When the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) recently endorsed John McCain for president the usual suspects bitterly denounced them. Treason! Delusional! Selfish! Self-hating! These criticisms misunderstand Log Cabin's basic mission. In the context of that mission, LCR's endorsement was sensible.
As usual when I write about Log Cabin, I should first explain my own history with the group. Back in the mid-1990s, I was president of the group's Texas chapter. I also served briefly on LCR's national board of directors in the late 1990s. Although I have many friends in LCR, I've had no role in the organization for eight years.
Critics of the endorsement basically argue as follows: (1) LCR is a gay-rights group. (2) Gay-rights groups should endorse the candidate who's better on gay rights. (3) McCain is worse on gay issues than Barack Obama. (4) Conclusion: LCR should not have endorsed McCain.
What explains LCR's endorsement in the face of this simple logic? LCR's critics offer several explanations.
Some say that Log Cabin must simply be ignorant of the candidates' stands on a familiar list of issues, like employment-discrimination protection and the military's gay exclusion. But LCR's directors and members are very well informed on these and other political issues.
Other critics say that LCR members must be self-hating. This charge is silly and uninformed. LCR recognizes, and actively opposes, the anti-gay tendencies in the GOP.
Finally, some critics conclude that LCR's members must care more about their own pocketbooks, preferring tax cuts over their own (or others') civil rights. Many label this selfishness or, worse, a betrayal of gay rights.
Some LCR members may indeed be stereotypically selfish Republicans - - just as some gay liberals are soft-headed and hopelessly naive. But the fairer description is that they simply believe libertarian or conservative positions on economic and foreign-policy matters better serve the public interest. That's what makes them Republicans, after all.
There is also irony in this criticism. It typically comes from left-leaning activists who have been counseling us for years that gay rights, narrowly conceived, are not the only thing that matters. LCR has taken this counsel to heart and, as a frankly partisan organization (unlike the Human Rights Campaign), it must consider its party's positions on non-gay matters.
The deeper problem is that LCR's critics fundamentally misconceive the organization's mission. Critics analyze the endorsement through a standard civil-rights lens. A gay-rights group should look at the candidates, they reason, and choose the candidate who's "better" today solely on the basis of gay rights.
This kind of analysis would almost always mean endorsing a Democrat over a Republican opponent. Fine, say the critics.
But the problem is that it leaves no room for a gay Republican organization working from within the party to improve it on gay issues while retaining its GOP credentials. Having some credibility as a Republican group is essential to LCR's mission. Otherwise, it's just a garden-variety gay-rights group.
Quite a few people think it's delusional to imagine that a few thousand gay Republicans are likely to have any effect on today's GOP, which is dependent on a "base" intensely hostile to gay equality. There's some truth in this. If the Republican Party is to change on gay issues, the primary reason will be huge shifts in the culture for which no single organization can claim credit.
But there is some value in having a group of openly gay people within the party embracing its basic philosophy while simultaneously endorsing gay equality. Such a group can have a uniquely positive impact given its special niche in the political system. These gay GOP activists literally embody the future Republican Party we must have if gay equality is to survive shifting electoral allegiances.
LCR operates on the principle that a political party that genuinely embraces small government and individual rights would be a good thing for everybody, including gay people. It endorses candidates based on long-term considerations about how to advance gay equality within a conservative political party.
This does not mean LCR should support all Republican candidates. However, the question for LCR is not reducible to weighing the candidates' paper positions on gay rights. The question is whether, given the context, including the overall tone of the campaign and the salience of gay issues within that campaign, the Republican candidate meets a minimum threshold of respect for the rights and dignity of gay Americans.
In 2004, George W. Bush did not meet that test after he backed an anti-gay federal marriage amendment that would have ended the possibility of gay marriage anywhere in the country for decades.
McCain, whatever his shortcomings, loudly and articulately opposed that amendment. His opposition was maintained at considerable political cost to himself. It takes nothing away from his courage to observe that he did so in defense of federalism, rather than in defense of gay marriage itself. Many Republicans and Democrats were ready, in the hothouse of that time, to ditch federalism in order to appease religious conservatives and others opposed to gay marriage.
McCain's opposition gave political cover to other Republicans and even Democrats to oppose the amendment. Thus was removed a dagger aimed at the infant heart of the gay-marriage movement.
To refuse to endorse him after that singular act, especially when he is famously alien to the party's religious conservatives (despite his recent pandering to them), would have been practically to forfeit any role for LCR within the GOP. And that would have been no favor to gay Americans.