The following is an excerpt from Neil J. Young’s “Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right.” Available now.
Gay Republicans had often used civil rights language to make political claims for their interests. Log Cabin Republicans proudly saw themselves as heirs of Lincoln’s Republican Party, and the California clubs had supported the early 1980s drive to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday. But they showed little support for racial liberalism and actively opposed affirmative action. Most of the early clubs’ founders had been backers of Barry Goldwater, who had opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and they had been largely untroubled by President Ronald Reagan’s desire to roll back civil rights legislation. On the contrary, gay Republicans tended to share Reagan’s belief that the civil rights movement had successfully ended institutional forms of racial discrimination. Gay Republicans agreed with Reagan’s view that the United States was now a “color-blind” nation where anyone could succeed by their own initiative. Republicans of all types and even many non-conservatives held this position as well, but for the many gay Republicans who blended in through “straight-acting” or who still lived somewhat closeted existences, their affinity for “color-blind conservatism” cannot be separated from how they were often able to keep their particular minority identity undetectable.
Gay Republicans advocated for the end of affirmative action policies, which one Log Cabin resolution denounced as “openly and covertly practiced racial and ethnic discrimination.” This perspective reflected conservative ideas that racial quotas constituted a form of “reverse discrimination” that fell most heavily on White men. Gay Republicans pointed out that their anti-affirmative action stance was consistent with their opposition to quotas for gays and lesbians. “We adamantly oppose preferential treatment and have crusaded against quotas and affirmative action within our own movement,” Rich Tafel wrote in The New York Times. In 1996, Log Cabin supported the passage of California’s Proposition 209, which sought to ban public institutions, including schools and universities, from using affirmative action in employment or contracting. After the initiative passed, Log Cabin presented its highest award, the Lincoln Leadership Award, to Ward Connerly, the conservative African American activist who had gotten it on the ballot and led the campaign. “This award symbolizes the bond I have formed with Log Cabin Republicans,” Connerly said at Log Cabin’s annual dinner. “We are joined at the hip.”
Before the event, where political commentator Andrew Sullivan was an invited speaker, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force had asked Log Cabin to reconsider honoring Connerly. “We have a responsibility to honor the cause for equality of our allies,” the NGLTF contended. “Affirmative action is an integral part of that cause. … Honoring Mr. Connerly’s work divides our community by race and sexual orientation. We believe the GLBT movement has a responsibility to support equality for all people.”
Log Cabin responded that it was honoring the heterosexual Connerly for his work as a University of California regent to extend domestic partner benefits to gays and lesbians within the state university system. But its support showed that gay Republicans had begun to prioritize conservative ideological positions over their relationship with other gay and lesbian organizations, and didn’t perceive civil rights and feminist groups as their allies. Gay Republicans argued that gay liberals believed a homosexual identity required political conformity. “Are you tired of gay people who demand allegiance to every left/liberal cause and who are blinded by dogma no matter the outcome?” a popular mailer used by several Log Cabin clubs asked potential members.
Such conversations took place in Log Cabin’s almost entirely White, predominantly male clubs. The rare exceptions — Carolyn Handy, who directed the Washington club in the 1980s, and Abner Mason, who briefly helmed the Log Cabin Federation, were two of the bare handful of Black leaders in the organization — only highlighted Log Cabin’s racial uniformity. Log Cabin’s whiteness shaped its positions on matters beyond affirmative action, including immigration, law enforcement and welfare, and demonstrated how self-interest limited its political vision. For example, gay Republicans worked to remove immigration prohibitions against homosexuals and persons with HIV/AIDS, but they were generally silent when Republican lawmakers pursued anti-immigration policies, such as Gov. Pete Wilson’s backing of 1994’s Proposition 187, which denied California’s undocumented residents access to state services, including public education. And gay Republicans’ attention to police abuse of power all but evaporated once the surveillance state against homosexuals ended. They failed to see that the valid critique they had once made about the dangers of law enforcement’s expansive authority might apply to other vulnerable populations, especially racial minorities. Instead, gay Republicans backed policies for bigger police budgets and harsher sentencing laws, and supported “tough-on-crime” politicians like Rudy Giuliani and Richard Riordan. Gay Republicans’ “law and order” politics largely derived from the view that law enforcement should help safeguard private property and deter civil disorder, but they also saw the usefulness of portraying police officers as protectors against anti-gay violence. One strategy memo suggested that gay Republicans could “relate fag bashing to the need for a strong police force.”
Rising anti-gay violence did not mean gay Republicans also wanted hate crime laws passed, however. “Hate crime” had entered the political lexicon in the mid-1980s to describe criminal acts that were motivated by prejudice based on gender, race and sexual orientation. Media attention and political activism around hate crimes accelerated in the 1990s as states and the federal government considered legislation endorsed by civil rights and gay rights organizations. Gay conservatives were divided over the efficacy of hate crimes laws and whether they should be a political priority. Andrew Sullivan argued that the concept of a “hate crime” was itself “a function primarily of politics, of special interest groups carving out particular protections for themselves, rather than a serious response to a serious criminal concern.”
Journalist Jonathan Rauch contended that the doubling of reported anti-gay crimes over a six-year period that had also seen the passage of numerous hate crime laws demonstrated they were “at best insufficient, at worst ineffective.” Religious leader Rich Tafel thought pushing for federal hate crime legislation should be a secondary concern for Log Cabin Republicans. Some gay Republicans felt that hate crime laws represented another form of “special rights” for minorities, and didn’t want homosexuals lumped into a designated category of victims. But especially after the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, several of the clubs pushed for hate crime bills in their states. In Texas, the Log Cabin chapter lobbied for a 2001 hate crime act that included “sexual preference” as one of the protected classes. Such lobbying provides another example of how gay Republicans selectively supported progressive measures that benefited them.
Reprinted with permission from Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right by Neil J. Young, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2024 by Neil J. Young. All rights reserved.
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