| Fri Feb 27, 9:40 AM ET
Chicago Tribune
By Bob Kemper Washington Bureau
Gay activists who helped deliver more than a million votes for George W. Bush in 2000 are so outraged the president endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that they are setting up organizations and plotting advertising campaigns against the amendment that could undermine Bush's re-election effort.
Two of the largest Republican gay-rights groups, Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Unity Coalition, have broken with the president, accusing him of turning against gays to rally his conservative supporters.
The potentially vitriolic public debate over the amendment--which activists said is likely to lead to an escalation of violence and hate speech against gays--could turn off moderate voters in states where only a few thousand votes could spell the difference between victory and defeat for Bush.
Log Cabin Republicans, who have remained loyal to Bush since his election, are organizing in states that are a tossup this year, including Wisconsin, New Mexico and Missouri, to oppose the marriage amendment. The group, which has 50 U.S. chapters and is the largest Republican organization on gay issues, plans to begin running television, radio and newspaper ads in the next two weeks.
While they won't specifically target Bush--and conservatives discount the impact that a loss of gay voters would have on the president's campaign--the ads will suggest that by backing the amendment Bush is "someone who divides the public instead of uniting it," said Patrick Guerriero, the group's executive director.
"I guess the message is that if you really want a culture war, you're going to get it," Guerriero said.
Another gay Republican activist said GOP groups, inundated by angry e-mails and phone messages since Bush publicly backed the amendment on Tuesday, are likely to drop their outreach programs to the gay community, essentially giving up hope of garnering gay support this year.
Exit polls from the 2000 election indicated that about 1 million gay people voted for Bush, or about 25 percent of gays who cast ballots.
"Those million gay votes are gone. People are just beside themselves," the activist said. "Those voters in 2000 are dealing with a whole new set of facts now. There is nothing for gays now."
The Republican Unity Coalition issued a statement calling the marriage amendment "a terrible betrayal of conservative principles of federalism and limited government" and said it would "neither support nor defend this action."
The Bush campaign defended the president's decision to support the constitutional amendment, noting that it would still allow state legislatures to legalize "civil unions" for gay couples and to decide what state-level rights and responsibilities to confer on those couples.
"The decision was based on principle, not politics," a Bush campaign aide said.
But gay-rights activists see Bush's backing of the marriage amendment as an attempt to shore up his support with the conservative voters who provide his political base and who long have called for such an amendment. It also marks the end, they said, of Bush's ability to portray himself as a "compassionate conservative" and a "uniter, not a divider."
"Their crass calculus is that a culture war will win them votes," said John Aravosis, one of the leaders of DontAmend.com, an Internet-based movement in support of gay marriage. "He's falling in the polls and this is a last desperate act."
Gary Bauer, who heads the group American Values, dismissed threats from gay activists and said backing the marriage amendment will boost Bush's chances for re-election. Refusing to endorse the amendment when courts are chipping away at marriage as a heterosexual-only institution would have been "inexplicable and ultimately a political disaster," Bauer said.
"There are many more voters in the country who feel marriage should remain between a man and a woman who are likely to vote for him than there are gay activists who are going to vote against him," Bauer said.
Gay-rights activists bolting from the Republican ticket will not immediately line up behind the likely Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who also opposes gay marriage but does not support the constitutional amendment. But they may sit out an election that Bush's strategists believe will be extraordinarily close, activists said.
"Our job is not to hurt the party or the president," said Guerriero. "But there has to be a price to pay when you push . . . a wedge issue like this."
Protests by gay activists within the Republican Party will help underscore the anti-Bush message that larger, better-financed gay-rights groups, unaffiliated with the party, were already planning to spread in opposition to the constitutional amendment.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-rights group, is launching a comprehensive offensive that ranges from lobbying members of Congress to defeat the amendment to the group's first effort to turn out voters in states where the presidential vote is expected to be close. The group also has $1.4 million to support congressional candidates opposed to the amendment.
"It's a unique time in the [gay] community when we're all working together," said Winnie Stachelberg, the group's political director. "This is a fight we cannot afford to lose."
One of the biggest pushes against the constitutional amendment is expected to come around May 17, when Massachusetts, under court order, may have to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
But it also is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. Gay activists say the 1954 ruling, which ordered integration of schools, stands as a repudiation of a marriage amendment that seeks to restrict the rights of a minority group. | |
