Every public discussion of gay issues in America is packed with
ambiguity, nuance, and double meaning. This is an egalitarian and
liberty-loving country with strong religious faith: Majorities
oppose anti-gay discrimination in employment and in the military,
but also oppose gay marriage and still believe that homosexual acts
are immoral. While most people are comfortable having a gay
co-worker, they'd never want a son or daughter to be gay.
The presidential campaign has reflected, and the candidates have
manipulated, the country's deep ambivalence about
homosexuality.
The Bush Bypass
George W. Bush has developed a stock response to almost any
gay-related question. It involves both substantively opposing gay
equality and rhetorically reassuring everyone he's not a bigot, all
without ever using the word "gay."
Consider Bush's various statements on gay marriage over the past
year. Collected and condensed, they amount to this:
"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Activist
judges and local officials are trying to change this definition, so
we must protect marriage. But as we debate this, let's treat
everyone with dignity and respect."
The man-and-woman mantra of the first sentence enjoys 70 percent
support in elections, but especially appeals to religious
conservatives. The second sentence exploits populist resentment of
the judiciary. The third, Bush's dignity-and-respect mantra, pivots
to reassure gays and their friends and families that Bush doesn't
hate gay people.
No matter what the question, Bush almost never actually uses the
word gay. (He never uses the word homosexual, either. It is too
clinical and old-fashioned for some, too explicit for others.) A
substantial part of his political-religious base rejects the idea
that there are, properly speaking, "gay people" or homosexuals. For
them, the words homosexual or gay are adjectives, not nouns. They
describe an act, not a person.
Any time the subject comes up, Bush wants gays and gay-friendly
people to interpret his words as a humanitarian concession without
having religious conservatives interpret them as any kind of
political concession. It is a nice rhetorical trick that plays on
the hopes and fears of everyone.
The Kerry Cutoff
John Kerry has a different challenge but plays similar
rhetorical tricks. While he has a long Senate record of supporting
gay equality, he never mentions gay issues in his presidential
campaign unless asked about them.
Even when asked, his answers have gotten increasingly Delphic.
His stock response on gay issues now involves confirming he
supports liberty while reassuring us he's not for license.
So while he supported letting gays serve in the military during
the Democratic primaries, Kerry has since voiced concerns about
"unit cohesion" and morale. These are code words for opposing gays
in the military.
On gay marriage, Kerry always deploys the man-and-woman mantra.
(See above.) Asked to defend his position, he invokes his
"religious" convictions. That's a nod to religious
conservatives.
When Missouri passed a state constitutional amendment banning
gay marriages - before a single judge there had ordered the state
to recognize such marriages - Kerry told the mainstream media he
had "no problem" with the amendment. Advised later by a gay
reporter that the amendment also banned civil unions, Kerry said he
opposed it. Informed still later that the amendment did not in fact
ban civil unions, his campaign said he had no position.
So, as Kerry might put it, he actually did support the amendment
before he opposed it before he was neutral.
The Edwards Exposè
Most richly ambiguous of all was the performance of John Edwards
in the vice presidential debate. Asked about gay marriage, Edwards
peppered his response with the man-and-woman mantra no fewer than
three times while declaring his opposition to a constitutional
amendment and his support for largely unspecified "benefits" for
gay couples.
And here is how Edwards began his answer:
"Let me first say that I think the vice president and his wife
love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't
have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk
about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they
embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of
parents like that who love their children, who want their children
to be happy."
Highlighting the homosexuality of an opponent's child is a very
odd way to begin an answer. While the moderator's question itself
had vaguely referred to Cheney's "family experience," nothing in it
stated that Cheney's daughter is gay. Edwards must have known that
his own comments would be the first time millions of people would
hear about it. Why would he introduce this fact into a nationally
televised debate?
To many listeners, Edwards' answer humanized the gay-marriage
issue by calling attention to the effect that denying marriage has
on the lives of actual people. It also affirmed the morality of
loving one's own children, gay or not. That message needs to be
heard by families who have rejected gay children.
But learning of Cheney's gay daughter likely had a very
different effect on some of Bush's conservative supporters. It
suggested that the administration might not be as trustworthy on
gay issues as they had thought. After all, Edwards just told them
that the Cheney half of the Bush-Cheney ticket has been infiltrated
by the enemy.
Did Edwards intend to produce that homophobic but politically
useful effect? He predictably denies any double-meaning. Such is
the complexity of talk about gay issues in this country that we
can't be sure.
[Editor's note: The above was penned shortly before the
final Bush-Kerry debate in which Kerry similarly raised the issue
of Mary Cheney's sexuality, about which the author comments in a
subsequent column.]