Who’s Left on the Right?
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COMING OUT REPUBLICAN
A History of the Gay Right
by Neil J. Young
Univ. of Chicago. 441 pages, $30.

I WAS A REPUBLICAN, but I never inhaled. I first voted in 1974, a time when many states had significant numbers of conservative Democrats, especially in the South, and also liberal Republicans, anchored in the Northeast but scattered around the country, notably in the libertarian West. This expansive political landscape, before “Republican” and “religious Right” merged, endured for a while: as recently as Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991, a professional Black woman referred to herself as a Rockefeller Republican, more than a dozen years after the former Vice President’s death.

Alan Contreras, a frequent contributor to these pages, is a writer and consultant living in Eugene, Oregon.