Mark Foley Doesn’t Represent Me: A Gay Republican Speaks
By Dennis Sanders | Related entries in General Politics
The Mark Foley scandal threatens to make life hard for gay men in general and gay Republicans in particular. The former congressman’s salacious instant messages with teenaged boys have unleashed stereotype of gay men as sexual predators ready to feast on innocents.
But it also paints a very distorted picture of gay Republicans as self-loathing, closeted individuals who knowingly support anti-gay politicians. Recently, David Corn, a writer for the Nation, questioned why gay Republicans, well why we exist:
Let’s be clear about one thing: the Mark Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Some family value conservatives are suggesting it is. But anytime a gay Republican is outed by events, a dicey issue is raised: what about those GOPers who are gay and who serve a party that is anti-gay? Are they hypocrites, opportunists, or just confused individuals? Is it possible to support a party because you adhere to most of its tenets–even if that party refuses to recognize you as a full citizen?
Of course , Mr. Corn was talking about gay staffers on the Hill, but he might has well been talking about gay Republicans in general since I’ve heard that argument before.
Well, let me tell you MY story.
I am an out gay Republican man who lives with his partner in a house in North Minneapolis. (My partner is an ardent Democrat, and somehow we maintained a truce. He’s too cute to argue with.) I’m a pastor and I don’t hide my sexuality. I’m not putting it anybody’s face, but I’m not hiding. For nearly five years, I’ve been part of Log Cabin Republicans. As a part of Log Cabin, I’ve worked on campaigns of those candidates who are “fair-minded” and support gay rights. Along with others, I’ve spoken out against Republican politicians who support policies that hurt gay Americans.
The question always comes, how can you support a party that doesn’t like you? This again brings up the image of someone who just blindly support anyone with an “R” behind their name. Since this question usually comes from Democrats, let’s turn that question around: do you support the Democrats because they like you? I would think most gay Democrats support their party for many reasons ranging from social programs to the environment to national security. Neither I nor any of my gay Republican friends support Republicans who are anti-gay. We believe in many of the values of the GOP: limited government, low taxes and a strong national defense (though the argument can be made that these days, the current leadership doesn’t reflect these values anymore). However, gay Republicans, at least most Log Cabiners, won’t support someone who wants to limit our rights as Americans.
Log Cabin Republicans want to change the party’s stance on gays. It does us no good to simply leave the party and allow the far right to control the party. We want to send the bigots packing the same way that Democrats did to Southern segregationists four decades ago.
It is not easy to be a gay Republican. You are attacked by the Religious Right and by other gays. Try having a booth at Gay Pride. Every year for several years, our local chapter has had a booth at Twin Cities Pride. Many times you will recieve dirty looks and even sometimes slurs from people. We are constantly characterized as the equivalent to “Jews for Hitler.” While I do agree that gay Republicans should be out, because that helps the cause of gay rights, I can understand why some chose to keep a low profile; no one wants to face the verbal assault from fellow gays.
Mark Foley is a sad individual. For years, he denied being gay. He finally did only when he was caught red handed. Foley might be a gay Republican, but he sure as hell doesn’t represent the many gay Republicans that I know who are out and proud and are NOT trolling the internet to have virtual sex with people who weren’t around during the Reagan Administration. He should not be viewed as the template for all gay Republicans. He chose to live in the closet and it is now the closet that has destroyed him.
I would ask those who lean more to the left to actually get to know some gay Republicans. Listen to them. We are not apologists for the far right. We live out in the open and work hard for equality. Don’t allow one pathetic lawmaker from Florida be the only example of gay Republicans.
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October 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I have to admit, I’ve always thought of the term “Gay Republican” as being an oxymoron. Though frankly I’ve also always believed that anyone who toes the Republican party line, gay or straight, doesn’t give a shit about anyone who isn’t a corporation or make over $100k a year, and has no concept of the looming environmental disaster our society is generating. Plus they seem to believe that the definition of “diplomacy” is “Beat them with a stick until they do what I want.”
Regarding trying to change the Republican stance on gays…pretty much no chance until their core base the fundamentalists accept homosexuality - in other words, when hell freezes over (or the Rapture arrives - oh PLEASE let the rapture come and take away all the fundies!)
Of course I don’t believe Foley did what he did because he’s gay, but I do believe that internalized homophobia and fear of outing can be motivating factors behind this sort of behavior. Psychologically it is easier to go after young, impressionable types than it is to have a mature adult relationship, especially if you loath in a potential partner what you loath in yourself - their homosexuality. Doing things with teenage kids may also be seen mentally as merely the good-natured playing around that many boys did when they were growing up - it doesn’t fit into the “gay” box and therefore has less negative stigma attached to it in the mind of a homophobic gay person. That plus paranoia about HIV and other such issues also can drive the uneducated into that arena, because young guys are theoretically less likely to have been exposed.
Mind you, I’m not excusing Foley at all, but I’m trying to place the blame properly on the society that made him hate and fear his homosexuality rather than on his homosexuality itself. I am also differentiating his behavior (ephebophilia) from pedophilia, as psychologically one is classified as a mental disorder and the other is not - in many societies even today marriages are performed between older men and women as young as 13 or 14 - our culture considers that to be kinda sick, but the point is that it is not outside the range of common human practices.
I have to admit, though, even though I personally think what he did was more icky than indictable (unless it turns out he actually had sex with a page while they were a minor), I’m definitely gloating about what it’s doing to the Republicans’ chances in the upcoming election.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Of course, if those who disagree with the religious right’s political views abandon the Republican Party, we end up with a Democratic Party with no viable check or balance. (Unless you are a wild-eyed optimist where third parties are concerned.) And we have seen for the last few years what happens when there are minimal to no checks and balances.
Likely it is true, in the vast majority of cases, that the homophobic views of religious fundamentalist individuals in the Republican Party won’t be changed. But that is very different from saying that the view of the Party can’t be changed. Unless everybody just accepts the assumption that it is impossible — in which case it will be.
Being a moderate (or even just a conservative but tolerant) Republican doesn’t win us any popularity contests. But the struggle is worth waging, for the good of the nation as well as the good of the party.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Dennis - What would like the Republican platform to be towards homosexuals? Tolerance is a bit vague. I consider myself tolerant, but I’m sure that other consider me anything but.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Many gay Republicans I met have one other defining feature - intolerance of other kinds of gay people. In particular, they like gays to be quiet, suit-wearing, church-going types who hide their sex lives and their orientations under a cloak of secrecy. Those who prefer to be flamboyant, sexual, or alternative are frowned upon, because they’re afraid we will scare the straight people with our “otherness”.
Granted, I probably have a similar level of intolerance towards those who want us to be chameleons of straight people, but mostly because I have always resented having other people tell me how they think I should live or think.
October 11th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Personally I feel a Gay Republican is an oxymoron. I dont personally see the vantage of belonging to a party that thinks Im half a person. It sounds too much like walking around in a black pointy hat with a straw broom and a book of spells and pictures of someone making pacts with the devil during the inquisition. I just dont see the point.
But if you want to speak Irony… my brother just told me about this woman who works with him. Lets call her Colleen. Well Colleen has gone about every angle one can get around being as closed minded as one can be when it comes to immigration, lets not even mention that her husband employs a good line of hispanics who have worked their lives to become established American Citizens. People with good familys who work hard to make it. Well Colleen has always thought herself above such people… never wanting to interact these employees of theirs. Never seeing that everyone struggles… why is colleen so closed minded? I dont know… but I do know kharma is real. For you see colleen hates people who she deems beneath her, unfortunately for colleen, she has become what some call a trophy wife. Colleen has many things of privilege, of which she earned nothing. One of those things is her porsche. It would seem she has had many many indiscrepencies with this car. And when she hit a someone who has no insurance, whom happens to be an immigrant, and with the fact that she has so many problems she requested the authorities to be absent from the issue at hand. So ofcourse, to do so will force her to pay for it all…. I dont think Irony could fit better.
Basically Im just saying that what goes around comes around. And If (heaven forbid) the homosexual end must define the inconsistencies of the family cockiness one gets from the republican party… well then… let another tyrant fall.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Mr. Sanders:
It is simply not good enough to say that you only support Republicans who are “good” on gay issues. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are political parties. That means that your nice Minnesota Republicans support Mark Foley, George Bush, Dennis Hastert and (ugh!) Rick Santorum. No matter how you slice it-they do not like us! Or in Foley’s case, himself. So if you really want it both ways: please consider a conservative Democrat. But if you love your partner,mother,father and me: call Al Franken and tell him you want to volunteer for a real American.
Michael McNamara, prairieman56@aol.com
October 11th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Hi Dennis, nice column. You are a wonderful person, but I cannot imagine being a gay Republican. Sounds almost like an abusive relationship. Some of my best friends/relatives are Republicans, and they are wonderful people too. But personally, I just can’t seem to vote for anybody who is anti-gay regardless of how much I agree with them on other issues. Doesn’t work for me.
Here’s an interesting comparison: Colin Powell (who is not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that), who joined the Republican party. They exploited, used and abused him, contradicted and humiliated him, then they tossed him away. Maybe he would have been better off being a Democrat?
Being a conservative used to mean actually conserving, remember? Like conserving the environment, conserving resources, less government, fiscal responsibility, et al. A true conservative would be neither anti-gay nor pro-gay, right? But this Republican party is not conservative at all, they are radical. You could be waiting a long time for them to accept gay people.
Keep smiling, keep writing
from Aunt Cheryl in Chicago
October 12th, 2006 at 7:06 am
Gay Republican? Mmmm…
The Republican platform is anti-gay, anti-choice, and, let’s be honest here, racist and xenophobic (why build a 700-foot fence on the border with Mexico and NOT on the border with Canada?). My guess is that gay Republicans are so because they are more interested in wealth and power. After all, the Democrats have always been the party of the poor, the disaffected, and the disenfranchised. Some gay people do not want to be counted among those kinds of ranks. They rather take holidays in Provincetown, wear D&G cargo pants, and sit in the balconies of their million dollar condos in DC while they watch their lesser brethren be led to the slaughterhouse.
The author may emphasize the fact that he only supports moderate and fair Republican lawmakers, but that argument doesn’t wash. This is the party of Bob Dornan, the venomously homophobic congressman (so vitriolic was he that some people questioned his mental sanity) who coined the acronym g.a.y. (got aids yet?) and whose chief of staff was Brian Bennett, a closeted self-loathing homo. How do explain this? How do you explain a homosexual working for a man like Bob Dornan?
And that’s just one example. Many of the anti-gay, anti-choice, xenophobic/racist Republican lawmakers in Capitol Hill employ gay staffers. Gay men (and Republican right-handers) like Kirk Fordham and Jeff Trandahl are accomplices in the dehumanization of gay people; furthermore, Fordham and Trandahl are not in the least concerned about the fate of the gay man at large, the gay men and women who live less glamorous lives in rural (or urban) America. Fordham and Trandahl care about their trips to Cape Code and their elite circle of friends…
That’s what a gay Republican is: a modern-day Uncle Tom…
October 12th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Personally, I am a republican who happens to be gay and I believe in personal responsibility, low taxes, limited government, strong defense, free markets, and individual liberty.
The people who have apparently hi-jacked the Republican Party do not represent me but if I and my fellow gay republicans walk away from the party, then we surrender. Isn’t America about fighting for what you believe in? Liberty is something you fight for. Liberty is not something that is given to you. I work within the party to try and change views just by my presence and the presence of my partner. Sure, we will not change everyone’s mind but our causal effect results in change and that is why we are where we are.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
You think those bastards actually listen to anything you say? The people who sometimes refuse to allow the Log Cabin Republicans to attend their conventions? The people who occasionally return your donations because they don’t want to be associated with you? You poor deluded fool.
October 12th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Oh, I do not think they listen at first but they see my presence and they feel it. When they find out that I am still with my highschool sweetheart after 28 years it BLOWS thier mind. They stutter. They stammer. Then I know they listened that I am with my hightschool sweethart and they aren’t. The shock value at having something many people dream about but few achieve is priceless and then I know that even if for a moment, they listened and remembered their first love. I am a lion in another’s lion den but I can hold my own. And to call me a fool is mild compered to what I have been called.
If you think it is easy being in LCR and also a republican and at places where many times I am hated? It is hard but just like a gay pride parade where people hold signs saying “GOD HATES FAGS”, I make my presence known and I am not backing down. The difference is that I do not scream insults. I do not sink to their animalistic level. I do not invoke the name of GOD to support my postion. I am who I am and demand respect. If you, and I mean SLEIPNER, do not respect me or anyone else for their beliefs and can merely call them I fool, well that is your right, but I would never call someone like you a friend.
I live with a passion for change and I work toward that goal. If I do not succeed, well then I don’t but at least I tried.
October 12th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Kevin - I am a conservative, white, Christian heterosexual male (I would be one of Sleipner’s bastards). I am certain that you and I differ in terms of the homosexual agenda. With that said, some of the most intelligent and talented conservatives have been homosexuals. Hate and disagreement are two very different things. I would imagine that you run into a fair amount of disagreement in terms of homosexual issues in the Republican party. I would hope that you don’t run into hate and, if you do, it should be universally condemned. I think Sleipner’s comments are a good example of the Democratic attitude towards homosexuals, but even more, blacks. The Democrats use these two demographics as if they are chattle birthrights that belong to them, to be used in anyway. You’re not authentically black if you do not tow the party line on entitlements and affirmative action. You are an “Uncle Tom” if you are homosexual in the Republican party. The reason is simple: The Democrats are fundamentally a party of identity-politics, particular victim-identity politics. You, as a homosexual and a Republican pose a threat to the very core of the Democrat party, to wit: that not all people embrace politics through the narrow scope of the victim-identity. Godforbid, a black person says affirmitive action is wrong, they are betraying their own identity. I have, and most conservatives do, an incredible respect for people that use THEIR MINDS, rather than their classification/identity, in their political decision making. Some Republicans probably don’t consider you a friend, they are stupid and they are playing the same identity-politics that Democrats do. Anyway, I enjoined your comment because it obviously came from the heart.
October 13th, 2006 at 1:50 am
Perhaps the reason you see Democrats as victim-identity politicians is because the Republicans treat gays, blacks, democrats, etc. as victims to climb over on their way to the executive golden parachute.
I don’t see race or orientation as a means to get what I want, but I do believe that my race or orientation should not prevent me from being able to ever get what WASPS get handed to them on a silver platter. Incidentally, I’m a white male who can pass for straight if I want to, so I’m perfectly capable of fitting into the “priviliged class” if I choose to. I don’t believe gay people have ever asked for any special or different rights, they just want the same rights as everyone else gets automatically.
Entitlements are not about race or ethnicity, but about income and being down on one’s luck. There are just as many white people who need welfare as there are black, and most legitimately need help, whether due to medical problems, job issues, sometimes problems with drugs or alcohol, or whatever. The biggest lie of the right is the “compassionate conservative” oxymoron - it’s a great sound bite but they have never had any intention of ever living up to it. A lot of people need help sometime during their life, and the Republicans have no desire whatsoever to give it to them (unless they’re rich or a corporation).
Another lie of the right is that Democrats want to give everyone a free ride. What they really want is to help people out until they can get back onto their own two feet again. Republicans are responsible for the huge ranks of homeless mental patients (because they closed down all the state-run mental institutions a few decades back), and don’t seem to realize that by spending a few dollars on someone down on their luck can transform those people back into contributing members of society. One would think a philosophy based on the free market and economics would recognize the concept of return on investment and proactive preventative spending to avoid higher reparational future costs (a la universal health care).
October 13th, 2006 at 2:00 am
And Kevin - congrats on the long term relationship, I know how rare that is in even the straight world, and more so in the gay community since we are denied marriage and children (in most states), which are two of the primary foci that help stabilize relationships.
My last relationship was actually with a Republican - so I can respect and deal with it to some extent - but at least he was more the fiscal / social Darwinist type of republican, not one the neocon fundie-appeaser morons that seem to have hijacked the party. His type of republicans I can at least understand - staying within budgetary limits makes a lot of sense to me, but I must admit that these days I paint the entire Republican party with the fetid brush of the neocons, because they keep voting with them…
October 15th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Thankfully, we are getting back to a rational debate. I do respect christian conservitive views. I live in a predominantly orthodox jewish neighborhood. I repect their views too. I respect that they will not eat pork or work on Saturdays. At the same time, I do not want legislation getting rid of “pork” unless it is the type in DC nor would I support a law banning work on Saturdays because it is the belief in my neighborhood. Yes, some stores are closed on Saturdays. That is their personal belief and choice. Many christian conservatives I know like me and don’t want to make their personal beliefs laws. Unfortunately, some do.
I believe in a higher power and I believe that for me to “know” instead of “believing” what it is to me is what I “believe” is blasphemy. My Jehovas’ Witness friends believe that I will simply go to sleep and remain in an unconsciosous state without thought (or pain) for eternity. I respect that view.
But any government that attempts to legislate so that its residents can get into heaven based on some christian dogma is a religious state. That is not what America is about.
Foley’s actions in “Baking the Chicken”, meaning that he would bait teens and wait until they were of legal age to make his first physical move (acording to the most recent accounts), sickens me and it would sicken me whether it was male or female because it lacks moral integrity.
Some people think that just because one has same gender sex with one’s partner that the person lacks moral integrity but that is just a belief or opinion. It is not a fact. How a man makes love in a committed relationship has little relevance to how a man lives his life outside his home. What is important is whether that man (or woman) has moral integrity at work, socially, in politics, and in life in general.
Any person who believes in change and that Amerca can be better is someone who cares about this country. Regardless of their views, aren’t they better that the person who will not vote on election day?
I HATE volunteering on election days at my polling place but I do it because I do it as a service for America.
Just please do not think of all gay republicans as fools (or if you do, keep that opinion to yourself).
Respect individuals for their views even if you do not agree with them but we have to STOP THE HATE in this country.
And I am not a VICTIM. I am far from it.