Conversations secretly taped in 2000 with then presidential candidate George W. Bush, by a former aide now hawking his book, clarify Bush's perspective on gays and gay rights - not as rejecting as the fundamentalists wanted, and not as bad as gay rights activists claimed.
As
reported by the New York Times, the tapes were made by Doug
Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister and a Bush campaign
liaison to evangelical Christians. The Times notes:
A White House adviser to the first President Bush, Mr. Wead said...in 1990 that Andrew H. Card Jr., then deputy chief of staff, told him to leave the administration "sooner rather than later" after he sent conservatives a letter faulting the White House for inviting gay activists to an event.
Which perhaps should have alerted "W." that the guy wasn't to be trusted (at any rate, this betrayal might open Bush's eyes a bit).
According to the Times, "Many of the taped comments foreshadow
aspects of his presidency, including his opposition to both
anti-gay language and recognizing same-sex marriage." Also, Bush
"repeatedly worried that prominent evangelical Christians would not
like his refusal 'to kick gays.' -- Specifically:
Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.
But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"
Many activists will again go ballistic (expect denunciations of Bush calling gays "sinners") and ignore that fact that Bush (a) said he was in the same boat and (b) was rebuking the fundamentalists using a language they shared.
Here is another relevant excerpt:
Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."
"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."
Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."
Again, not the "bigot" and "hater" of activist propaganda.
On the other hand, Bush is never going to be a ally for marriage
equality. Again, the Time reports:
As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention.
All in all, unless we understand the mainstream GOP view that
Bush reflects, rather than making it seem worse than it is, we
won't be able to enter into any kind of meaningful dialogue with
the party in power.
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