HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
man from Arizona, said he felt
encouraged by the fact that there
are now a handful of openly gay
Republican candidates running
for office, albeit mostly in local
elections. In 2000, Kolbe, who
was by then out of the closet, delivered a speech at the convention
in Philadelphia and a contingent
of Texas delegates took off their
cowboy hats and prayed. Despite
the decline of such overt gestures
of anti-gay sentiment, some critics feel that the “gentle acceptance” now on display is actually a warning sign. “The more
conservative you get, perhaps
the more imperative it is to have
token representation with you,”
said Michael Bronski, the author
of A Queer History of the United
States and a Harvard Professor. “You need a little bit of prochoice women and some gay guys
and some black people so that you
aren’t completely visibly homophobic, misogynistic and racist.”
Evan Wolfson, an influential
voice on the left and the head of
Freedom to Marry, said that while
it’s still true that the “majority of
Republicans and the Republican
leadership are far more anti-gay
than the vast majority of Demo-
crats and the Democratic leadership, there are beginning to be
significant fissures in the Republican party.” In his mind, however,
it isn’t GOProud or Log Cabin that
are primarily driving these changes. Although his group is working
with Log Cabin in a campaign to
win over young conservatives, he
gives most of the credit to organizations made up largely of Democrats, like his own.
More specifically, he credits the
work of left-leaning groups over
the past three decades with making America a place where it’s
socially acceptable to be gay — a
place where gay Republican voters and the occasional politician
can come out as gay to their fellow conservatives without fear of
alienation. He also acknowledged
the emergence of a number of
powerful “right-of-center” voices
speaking up for marriage rights,
among them Laura Bush, Dick
Cheney, the Conservative British
Prime Minister David Cameron
and even (“God help us,” he says)
Glenn Beck. And he gives credit
to a few big-money forces on
the right. In recent years Paul E.
Singer, a major Republican donor
whose son is gay, has given millions to gay-rights initiatives. In