Huffington Magazine Issue 16 | Page 78

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-