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COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.
Will gay Republican's support for the party come at the expense of gay rights?
The January 19 breakfast, its program said, "celebrates the ed States of America" and was a tribute to the "more than one million gay and lesbian voters" who cast ballots for the Republican ticket. Alan Simpson, former U.S. senator from Wyoming, praised his old friend Vice President Dick Cheney for his close relationship with his lesbian daughter, Mary. Charles Francis, a friend of the new president's, spoke optimistically about making sexual orientation a "nonissue" in the Republican Party.
Applauding approvingly, the largely white and male crowd of between 300 and 400 dined on bacon and eggs in an elegant Washington, D.C., ballroom. But then David Catania, a District of Columbia city councilman, momentarily punctured the feel-good mood of the first public event of the Republican Unity Coalition, billed by its founder Francis as a "gay-straight alliance." The GOP's "treatment of gays and lesbians is at best unacceptable and at worst disgraceful," he declared, comparing its official platform, which opposes same-sex marriage and gays in the military, to racial segregation.
"What you're speaking about, David, is old crap," said Simpson, following Catania at the microphone. "There's no need to wash out the old laundry." Yet the antigay Republican platform to which Catania referred was adopted just last July.
The angry exchange between Catania and Simpson illustrates the deep division inside the GOP about how to address its antigay stances during a time in which the party holds unprecedented power. The election--and the Supreme Court order in its aftermath--gave the party control of not just the White House but also the House of Representatives as well as a 50-50 split in the Senate and 29 governorships.
"When a group identifies primarily with one party, as the gay community has done with the Democrats, it's generally feast or famine," says Larry...
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