Republicans, Nazis, Whatever. In Orange County,
Florida, where openly gay Republican Patrick Howell is running for
the state legislature, the leader of the county's Democratic Party
asserted that a gay person voting for Howell would be like "a Jew
voting for Hitler." Responds the leader of the Orange County
Republican Party,
writing in the Orlando Sentinel:
"Comparing any candidate to Hitler is so extreme, so vulgar and so desperate that it begs for a reaction of indignant outrage"[H]ow can a party chairman regard any voting block as exclusively Republican or Democrat? Voters do not belong to me or to my party, like distinct herds of cattle. How terribly presumptuous, not to mention condescending"to Democratic voters, gay and otherwise."
How indeed, except that this mentality is par for the course, and expressed in somewhat less vulgar terms by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, among others. Consider Frank's remark, "I guess if you're gay but you're also rich, and you like to pollute, and you don't like black people, then you vote Republican."
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which has endorsed Howell, chimed in with a condemnation of the Hitler comparison, although one that doesn't go much further than belaboring the obvious. "There is no comparison between a man who's participating in the democratic process and a totalitarian responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent people, including Jews and gay," says the Victory Fund statement.
Well, duh. Memo to the Victory Fund: It's not like the Democrats in Orange County just got slightly confused about the difference between Nazis and openly gay Republicans, you know. The Democratic party is dependent on its core constituencies -- blacks and Hispanics, trial lawyers, unionized government workers, and gays and lesbians. The trial lawyers and government workers aren't going anywhere as long as the Democrats continue to oppose tort reform and support bigger government. But the Democrats will fight tooth and nail to maintain their high percentage of minority and gay votes. That's why GOP efforts to reach out to Hispanics, blacks, and gays and lesbians are viewed as such a threat. And, in fact, the Orange County Democratic leader aimed his remark at a black gay Democrat who was helping Howell circulate petitions. Gays and blacks voting Republican -- no wonder the Democratic leader went apoplectic.
Still More on Goldstein. If you"ve been
following my
earlier postings on gay "progressive" Richard Goldstein's
attacks on gay moderates in The Nation and elsewhere over the past
few months, you might want to take a look at the letters
published in the current issue of The Nation. In addition to
the response from IGF contributor Andrew Sullivan (one of
Goldstein's prime targets), what's surprising is how many ordinary
readers of this left-of-liberal mag wrote to take umbrage at
Goldstein. For some of them, perhaps cocooned on the left since
they came out, Goldstein's screed may have at least enlightened
them to the existence of gays who are challenging left-wing
orthodoxy. As the communists like to say, "To be attacked by your
enemy is a good thing." Well, sometimes.