IGF CultureWatch

It seems as if a lot of the gay community attention and energy that would normally go to advancing gay equality is being siphoned off by the presidential race, primarily by the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

From a gay advocacy standpoint it is not clear that there is a lot of difference between the positions of Obama and Clinton. They both have articulated relatively gay-supportive positions-except, of course, for gay marriage which is not yet a winner in the court of public opinion.

For most gay voters then, the decision to support one or the other is based mostly on other, non-gay issues or on the symbolic significance that attaches to the first serious presidential candidacy of a woman or a man of mixed-race ancestry.

What I would like to know, however, is how hard the candidate if elected would work, how much of their time and energy they would devote, how much of their post-electoral political clout they would use to move their gay campaign commitments into the reality of policy.

Anyone can state a position, but achieving it is another matter entirely. Legal equality for gay people, equal partnership rights at the federal level, equal right to serve openly in the military, adding sexual orientation to employment non-discrimination legislation-those will take considerable effort.

Will the candidate-if elected-lobby senators and representatives? Will he or she pressure the joint chiefs of staff to approve ending the military gay ban? (The President is their boss, after all.) Will he or she issue the necessary executive orders? Will he or she use the bully pulpit of the presidency to help increase public support for those initiatives? To be sure, moving public opinion is like turning around a battleship-it takes time and continuous pressure, but the time to start is as soon as possible.

After all, both employment non-discrimination and an end of the military gay ban already have substantial majority support. Similarly, there seems to be majority support now at least for same-sex civil unions and equal federal benefits for gay partners. How long must we wait for the majority support we have earned to be translated into legislation and public policy?

What I hope is that every committed Obama and Clinton supporter will not rest satisfied with merely supporting his or her candidate and assume that the candidate will act zealously on their behalf, but will actively let the candidate know that the supporter's money and campaigning energy is based to a significant degree on the candidate's gay positions. You cannot leave this to the professional activists: Their statements are taken for granted as being part of their job and discounted accordingly.

Demand to know what specific actions the candidate-if elected-will take to implement his or her promises on gay issues. Our issues are not important for most people and they will get shunted aside unless we make clear how important they are to us. If we do not do it, who will?

My worry is that once the nominee is determined and the general election campaign begins, the candidates will focus on issues of more general interest-the Iraq War, health care, education, the condition of the economy, and gay issues will be soft pedaled or ignored entirely. We are certainly not going to get much conspicuous support as the candidates of both parties, having presumably locked in their core constituencies, both try to appeal to the political center and not offend any potential voters.

And the related worry is that gay Democratic activists will be so eager to get rid of Republican dominance of the executive branch that they will hesitate to raise our issues in any conspicuous way for fear of antagonizing any centrist voters who might otherwise vote for the Democratic nominee. In other words, they will be pressured to be, and they will want to be, "good boys" and not make waves.

A word on McCain. Writing in the April 8 issue of The Advocate, James Kirchick makes a persuasive case that McCain is no George Bush. He opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment (though not similar state amendments) and he is no partisan of the religious right.

But what Kirchick leaves out is the effect of another conservative on appointments to federal judgeships and the Supreme Court, and the absence of any plan or strategy by McCain for bringing the enormously expensive and deadly Iraq War to a conclusion any time in the next two decades.