A Calamity For Gay Republicans
By Marc Ambinder, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006
nationaljournal.com
( Perhaps they'll wake up, and realize they shouldn't BE Repugnicans? )
Less than 24 hours after Rep. Mark Foley resigned in disgrace, some 50 gay Republicans gathered at a friend's house in Virginia. They were in a brittle mood. Foley -- one of their own, in terms of sexual orientation and party ID -- had, by his misconduct, exposed them to personal and even professional recrimination. And they feared a backlash. A close friend of Foley's summed up the situation this way: "It is a disgrace. It's a disgrace for the party, and it's a disgrace and a disaster for all of us."
Some presumably heterosexual Republicans whispered to reporters that a "gay subculture" had protected Foley at the expense of their majority.
Washington's community of gay Republicans includes at least one member of Congress, more than a dozen high-ranking congressional aides, current and former White House staffers, advisers to the Pentagon, press strategists for prominent conservatives, several well-known journalists, and a legion of influential lobbyists.
Many choose not to publicly disclose their sexual orientation because they're afraid that they would face retaliation from their employers. Others believe that their employers might face retaliation from their constituents. Still others try to strike a balance, confiding in a select group but maintaining a safer, though ambiguous, public identity.
Contacted by National Journal, many declined to comment, and those who did speak asked that their names not be used. A few expressed the fear that any article about powerful gay Republicans could trigger a witch hunt. Indeed, in the wake of Foley's resignation, an e-mail purporting to identify gay Republican staff members circulated on Capitol Hill. Some presumably heterosexual Republicans whispered to reporters that a "gay subculture" had penetrated the highest ranks of the party and had protected Foley at the expense of their majority.
One well-known association lobbyist, speaking of his own situation, lamented, "It's really poisonous to be a gay Republican right now." Most Republican leaders took pains, in their initial public comments, to avoid the topic of Foley's sexual orientation. But others, particularly those identified with the party's culturally conservative wing, including Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, breezily conflated Foley's conduct with his sexual identity.
"You don't need 'gaydar' to understand he has certain dispositions," Cannon remarked to the Deseret News.
Foley has told his friends that he chose to be discreet about his sexual orientation in his home state of Florida. His thinking, according to a close friend, was that his political work had nothing to do with homosexuality and that he had no obligation to disclose it. He had convinced himself that it shouldn't matter. His friends say they think he used that rationale to cover his fear that it would matter to voters. Foley confided in several trusted reporters, but he refused to answer inquiries from others.
In 2003, after accumulating millions of dollars for a Senate race, Foley publicly refused to confirm or deny published reports that he was gay. He later chose not to run, he said, because he needed to tend to his parents. Earlier this year, as Katherine Harris' Senate bid floundered in Florida, Foley, according to both a former staff member and a close friend, expected party leaders to ask him to take her place. No such call ever came. His friends are now convinced that Foley grew frustrated by the disconnect between his political ambitions and the reality of his life.
The Start Of A Purge?
As he straddled the threshold of the closet, Foley created a welcoming atmosphere for gay staffers. "He made a great spot for gay Republicans to find a place to work," said a former Foley aide.
Several gay Republicans who worked for other lawmakers found his suite of offices to be a safe zone and would drop by to kibitz. Others benefited from his advice. He counseled one in his dealings with blogger Mike Rogers, who publicly disclosed the identities of a dozen gay Republican staff members.
Foley's friends ruefully speak of knowing that Foley was friendly with congressional pages. One recalls jokingly telling Foley to be careful not to confirm a stereotype about sexual predators. Foley laughed, a friend says.
But then, in the fall of 2005, a page sponsored by Rep. Rodney Alexander of Louisiana, complained. After Foley had furtive discussions with House officials, his friends warned him to police himself. And one former Foley staffer recalls asking the lawmaker directly whether there was anything more serious floating around. Foley, according to the former aide, said no.
The debate about what happened next consumed the Capitol this week. One senior Republican official sympathetic to Speaker Dennis Hastert said that Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, last spring promised both Rep. John Shimkus, the chairman of the page board, and a top assistant to Hastert that he would make sure Foley behaved himself. At that time, Fordham was the chief aide to Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Fordham's assurances, according to this account, apparently were enough to persuade Hastert's staff not to recommend further action.
But Fordham this week strongly disputed the charge that he interceded on Foley's behalf. Fordham instead contends that he was frustrated that his efforts to rein in Foley's questionable behavior had failed and that he subsequently sought help.
Fordham told ABC News that in 2003 he warned Hastert's powerful chief of staff, Scott Palmer, that he was worried about Foley's penchant for doting on male pages. Palmer, according to Fordham, subsequently notified Hastert. Palmer responded that Fordham's version of events is untrue. And a House leadership aide wondered aloud why Fordham, who professed to be surprised by Foley's conduct on Monday, was saying two days later that he remembered having long-standing anxieties.
That Fordham helped Foley deal with ABC News's inquiries late last week became the focus of Reynolds's suddenly jeopardized re-election campaign. On Tuesday, Reynolds considered firing Fordham. When the press attention increased the next day, Reynolds asked him to resign.
One of Fordham's friends suspected immediately that the leadership had decided to "purge" its ranks of gay staffers -- or at least would use the firing as a pretext to suggest Fordham and other gay Republicans working for senior House members had had an incentive to protect Foley.
Culturally conservative advocacy groups have worked feverishly to bring homosexuality to the center of the story. On Monday, the Family Research Council sent out a press release titled "Pro-Homosexual Political Correctness Sowed Seeds for Foley Scandal."
It stated, "While pro-homosexual activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two."
Most researchers have found no evidence of such a correlation. Meanwhile, the Arlington Group, which speaks for many influential evangelical activists, released a statement saying its members "are very concerned that the early warnings of Mr. Foley's odd behavior toward young male pages may have been overlooked or treated with deference, fearing a backlash from the radical gayrights movement because of Mr. Foley's sexual orientation."
Patrick Sammon, the executive vice president of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, said he doesn't anticipate any sort of purge of gay Republicans from Hill offices. "The fact is, the anti-gay groups are losing momentum," Sammon said. "And momentum is on our side, so they're going to use any desperate tactic to turn the tide. Most people are intelligent enough," he added, to know that Foley's behavior isn't typical of gay men.
Yet The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote that House Republican leaders should have "quarantined" Foley from male pages and that the leaders were lenient on him precisely because they knew he was gay. The Republicans, The Journal asserted, did not want to open themselves up to charges from liberals that they were holding a gay lawmaker to a different standard.
Implicit in The Journal's editorial is a sociological quirk of Washington life: Republicans in Washington, even some who publicly crusade against gay marriage and refuse to meet, officially, with gay Republican groups, often knowingly hire and socialize with gay people. The atmosphere of quiet accommodation extends to the top reaches of the party. During the last election cycle, the Republican National Committee's field director, Dan Gurley, did not make a secret of being gay. Robert Traynham, the communications director for conservative Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, is openly gay. At Grover Norquist's Wednesday meeting of conservative leaders in Washington, one activist urged those in the room to separate homosexuality from Foley's conduct, and most in attendance seemed to agree.
Not surprisingly, many Democrats and liberal gay-rights activists shun well-placed gay Republicans as traitors to their sexual orientation. Far from using their position to advance the cause of gay rights, "they have rewarded failure," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
Foley's situation "may be the last straw for many gay Republicans," he said. "At one point, it may have been worth the effort, but they long since knew they were losing and weren't succeeding." Even some gay Democrats wonder whether the pressures of the closet are partly to blame for Foley's problems. "Being gay and closeted doesn't guarantee that you'll do things you shouldn't do, but it increases the likelihood that you might," Frank said. "That's what happened when I used a prostitute," he said, referring to an incident that led to his 1990 reprimand by the House.
Both parties are sensitive to shifting public attitudes about homosexuality. Although a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, they support civil unions. But a strong and politically potent minority believe that homosexuality is contrary to God's will or, at the very least, abnormal. The Republican Party has vigorously fanned the anxieties of these voters. Top Republicans and White House officials helped to orchestrate anti-samesex marriage initiatives intended to boost turnout among conservatives, particularly Catholics and evangelical Protestants.
Democrats, too, sometimes "borrow a page from the Republican playbook," said Joe Solomnese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, Washington's major gay-rights lobby. Democrat Ken Lucas, who is challenging GOP Rep. Geoff Davis in Kentucky's 4th District, told a newspaper editorial board that Republican leaders should have watched Foley closely because he is gay. Earlier this year, Democratic strategists delighted in gossiping about Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman's sexual orientation. Mehlman told the New York Daily News last May that he's not gay, and he joked that rumors to the contrary had hurt his social life for a while.
When Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona retires at the end of this term, there will be no openly gay Republicans in Congress. In 1996, after a gay magazine threatened to out him, Kolbe publicly disclosed his sexual orientation. Former Republican House members who are gay are reluctant to speak openly about the Foley scandal or their own experiences. Former Rep. Steve Gunderson, who represented a Wisconsin district, declined through a spokesman to comment, saying he prefers to speak only about his post-Congress foundation work. Reached in Miami, former Rep. Bob Bauman, who lost his seat in Maryland's congressional delegation after being outed in 1980 for patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute, said he no longer talks about his experiences.
"That part of my life was over 20 years ago," he said. |
