast between the candidates on this matter is clear: Bush created this issue, and John Kerry and John Edwards from the day he announced it strongly opposed it. While, regrettably, John Kerry does not support same-sex marriage, he has clearly committed himself to positions wholly in accord with a recognition of our rights. In addition to helping defeat Bush’s Constitutional amendment, Senator Kerry has reiterated his opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, and specifically to the provision that denies federal recognition to any same-sex relationship allowed by any state. He explicitly supported an amendment to the law whereby couples in states that confer full legal rights to same-sex couples would be eligible for equal federal benefits as well. On every other issue—employment discrimination, hate crimes, service in the military, etc.—Kerry has been fully supportive since he came to the Senate twenty years ago. And in John Edwards we have a vice presidential candidate who was strongly supportive of gay rights even while representing North Carolina with his colleague Jesse Helms.
As I write this—literally—the Senate has just defeated the Republican effort to enshrine our lack of rights into the Constitution, by a vote of 48 to 50. The partisan breakdown was 44 Democrats siding with us, while three Democrats opposed us, compared to 45 Republicans voting against our interests and only six being supportive. Interestingly, the vote did not come on the substance of the Constitutional amendment, although the Democrats through Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle offered to cooperate in structuring such a vote. Majority Leader Frist clearly understood that if the vote had been taken on the substantive issue, it would have been even further short of a majority.
Had the vote been on the substantive issue, Senators Kerry and Edwards would have made an exception to their policy of spending most of their time on the campaign trail and come to the Senate to vote no. I regret the fact that they did not do this on the procedural vote that kept the bill from coming up, because I thought it would have been useful for them to have underscored their opposition. But under the procedure by which the Senate killed this bill, sixty affirmative votes were needed to consider the amendment, and thus Kerry’s and Edwards’ decision not to vote had exactly the same effect as if they had voted against the motion.
The House has not yet voted on the bill, and it is unclear that it will, because of the less than lukewarm reception it has gotten. But sentiment in the House on the bill also divides sharply along partisan lines—only eight Democrats out of 207 cosponsor the bill, less than five percent, while 117 Republicans, more than half of their party, have signed on to cosponsor it. Should it come to a vote, the breakdown will be very partisan, similar to the Senate outcome. This November, to the extent that Democrats win seats from Republicans, votes against any future version of this will increase. If Republicans take seats from the Democrats, the anti-marriage cause will gain strength.
In both the House and the Senate, on every issue that’s likely to be voted on involving our rights, Democrats are anywhere from eighty to 95 percent in support of fairness, while Republicans are from ninety to 98 percent against us. In the House, the problem with Republican majorities is worse than in the Senate, where the rules allow individual Senators to bring up issues even when the Senate leadership wishes they wouldn’t. Thus in the Senate, even during the years of Republican rule, we have seen votes—initiated by Democrats—on gay-inclusive hate crime laws and on anti-discrimination laws. In the House, the rules give the leadership complete control over the agenda. It is theoretically possible for a majority of the House to overrule the leadership in this regard, but not even the most pro-gay Republican ever breaks with his or her party leadership on these procedural matters. Consequently, while we have a number of Republicans in the House—only a few, sadly—who profess support for the issues we care about, they are not able to help us bring these issues to a vote. The conclusion is indisputable: as long as the Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, no legislation favorable to gay causes will even be allowed to come to a vote.
These facts are so clear-cut that not even the most partisan of gay Republicans can deny them. What they argue instead is that there are two reasons why it is good for gay rights for people to vote Republican despite their Party’s poor record on our issues. I have always been skeptical of these arguments, and after our experience with George Bush—whom gay Republicans boast they helped elect in 2000—it is clear that they are invalid.
The first argument is that having people committed to gay rights in the Republican Party was important because of the ability of those individuals to help persuade their fellow Republicans to become more supportive of our positions. But, in fact, taking American majority opinion as a baseline, the Republicans have gotten comparatively worse rather than better over the years. While there has been some movement away from homophobia on the part of the Republicans in keeping with the national trend, the extent to which the Republicans are far less favorable to our rights than America as a whole has increased. Gay Republicans supported Bob Dole in 1996 and George Bush in 2000 on the premise that they could be moved to more friendly positions. In defeat, Dole has remained an opponent, while in victory—however shaky—George Bush has moved to be even more of an opponent than advertised. It is legitimate for hope to spring eternal, but not a very good idea for people to base their politics on indefinite patience.
The problem, in my view, is that the gay Republican efforts to bring about a diminution in anti-gay Republican behavior have been deeply flawed. Essentially, they have taken the position that they will continue to support even very conservative Republicans who profess strongly anti-gay policies in the hope that their allegiance will somehow kindle in them some sense of gratitude and a moderating of their positions. But in politics, as in other areas of life, rewarding bad behavior is no way to change it. As long as anti-gay Republicans could continue to enjoy support from Log Cabin and others, they had no incentive to change their positions, and the result was not surprising.
The other argument is that, while it might be better for GLBT people if the Democrats were in power, as long as the Republicans are in power it is important for us to have friends in their camp. To some extent that argument is vitiated by the lack of results we have seen from having these friends on the Republican side. But it has an even more serious logical flaw. The fact is that elections in the U.S. in the last few years have been very close. Control of the Senate has fluctuated by a margin of one vote. The presidential election of 2000 was the closest in American history in the Electoral College, while Al Gore’s popular margin was a fairly clear one. And even in the House we have had Republican majorities which are, by historical standards, relatively narrow. In other words, we are not in a situation in which Republicans were foreordained to win and it was therefore important for us to have gay Republicans around to serve as our emissaries. In a number of cases, it was the votes of gay Republicans that made it possible for the Party to win elections.
For gay Republicans simultaneously to take credit—as they have—for helping George Bush to become President and for moderating his anti-gay behavior is equivalent to the arsonist who sets the fire and then arrives at the scene to take credit for helping to put it out. You cannot logically take any moral or political credit for reducing the impact of an outcome for which you are responsible. There are some states in this country that are overwhelmingly and reliably Republican, and there the argument for some gay Republican presence has at least some plausibility. But in a closely divided nation, for gay Republicans to help their anti-gay fellow partisans take office, and then claim credit because they are not as bad as they might have been, makes neither logical nor political sense.
To the credit of many gay Republicans, including D.C. City Councilor David Catonia and some of the leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans, they have come to terms this year with this unpleasant reality, and I admire them for it. It is not easy to confront your own party, nor is it fun to have to acknowledge that some of your arguments have proven wrong. So I welcome those gay Republicans who are now forthrightly acknowledging that defeating George Bush is very important for gay rights. But some of them seek to compensate for this by an even more enthusiastic defense of other Republicans, and that simply perpetuates the error. Over the past decade, political parties in America have become more polarized, and the Republican Party in particular has been transformed into a rather monolithic, cohesive, extremely conservative ideological bloc. No matter how sincere gay Republicans may be about their commitment to changing this, as long as they participate in helping that bloc maintain power, the net impact of their political work will be to harm gay causes.
I agree with many gay Republicans that we would be much better off in our country if gay rights were not a partisan issue. If those who support the fight against homophobia were able to find people on both sides of the political aisle for whom they could vote with equal confidence, that would indeed be advancing our cause. Moreover, I understand those for whom lowering taxes and cutting back on environmental standards are more important than gay rights, and who therefore choose to vote Republican despite the clear superiority of the Democrats on gay issues. But in the current context, for those whose primary commitment is the advancement of fair treatment for GLBT people, it simply makes no sense to vote Republican today.
To bring this to the most relevant point, given the extent to which the Republicans have based some of their 2004 campaign on explicitly anti-gay themes, if the Democrats this year win big, not only will gay rights be advanced specifically, we will in my judgment begin to see the movement in the Republican Party that gay Republicans have sought. That is, only if an attempt to make gay bashing a national political platform clearly fails will Republicans who dissent from that view begin to get the political strength to free their party from its shackles. If John Kerry is elected President and the Democrats take back the Senate and the House, we will see, both in specific enactments and in political perception, a significant advance for gay rights.
Barney Frank represents the 4th Congressional District of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he serves as the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.
