Did any president, ex- or sitting, show more friendliness and warmth of spirit to gay folks than President Ford did in this 2003 letter to Charles Francis, the head of the then-promising Republican Unity Coalition? Ford says:
I fully concur...on "gay equality before the law." I sincerely hope that you prevail in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.
The coalition sought to make sexual orientation "a non-issue in the Republican Party." President Bush and the Federal Marriage Amendment/Marriage Prevention Amendment shot it out of the sky. Bush, of course, refused even to say the word "gay" for most of his presidency. Contrasting that with Ford's tone says volumes about the Republicans' wrong turn. With luck, it also hints at a different future.
President Ford was as decent and humble a man as ever worked in American politics. My own favorite Ford story, told by his former press secretary, Ron Nessen: When the president's dog, Liberty, pooped on the White House carpet, Ford blocked the Navy stewards who rushed to clean it up, insisting on doing the dirty work himself. Ford said, "No one should have to clean up after another man's dog."
18 Comments for “Ford’s Gay-Friendliness.”
posted by Greg Capaldini on
Am I mistaken to remember that President Ford had a gay son?
posted by raj on
Son Stephen was rumored to be gay while Ford was in office, and maybe a little after he left office. But I never read anything to confirm it and there was a little denying going on–nothing nasty, just denials.
posted by Len on
My issue with gay progressives who treat the GOP as if it must always be “the enemy” (and thus take a stance of implacable opposition instead of lobbying/wooing) is that there is real potential for the Republicans to be enticed into a more gay-friendly stance as shown by a Ford or a Goldwater, among others.
With someone like Rudy (or even McCain) at the head of the ticket, we could see a very different GOP. Would gay Democrats welcome that, or see it as a threat to their own “one party” strategy?
posted by dalea on
Gerald Ford was the last Republican I ever voted for. A good man, and an example of what conservativism used to mean. But that sort of sensible, good natured political viewpoint is pretty much extinct. Lincoln Chafee went down in flames carrying the banner last November. So did Leach in Iowa.
Who is left on the national stage? Snowe, maybe Hagel, Spector pretty much exhausts the list. The problem for gay conservatives is they keep holding up a dead horse as a vehicle for advancement. The Republican party talked about here, the one that is filled with open and gay friendly pols, exists for sure. In large liberal cities, and some other liberal outposts there is indeed such a thing. Places where there is a larger liberal Democratic Party tend to have a liberal Republican one. But these people have virtually no national influence on the party. Not even Guiliani does for all the attention he gets. In most of the country, the actual choice is between some moderate Democrat and a rapture ready Republican wingnut.
Which is what makes it appear that IGF is disconnected from the real world. For most gay people outside a few major cities, the description given here of conservativism sounds like something produced by very heavy drugs. Not by observing the world around us. Nor by seriously looking at the election stats. Just nostalgia for a world as gone as Tzarist Russian. Which can not be a plan of action, just a way to reminisce.
If we had a party where the voice of people like Ford was heard far and wide,and taken seriously, it would make sense for gays to be part of it. But we don’t. We have the party of the religious loons and the wingnuts. In which party there is no place for gay people.
Perhaps the best vision of a two party solution is Gov Sebalius of KS. She has worked actively to recruit moderate Republicans to run as moderate Democrats. Which seems to produce an exodus from the Republican party of the kind of people who are open to gay folks. The net result is that the Democrats become even more the only rational choice for gay people.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
What makes this funny is that gay leftists like Dalea would claim it was “homophobic” and “hateful” if a state governor actively affirmed that they opposed gay marriage and supported laws that ban it.
That is, unless her name was Kathleen Sebelius.
And that really shows Len’s point; as the 2004 elections showed us, Democrats like Dalea will rail against the stances of Republicans, but then scream “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive” and channel tens of millions of gay dollars to candidates who openly state that they have the same position as those Republicans.
Meanwhile, conservative gays like myself have had no trouble in working with Republicans in cities like Dallas and Fort Worth to advance and pass nondiscrimination ordinances. It is simply a matter of keeping leftist antireligious bigots like Dalea, who thinks gays should have the right to urinate and vomit on Christians in public, out of the process — and make it clear that we will not tolerate leftist Democrat heroes like Bonnie Bleskachek who abuse nondiscrimination law and themselves use their position to manipulate other people into having sex with them for career advancement.
posted by Audrey B on
In my opinion, the only rational choice for people of any sexual orientation is Libertarian. I say this because I believe in the values of our founding fathers. All those who want liberty (for real, this time) say ?I?.
posted by Novaseeker on
I get it now! If all gay people simply became conservative and voted for the Republicans, there would be no more issues relating to gay rights at all, because we would suddenly see the enactment of all kinds of legal protections for gay people everywhere in America! It’s so simple!
/sarcasm_off
And by the way, as a pre-emptive effort to discourage your favourite game of “label my interlocutor”, I am not a “leftist” but an independent. I have voted for people from each of the main parties, and will likely continue to do so in the future, so keep your labels to yourself.
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
there is real potential for the Republicans to be enticed into a more gay-friendly stance as shown by a Ford or a Goldwater
With who?
Where would that candidate begin?
He wouldn’t even be able to make it in a primary, let alone get elected. The Republican party has already indicated it would sooner lose an election — by a significant margin — than let go of its far-right-wing social conservatism.
The GOP’s response to its electoral defeat? More of the same, and even more social-conservative, anti-gay “leadership.”
conservative gays like myself have had no trouble in working with Republicans in cities like Dallas and Fort Worth to advance and pass nondiscrimination ordinances
That’s part of the problem too.
The old parties are busy being demogogues on gay rights — with leftists not being anywhere near as great as they claim and rightists happily passing anti-gay laws and then pointing to useless “anti-discrimination ordinances” as “proof” that their big-government agenda on gay issues is hunky-dory.
Neither has a bona-fide belief in the liberty and self-determination of individual gay citizens and their right to live their lives — their *entire* lives in *every* area — as they see fit. Rather, they spend all their time arguing over which areas of our lives the government should run for us and how those areas should be run.
That’s why gay rights in the GOP and Dem parties are such a dead end. Neither uses them except as campaign fodder for their dim-minded followers.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
I get it now! If all gay people simply became conservative and voted for the Republicans, there would be no more issues relating to gay rights at all, because we would suddenly see the enactment of all kinds of legal protections for gay people everywhere in America! It’s so simple!
And yet, Novaseeker, slavishly preaching the reverse of that (“liberal” for “conservative”, “Democrat” for “Republican”), has been so successful that you’re now living under a state constitutional amendment you hate and with a governor and former Presidential candidate — both Democrats — who openly and loudly support stripping gays of rights.
If you want support from Republicans, you need to support them as well. However, as dalea has made clear, “real gays” must always vote Democrat and always oppose Republicans. Don’t blame the Republicans, then, for not bothering to appeal to a constituency that has openly stated its complete, utter, and total hostility towards them — and, as dalea makes obvious, considers any action by Democrats, even if it involves stripping gays of rights, to be “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive”. When you also consider that this constituency is represented by antireligious bigots who demand, like dalea, that Christians and the religious should be publicly urinated and vomited upon for exercising their legal rights, you can also see why Republicans really want very little, if anything, to do with them.
posted by dalea on
Wow, our favorite Aunt Tom, ndiii, has decided to take after me. Again. What an honor, to be the local bogyman. Imagine, someone had the gall to advocate getting tough with religious nutwads. Good ol’ ndiii says just accept these creeps and honor their ‘religion’.
Yes, I advocate hardball tactics with those who seek to use their employment venues to advance anti-gay sentiments. And I strongly urge outing any and all homophobes. Ndiii seems to feel that once some hatefilled bigot crys religion, we should get all mushy and sentimental, seeing the hateful as some sort of something cuddly. And I further suggest that those christians who are offended by this attitude get off their lead butts and deal with their fellow believers. Like right now. When people who have generally met with and dealt with only hatefilled conservative christians, are told to be more understanding the result is like mine.
Anyway, it is always fun to hear from those bringing the light of christian practice to us, like ndiii. He is the best advocate of anti-christianity we have here.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
LOL; what makes it funny, dalea, is that you seem to be all hep to go after and publicly assault Christians who exercise their legally-protected right to request reasonable accomodation……but seem to have nothing, absolutely nothing to say about people in the same city who use their power and privileged position to demand sex with them as the price of advancement, who sabotage the promotion of those who rebuff them, who openly discriminate against people not like them, and who callously hurt the careers of innocents to cover up their hateful actions.
Why? Because it’s a gay person doing it.
Or, to put it bluntly, you gay leftists are more concerned with someone who was acting WITHIN the law than you were with a glbt who was breaking it.
And, since Bleskachek unquestionably was using her employment venue to advance her anti-male, anti-straight, sex-demanding sentiments, by your logic, others should be perfectly justified in using “hardball tactics” against gays.
People in Minneapolis know this. And they also know that gay leftists like you, dalea, are antireligious bigots and hypocrites.
posted by raj on
It’s nice that Ford send a nice letter to Francis, then head of the RUC (the Republican Party’s analog to the Soviet Union’s “labor unions”–i.e., the vehicle that the Republican Party used to suggest to the Soccer Moms to believe that they actually didn’t despise gay people).
But Ford’s legacy will forever be tainted not only with his pardon of the criminal Nixon, but also with the fact that he green-lighted General Suharto’s (of Indonesia) attempted genocide of the East Timorese. That genocide resuled in the murder of 1/3 of the East Timorese population, and began only a few hours after Ford and is Secy State Kissinger had supped with Suharto and had left Jakarta.
Ford was an evil man, and attempts to praise him now that he is finally dead fall on deaf ears.
posted by raj on
It’s odd (not really) that NDXXX is still whining about his assertion that christians should be granted special rights–because they’re christian.
What’s even more odd is the fact that he’s doing so in a comment that fulls less than an entire screen.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
It’s odd (not really) that NDXXX is still whining about his assertion that christians should be granted special rights–because they’re christian.
LOL….so including religion in employment law nondiscrimination statutes is “special rights”?
In that case, it becomes completely understandable why people think gays like Raj who demand employment protections are asking for “special rights”.
What is hilarious is that nondiscrimination on the basis of religion works both ways; just as a Christian bus driver could make a request for reasonable accomodation to not drive a bus with an ad she finds objectionable on the side without fear of retaliation or reprisal, so could an atheist for exactly the same reason.
Furthermore, I’ll take a Christian requesting reasonable accomodation under the law any day over a gay person using their position to discriminate against males, straight people, and anyone who won’t provide them sex on command.
posted by Randy on
“Gerald Ford was the last Republican I ever voted for. A good man, and an example of what conservativism used to mean. ”
you mean conservatism used to mean that you let people guilty of crimes be pardoned so that they escape any sort of prosecution? That only the underlings who carried out the wishes of a criminal are deserving of jail?
Please — no one needs that, whatever your political stripe.
posted by Anon on
Is see this, and I see the Oliver Sipple story. And it’s funny, because I was just wondering if I am the only one to notice that Heather Poe had more screentime during the funeral than Betty? A seating chart accident, surely. But thank God for C-SPAN!
Tickled me pink. Made my day.
posted by Mike German on
Great article in today’s WSJournal about the gay couple who fixed up President Ford’s former childhood home in Gr. Rapids – and made a friend along the way:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116769005038064229.html?mod=todays_us_nonsub_page_one
posted by ETJB on
Ford was the last Republican President to support the ERA and be pro-choice.