IGF CultureWatch

Believe it or not, in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race, Bay State governor and presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights.

That Romney would have run to the left of Ted Kennedy - who so corpulently embodies the catchphrase "big government" - on any issue, never mind one as loaded as gay rights, might sound preposterous, but it's all in writing.

Last week, Bay Windows, a Boston gay newspaper, reprinted excerpts from a letter Romney wrote to the Log Cabin Republicans in 1994, hoping to gain the group's support in his campaign against the veteran Democratic lawmaker and Massachusetts institution.

"If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern," Romney wrote. "My opponent cannot do this. I can and will."

Romney lost that race by a wide margin, but came closer to defeating Kennedy than had any previous challenger in recent memory. Romney's support for the gay community did not end with his loss, however, as his political aspirations dictated otherwise. At the Boston Gay Pride Parade in 2002, when he ran for governor, Romney supporters marched and handed out fliers stating, "Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend."

Twelve years later, Ted Kennedy actually supports "equality for gays and lesbians" as he has been a forthright backer of gay marriage and an outspoken opponent of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has made himself the poster boy for conservative opposition to gay marriage, conveniently positioned as he is at the geographical epicenter of the debate. The thought of Romney attending a Pride parade today is unthinkable. It is unlikely he would make it out alive.

Rather than making gay equality a mainstream concern, Romney has used the gays whom he was courting just four years ago as part of his nationwide comedy routine. That Romney is supposedly the lone sane person in a commonwealth full of radicals has become the crux of his presidential narrative. His stock line at GOP fundraising dinners across the country is that his being governor of Massachusetts is akin to being a "cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."

Romney won the governorship there in 2002 on reformist credentials; he parachuted in not long after cleaning up the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City Olympics.

Romney's flip-flop on gay rights is part and parcel with a radical shift toward the right in his single term as Massachusetts governor. In a 1994 interview with Bay Windows, when asked about his views toward "conservative Republicans like Pat Robertson or Jesse Helms," Romney came just short of decrying them outright. Yet the mention of those men's names conjured the memory of his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, "fighting to keep the John Birch Society from playing too strong a role in the Republican Party," and his walking out of the 1964 GOP convention after presidential nominee Barry Goldwater pronounced that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Since this interview, Romney has appeared as a guest on Robertson's popular Christian television program "700 Club" and has made outreach to religious conservatives a crucial part of his campaign.

Poor Mitt Romney. As he will soon discover, the evangelical Christian right will brook no opposition to their "values" agenda. They can spot a phony when they see one and are not so cynical as to endorse a charlatan like Romney over someone who has a track record on their issues. There are other potential candidates who fit their bill, who lack the baggage of past expressions of pro-gay support. Sen. Sam Brownback immediately comes to mind.

Romney was unmistakable in his support for gay equality in 1994, and that he would now come out in favor of laws that explicitly ban gay equality indicates one of two possibilities: that his views about the rights of gays underwent a complete and utter transformation in a four-year period or that Romney did the math and figured that he would have a better chance of winning his party's nomination if he ran to the right of John McCain.

So, is Mitt Romney a hypocrite, an opportunist or a nihilist? Can I choose all three?

The new Conservative government in Canada has lost its promised attempt to repeal same-sex marriage in that country. The vote in Canada's parliament was even more favorable to gay marriage than it was in 2005, with more Conservatives voting for it than last time. According to a story in the Toronto Sun, this appears to end the matter in Canada:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he heard the message and will respect it. "We made a promise to have a free vote on this issue, we kept that promise, and obviously the vote was decisive and obviously we'll accept the democratic result of the people's representatives," Harper said. "I don't see reopening this question in the future."

The question put to MPs was whether they wanted to see legislation drafted to reinstate the traditional definition of marriage, while respecting the existing marriages of gays and lesbians. That Conservative motion failed 175-123....

Ultimately, more MPs supported same-sex marriage than in the last vote on the issue in June 2005. During that charged vote last year, only three Tories voted in favour of expanding the definition of marriage. Today, the number who approved the status quo was 13, including high-profile politicians such as Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon and International Development Minister Josee Verner....

The action in Canada follows what has become a familiar pattern. Same-sex marriage emerges (sometimes through judicial action, sometimes not), which is followed by strong political resistance that weakens over time as people in the jurisdiction grow accustomed to the idea and see no ill effects from recognizing gay families in marriage.

The House of Commons has been dealing with the issue of same-sex marriage in earnest since 2002, when the Commons voted overwhelmingly to support the traditional definition of marriage. In 2003, however, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that barring same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional.

Gays and lesbians began marrying in the province, and soon other jurisdictions faced similar rulings and began issuing licences. About 12,000 gay Canadians, as well as foreign visitors, have been married in the last three years.

A similar pattern emerged in Massachusetts after the Goodridge decision in 2003. There was a swift and strong political resistance to the decision, manifested in an initial vote to repeal gay marriage by constitutional amendment in the state legislature.

The next year, after an election in which opponents of gay marriage lost seats in the state legislature, there was much less support for repeal and the effort was overwhelmingly rebuffed. The Republican leader in the state senate stated that after a year of allowing gay marriage in the state he had not detected any changes-except that more people could now get married.

Seeing they no longer had the votes in the state legislature to enact a state constitutional ban, opponents of gay marriage then tried the tactic of forcing a popular vote on the issue, which would require the support of only a minority of the state legislature. That may still happen, but it probably won't succeed if it does. Almost three years into the recognition of gay marriage, with no evidence of ill effects, polls in the state show majorities now supporting gay marriage.

Vermont followed a similar pattern, too. In 2000, when the state supreme court ordered the state legislature to give gay couples equal benefits, there was strong legislative and popular resistance to the idea. In that fall's election several supporters of civil unions were defeated in a campaign marked by the slogan, "Take Back Vermont." But the furor subsided, played no significant role in subsequent elections, and is now over.

In states where the recognition of gay relationships emerged legislatively-like California and Connecticut-popular resistance seems to have been even lower. An effort to place the issue on the ballot in California has so far failed. There has been little or no organized resistance in Connecticut.

More tests of this pattern are coming soon. The New Jersey legislature has just voted, under pressure from the state supreme court, to extend civil unions to gay couples. It will be interesting to see whether New York and Washington state, whose legislatures will likely be dealing with the issue in the coming months, meet much resistance, and if so, whether that resistance also subsides after the state gains actual experience with recognizing gay families in law.

If the pattern of fierce-resistance-followed-by-acceptance continues, a future history of the struggle for gay marriage might appropriately be titled, "Much Ado About Nothing."

The coming year will provide an all too brief respite from all too many people's focus on politics. We do not have to face threats from a GOP Congress, but we aren't going to get much out of a Democratic Congress since they don't want to give the GOP ammunition to attack them with in 2008.

Instead it is an opportunity for community building, for attention to promoting social acceptance of gays, and heading off future assaults from the religious right. Here are some possibilities. If you don't like these, create your own.

We need far stronger gay organizations at the state level. Because of America's federal system, many gay issues are and even more can be determined at the state level-marriage, civil unions, child custody, adoption, non-discrimination, etc. For years the national organizations appealed for funds to fight the GOP hegemony in Congress, starving our state organizations. Now that that threat is absent, it is important to build up state advocacy organizations and community centers, providing for a staff and adequate technical support. This is particularly important in states with a strong conservative presence.

We need a small specialty think tank of gay-supportive theologians to issue counter-arguments when the Catholic Bishops or other religious groups condemn gays, gay relationships, or gay sex. The religious round table of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force seems to limit itself to issuing feeble press releases praising this or condemning that, but it never offers sustained arguments against whatever conservative religious groups say. Over the years I have tried to respond to the Catholic bishops and other homophobic religious statements (in pieces now posted at the Independent Gay Forum), but I am a journalist, not a theologian, so I undoubtedly overlook many excellent arguments-and I am only one small voice.

We need a study of homelessness among gay adults. A new NGLTF study drew attention to the fact that a disproportionate percentage of homeless kids are gay. But we have little information on the proportion of gays among homeless adults. I was talking recently with a homeless man in his 30s. He said simply, "What about people like me?" I had no answer. I know of no studies of homelessness that indicate the proportion who are gay. Nor do I know what unique issues they face, nor where to suggest they go for help, nor how best to help them.

Many of us have urged gays to come out to more people. Let me be more specific: Come out especially to older friends and relatives. A larger percentage of older Americans vote than any other group. And older Americans are the most likely to be anti-gay. Born in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, they grew up when most gays were not open, so they may never have known a gay person when their social and cultural attitudes were formed. Since older Americans are living (and voting) longer, we need to try to remedy those formative impressions.

In states where it is most practical to advocate gay civil unions rather than marriage, we should start using a film clip of President Bush's statement late in the 2004 campaign that if states want to offer civil unions for gays, "They should be able to do that." What more effective propaganda could you offer to conservative voters than Bush's own non-opposition? I do not understand why that clip hasn't been used repeatedly.

Drop "queer." The attempt to "reclaim" it has failed utterly. For most of us it sets our teeth on edge. Gabriel Rotello, a former publisher who once promoted "queer," renounced it in an Advocate opinion piece titled "The Word That Failed." (The literary allusion is obvious.) Some younger gays all full of youthful rebellion-without-responsibility adopted "queer" for a time, viewing it as "edgy" and "in your face." But let me tell you, dear ones, gay liberty and equality are not going to be won by being self-indulgently "edgy" and "in your face." You are just helping our opponents.

We need more heterosexuals to speak out for gay legal equality, but I have no idea how to go about making this happen. The Advocate recently featured comedian and talk show host Bill Maher who regularly speaks out on behalf of gays, but can we somehow induce 10, 20, 100 people with a national reputation to take up our cause? Most prominent whites began supporting black civil rights only when the level of violence, intimidation, and denial of rights in the south was made crystal clear on television news shows. But how often is a gay bashing broadcast? Or a child being yanked away from its lesbian mother or gay father? And how can you film a marriage ceremony that doesn't happen?