Regular readers know that we’re bent a little to the left. Just because our politics veer in one direction, however, doesn’t mean we’re afraid to engage other ideological adherents.
We’ve given the Log Cabin Republicans some hell in the past, but we’re hardly against offering them some space. Thus, we asked Log Cabin president Patrick Sammon to contribute to The Totally Frightful Issue II.
Read what Mr. Sammon has to say about gay rights, queer conscious Republicans and why no one party can go it alone. The prospect of a one party government, actually, can be pretty frightful.
As president of Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest organization of Republicans who support freedom and fairness for gays and lesbians, I’m not frightened easily.
As any gay Republican can attest, there is a sense of fearlessness that comes with dispelling myths and assumptions–namely, that being gay and Republican is somehow an oxymoron.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
However, as I look to the future political landscape for the LGBT community, one thing scares me–just a little. It frightens me to think that some supporters of gay and lesbian equality will attempt to go down the failed path of pursuing a one-party strategy toward achieving equality.
History has shown, particularly in the last fifteen years, the fight for gay and lesbian equality will never be achieved without Republican votes. We will never reach the goals we desire if we dismiss and fail to engage Republicans and conservatives about the importance of fairness.
As a party, Democrats have certainly come farther on gay and lesbian issues than Republicans. Log Cabin has no illusions about this fact. It’s why we exist. But, like many in the community, I remember all-too-well the results of putting all our eggs in one basket. In the early 90s, President Bill Clinton seemed like the brightest hope for gays and lesbians to ever come along. He wasn’t afraid to talk about us, listen to us, and say the things many of us desperately wanted to hear from our president. Indeed, Democrats helped open some doors that had remained closed to gay and lesbian Americans. But, it was also the same Democratic president who signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the “Defense of Marriage Act”–the two pieces of federal legislation those of us working for gay rights spend most of our time and resources trying to overturn.
As Melissa Etheridge put it during the much-touted HRC/Logo Democratic presidential forum in August, many gays felt like they had been “thrown under the bus.”
One way to make sure that doesn’t happen again is to demand more from our elected officials. The only way to do that is to be a truly bi-partisan movement that isn’t afraid or unwilling to work with Republicans.
History shows that when one political party receives the unwavering support of a particular segment of Americans, they tend to take that group’s support for granted. Why do they need to deliver for you? You’ll be there anyway.
Last month, a bi-partisan vote in the U.S. Senate advanced the hate crimes bill. Democrats, of course, delivered strong results for this important bill. But we must also remember that the bill would not have passed the Senate unless nine Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for it. Led by Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR), a vocal ally for gay and lesbian Americans, these nine Republicans provided the margin of victory that allowed hate crimes to pass.
Here are some other examples:
• Currently, a civil unions bill is advancing in Illinois. It recently gained approval in a House committee, thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Republican State Rep. Elizabeth Coulson. This bill will not become law unless there is sufficient Republican support.
• A similar situation faces us in New York where a bill providing marriage equality for same-sex couples is advancing. Again, the bill will not move through the Senate unless there are enough Republican votes. Regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans control the state senate in New York, we’re going to need Republican votes for marriage.
• In Wyoming, three Republicans voted against an anti-gay bill in a house committee. It lost by only one vote.
• In Massachusetts this spring, our movement achieved one of the greatest and most improbable victories ever in the fight for LGBT equality. A joint session of the state house and senate rejected a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage by a vote of 45 to 151. Supporters of the amendment needed only 50 votes to get it on the 2008 ballot. Four House Republicans voted ‘no’ and three Senate Republicans voted ‘no.’ Without these seven votes, our side would’ve lost. Republicans helped provide the margin of victory, showing why a one-party only strategy is the wrong path for the equality movement. We can’t win gay rights victories without votes from both parties.
It is clear that across the country, both at the state level and federally, we must be willing to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. As we head into one of the most contentious elections in recent history, I hope our movement remembers that a Democrat-only strategy is a recipe for failure.
————-
Patrick Sammon is President of Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest organization of Republicans who support fairness, freedom, and equality for gay and lesbian Americans.
akaison
In theory, I agree one party rule sucks. But, then, I realize my most recent example of why this is the case is based on his party so well you do the math as to what I think of the GOP continuing to have power over us. Not that the Democrats are that much better. But given a choice between neutral and openly hostile, I think we all prefer neutral at this point.
I would truly love a European style multiple party system because it would mean we would get more gay rights overall in that every coalition would try to build up on the various interests groups whether they are libertarians, gays, enviromentalist, etc. They would need us more. The way it is now- both parties can ignore large swaths of this society.
DavidDust
Gay Republicans still puzzle me. They recognize that Democrats have been better for the gay community. But they are Republicans so they can convince OTHER Republicans not to be Nazi assholes??? Are they secret spies?? And they are necessary because Bill Clinton threw gays and lesbians “under the bus”?? Puzzling….
WWH
AB: “bent a little to the left”??? You are to the left of Chairman Mao. Which, of course, is part of your charm.
David Agnew
@akaison: The choice isn’t between “neutral and openly hostile”; it’s between “overtly hostile and covertly hostile.” Say what you may, but the GOP is at least up-front with its politics. The Dems, on the other hand, are all about smiling to our faces and stabbing us in the back.
@WWH: You’re absolutely correct – and you’ll find the Dems on Mao’s right! No party embodies communism more in the U.S. than the Democrats. None.
Jason
The guy’s logic makes no sense. Shouldn’t we be sending money to James Dobson and Focus on the Family and supporting their cause since we can’t win without Christian Americans? Shouldn’t Blacks be flocking to the GOP because they can’t possibly overcome racism without supporting the Republicans for re-election and giving them money?
WTF? How do you think we got to this point where the GOP is so insanely homophobic? Log Cabin’s boy Bush actually endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment. Hello? Wow, you guys sure are making some amazing progress.
Bill Perdue
Politicians are thoroughly sullied creatures. Grubbing after handouts from lobbyists and voting for the highest bidder and, they give flesh and blood to life Mark Twains comment “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.” The leap from congress to the top of their food chain, the White House, requires the morals of a gangster, sociopathic greed, and Napoleonic ambition.
It’s been that way since Lincoln was murdered.
If politicians are debased their shills like Patrick Sammon are merely ridiculous. Imagine defending eight years of gaybashing by Republican attack dogs by blaming the Democrats alone for DADT and DOMA.
DADT was written by Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn and signed by a Democrat Clinton but had overwhelming Republican support then and now. DOMA was authored by Georgia Republican Robert Barr. (Is there something the water down there?). The bill passed 85-14 in the Senate and 342-67 in the House of Greed. On 21 September 1996 Clinton signed into law as US Code 7 Stat. 2419. If memory serves most of those few voting against it Democrats, although most Democrats then as now firmly support this homobigot law.
To allege that DADT and DOMA were anything but bipartisan attacks on GLBT folk by the twin parties of bigotry is simply a lie.
If Sammon were on a call in talk show I’d like to ask him a couple of questions . Why does their favorite, Giuliani, do the Clinton two step on GLBT issues: one barely recognizable step to the left and two leaping jumps to the right. Secondly, I’d want to know if he knew that his boy Giuliani was a partner in the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani, legal whores for Texas oil barons backing Bushes oil piracy and attempts to partition Iraq and steal its petro assets?
Then I’d ask Sammon if their darling Giuliani was right when he advocated torture along with other Republicans contenders (except McCain, who knows all about torture) at a candidates forum?
“Rudy Giuliani, baldly seeking to overcome his rep as a two-faced Yankee liberal who kills the unborn and dresses in women’s clothes, grinned into the cameras and said he would tell his people to ‘use every method they could think of’ to get information.â€
The problem, Mr. Sammon, is that we already have a single party government. As Gore Vidal said “We have no political parties. We’ve never had much of them — I mean the Democrats, the Republicans. We have one party — we have the party of essentially corporate America. It has two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican†Gore Vidal March 12th, 2003 on SBS Australia.
Perhaps Mr. Sammon ought to honestly study Abe Lincoln, who he absurdly claims as a political ancestor. It was after all Honest Abe who said “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.†That would entail impeaching George Bush, but the Democrats are too cowardly to do that because, suprise, they’re going to be doing the same things he did in the mideast for the next few years.
Ampdy
So we need Republicans who vote like Democrats on gay rights? Let the lobbies gun for the moderate Republicans. Meanwhile, I’ll probably continue voting for Democrats.
Log Cabin Republicans exist because some gays out there think that a taxless society or wars of aggression against majority Islamic nations are more important than gay rights.
Andy Peters
Um…
OK, off topic, but did anybody else see the photo and think this was going to be a story about Screech from SAVED BY THE BELL?
WWH
David Agnew:Do you live in NYC?
kamasutrajones
Well, I live in the liberal land of New York, and I’m an out and proud Republican. Why? Because I believe in lower taxes, smaller government, more personal responsibility, and a strong defense. I also believe in equal rights for ALL people, including gays, lesbians, etc. Part of the problem with the Republican Party today is that they have become way too identified with the religon-based social conservatives, with whom I disagree wholeheartedly. This group of Republicans is not the ONLY face of the party. I am the face of the party, as well. To adopt a quote from the liberal-lover’s fantasy girl, Rosie O’Donnell, “I am a gay Republican.” Though I am not Log Cabinite, I do know that they did NOT support Bush in the last election. In fact, they produced a television spot that was anti-Bush, but the liberal media decided not to air it because it was “too controversial” (from a gay group is what they really meant). As well, I will remind everyone that the war of aggression between us and the Islamo-fascists did not begin with us. It began way back in 1979 with the abduction of hostages in Tehran for 444 days, continued through the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the U.S.S. Cole attack, the embassy bombings in Africa, the London Tube bombings, the attacks in Bali, Turkey, India, and Pakistan, AND 9/11. Where in any of those events, or others do you see an initial aggressive act on the part of the United states? Nowhere.
WWH
Kamasutrajones, you are my hero!!! Although I like to think of myself as a libertarian rather than a republican. Big hug!
dfrw
I disagree with Patrick Sammon on this point in particular: “We will never reach the goals we desire if we dismiss and fail to engage Republicans and conservatives about the importance of fairness.”
Republicans and conservatives do not want to be engaged or fair. Instead they want religion, particularly Christianity, to dictate and dominate a secular government and its policies. The establishment clause and the free exercise clause mean nothing if God can rule from the Hill. That said, if they truly wanted to be fair, Republicans could start with keeping religion out of government instead of constantly trying to insert it into everything in violation of the First Amendment. Continued insertion of religion into secular government infects everything including policies of fairness towards homosexuals. Log Cabin, and homocons in particular, want to be friends with these religous zealots (read GayPatriot.org for the unending defense of the “religious” response to homosexuality) instead of understanding that homosexuals will only truly be accepted as equals when they live as heterosexuals. (How is praying away the gay working for the homocons?)
In response to kamasutrajones, I say that Rosie O’Donnell is a darling of liberals to the same extent that kamasutrajones is a face of the Republican party.
kamasutrajones is correct however that the US didn’t commit the initial aggressive act. In fact one could argue that the US simply responded to the Barbary in the late 1700s, but the US is most certainly responsible for the continued and unending meddling in foreign matters that brings it to where it is today. The US would do well to stop trying to “spread democracy” or whatever the goal of the Bush government is today, and instead focus on its own matters, such as keeping national terrorists in its jails and foreign terrorists off its soil with regular law enforcement and indeed, not spawning terrorism by meddling in the Middle East’s backward, 7th century sandbox. Great Britain learned this lesson and now the US needs to learn it too. Those people are still fighting over stuff that isn’t even real. What makes Republicans (or Democrats) think they are going to change that? Apparently, Republicans (or Democrats) think they can.
Hopefully, the US will do a better job of keeping religious zealots in their place. Wherever religion is, trouble is certain to follow. Look at the trouble it causes for Republicans today.
Paul Raposo
“Log Cabin, and homocons in particular, want to be friends with these religous zealots (read GayPatriot.org for the unending defense of the ‘religious’ response to homosexuality) instead of understanding that homosexuals will only truly be accepted as equals when they live as heterosexuals. (How is praying away the gay working for the homocons?)”
Thank you, drfw! I tried figuring out homocons for for several weeks and GP was one of my stops. All those religious, gay hating gays are odd. Anti-gay religious conservatives–good. Pro-gay liberals–bad. Truly bizarre.
GP (Bruce) thinks all liberal gays hate America and want to destroy it. North Dallas Thirty (Jeff) thinks all gays want to kill Christians, kill the children of conservatives and all HIV+ people should die slow, painful deaths. Michigan_Matt prattles on about how liberal gays hate gays who have children–and hate children in general and V The K (James Whittenbach) sold his soul to the LDS and is a sad ex-gay.
Then there’s the original homocon–Nathan Scott, who has stopped posting about politics on his political blog because clearly he can no longer defend the indefensible Bush WH and has stopped posting completely.
Then there’s Robbie and Matt at The Malcontent who says he “loves his queers” for voting him the third most popular political blog in DC, while stating that trans people don’t deserve equal rights along side gays. They are a couple of rightwingers, or rather, gay hating queers who can’t give up the cock and thus cannot become ex-gays, so they trash gays who disagree with them in order to feel superior to gays and equal to straights.
Then there’s all the amalgamations of homocon names: That Gay Conservative, The Gay Conservative, Queer Conservative, whose blogs rarely get mention–aside from them–and receive very few comments, if any, yet sadly, the blogmasters continue to spout the rightwing speak and hate towards other LGBTQ people.
I have yet to read anything by a homocon that does not indicate that they would gleefully throw other gays under the bus for a chance to ride inside the bus with conservatives.
And let’s not forget, most homocons hate the LCR. Thankfully, homocons are only preaching to the choir and conservatism is on the way out.
What pisses me off about these jackasses, is that they don’t realize all the liberties, freedoms and rights they enjoy and partake of as gays, were fought for by the very liberals they loathe. If it weren’t for the militant queers at Stonewall, homocons would be in loveless marriages with women who they treat as property, hanging around public toilets harassing straight men. In other words, they’d be conservatives.
Homocons have done nothing to advance equal rights for gays, yet they enjoy life as out gays, while disrespecting the people who came before them, because the happen to vote differently.
How fucked up are these people? And how do they get laid? Who is screwing the people?
Ampdy
kamasutrajones and WWH and all jingoists across the land–
The United States of America, via the CIA, destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953, and installed an autocratic puppet, the Shah. So, technically, we started it.
Look up Mohammed Mossadeq, the Prime Minister of the democratically functional Iranian Parliament. The US is not an innocent victim here.
dfrw
Paul wrote: “How f***** up are these people? And how do they get laid? Who is screwing the people?”
I have no idea.
=)