HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
anyone in either party considered it a serious possibility. The
first Log Cabin chapter formed
after gay conservatives in California lobbied the governor at
the time, Ronald Reagan, to
speak out against the Briggs Initiative. This Republican-led ballot measure would have banned
gays from teaching in public
schools. After Reagan criticized
the law and California’s voters
rejected it by a wide margin, gay
conservatives saw an opportunity to press their party to stand
up for other gay-rights issues.
They chose a name that conjured
an idealized vision of the Republican party. “President Lincoln built the Republican Party
on the principles of liberty and
equality,” Log Cabin explains on
its website. They hoped that
Reagan and other Republicans
would follow in those footsteps.
Even in the late 70s, being a
gay conservative was a complicated and counterintuitive thing.
Today, however, it is arguably
more so. Although most of the
activists behind the gay rights
movement were liberals, it would
be years before the national
Democratic Party would add the
notion of sexuality to anti-dis-
THE RIFT BETWEEN
LOG CABIN AND
GOPROUD IS PART
OF A LARGER
STORY, THAT OF
THE INCREASING
POLARIZATION OF
AMERICAN POLITICS
AND THE REPUBLICAN
PARTY’S STEADY
SHIFT TO THE RIGHT.
crimination laws or hate-crime
legislation, and decades before
the party took a strong stand in
favor of same sex marriage. As
President, Jimmy Carter, like
Governor Reagan, opposed the
Briggs initiative, but he didn’t
personally express advocacy for
gay marriage until this year. If
you were gay and a fiscal conservative, the type of pro-business
voter who worshipped Reagan,
there was less incentive to turn
your back on the party of low
taxes, smaller government, and
decreased regulation.
Starting in the 80s, that began to change. First, the Demo-