HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
ment to secure equal treatment
under law for same-sex couples.”
This year’s Republican Platform,
meanwhile, railed against judicial
proponents for same-sex marriage, calling it “an assault on the
foundations of our society,” and
labeled Obama’s refusal to defend
DOMA a “mockery of the President’s inaugural oath.”
This year could be a turning
point for gay Republicans, and not
in the way that Romney backers
would hope.In past years, between
roughly 20 and 30 percent of voters who identify as lesbian, gay, or
bisexual have thrown in their lot
with Republican candidates, but
some observers are predicting that
that number could drop. Obama’s
support of same sex marriage had
an impact on at least one prominent gay Romney supporter. After
Obama made his announcement,
Bill White, the former president
of the Intrepid Museum, asked the
Romney campaign to return his
$2,500 donation.
It’s hard to know how many
gay Republicans have already defected to Obama’s camp. If you
wanted to talk to that contingent,
the Republican National Convention was not the place to look.
In Tampa, many of the same Re-
I TELL PEOPLE
[ANN COULTER’S]
DONE MORE
FOR GAY PEOPLE
THAN A DOZEN
RACHEL MADDOWS
WILL EVER DO.
publican diehards attended every
gay event. There was Jim Kolbe, a
former Arizona congressman who
was outed by the gay press in the
90s after he voted with the majority of the Congress to define marriage as the “union between a man
and a woman”, and Fred Karger,
the greatest gay Republican presidential candidate of 2012 you’ve
never heard of (he didn’t perform
well enough in the polls to earn
a spot in the debates and gave up
his election bid just two months
before the convention.)
Also in attendance was Rich
Weissman, a gay Jewish donor who
used to raise money for Clinton
and now wears four lapel pins —
the Republican Party elephant, the
hybrid bald eagle-Star of David
representing the Republican Jewish Coalition, Freedom to Marry’s
Valentine heart, and the plain