Bay Windows - August 14, 2008
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com

Throughout the Pittsburgh meeting, Sanchez was among a group of LGBT committee members that worked alongside the National Stonewall Democrats to ensure that the final platform was as pro-LGBT as possible.

The platform has not been without controversy within the LGBT community. Most LGBT advocates have praised this year's platform, which will be voted on by the party at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month, as the most progressive major party platform with respect to LGBT issues in the nation's history. For the first time the platform calls for an end to discrimination based on gender identity, opposes the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and ballot initiatives to ban same-sex marriage, and calls for the creation of a national AIDS strategy. Yet the LGBT blogosphere has been abuzz with debates about the platform's language, which omits the terms "gay" and "lesbian," both found in the 2004 platform, as well as "bisexual" and "transgender," and instead employs the legal jargon of "same-sex couples," "sexual orientation" and "gender identity." Sanchez said he suggested using the term "same-sex couples" rather than "gay and lesbian couples," a claim backed up by Stonewall, and he said the goal was to make the platform inclusive of the entire LGBT community and to use the language of public policy, not to de-gay the platform. The final text of the platform has not yet been released to the media.

Sanchez said when he and other LGBT committee members scrutinized the preliminary version of the platform created by the drafting committee they found that it called for "full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, and support [for] equal responsibility, benefits, and protections," but it did not specify that that included LGBT families. During discussions of that section in Pittsburgh, Sanchez said some members suggested adding in the phase, "including gay and lesbian families," but he opposed doing so, believing it left out other members of the LGBT community.

"I said, no, we're not going to go there, that's not your point," said Sanchez. He said he pushed for the term "same-sex couples" both because it was more inclusive and because it used the language used by lawmakers at the policy level to grant rights to same-sex couples.

"I said, if you're talking about same-sex couples, that language interests me. That language is used in laws," said Sanchez.

LGBT advocates defended the decision by the platform committee to use legal language rather than identity labels to describe the Democratic Party's stance on LGBT rights.

"This is the type of language that appears in legislation and policy across the country, and so when we're talking about the values and the policies we're thinking about in terms of Democrats across the country we're using language that they're going to use in their state legislatures, that they're going to use in their local non-discrimination policies for their state, for their county parties and for their state parties," said National Stonewall Democrats President Jon Hoadley, during a conference call about the platform with LGBT media. "This is intentionally trying to model that language. ... If the story becomes about, 'Four words are missing,' I think it would be a disservice to the fact that millions of our lives are included."

Speaking on the same call, openly gay Alabama state Rep. Patricia Todd, also a platform committee member, said she also felt the use of the legal language made the platform's commitment to LGBT rights stronger. She urged the LGBT media to look past the debates over language and to "not miss the big picture." She claimed that a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for the LGBT community.

"We can always nitpick anything to death. We can. We can find fault with anything," said Todd. "We have too much on the line right now with who's going to be president of the United States. And we cannot stand another four years of John McCain. It will kill us. We will go back 20 years if he is elected."

Sanchez also had an influence on the platform's language around HIV/AIDS. Sanchez said he and Marjorie Hill, executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), pushed for a change in the section on HIV/AIDS, adding a call for a national AIDS strategy to address the epidemic in the U.S. Hill and Sanchez's boss, AAC executive director Rebecca Haag, have been outspoken in calling on lawmakers to create a national AIDS strategy. Sanchez said the additional language in the party platform echoes Sen. Barack Obama's earlier commitment to create such a strategy.

"The 15 focus countries that receive money from the United States through PEPFAR [the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief] are required to have a national strategy. We excepted ourselves. This is an effort to correct that," said Sanchez.

Joe Kaplan, another openly gay platform committee member and a Democratic State Committee member from Mansfield, credited Stonewall Democrats and Todd with helping coordinate the efforts of the committee's LGBT members. The morning of Aug. 9 Kaplan said Stonewall held a brunch for the LGBT members, where they discussed which amendments they wanted to file. But beyond the added specificity around LGBT families he said delegates were largely happy with the initial version of the platform sent to Pittsburgh by the drafting committee.

"The draft started off as very favorable to begin with. There was nothing we disliked. There were parts we wanted to strengthen, and we did," said Kaplan.

Some of the platform's most groundbreaking statements were in the original version sent by the drafting committee to Pittsburgh, including the call to end discrimination based on gender identity and the opposition to DOMA. Sanchez credited openly gay Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, one of the members of the drafting committee, as well as DNC Chairman Howard Dean with ensuring that much of the pro-LGBT language, including the transgender-inclusive language, was in the original draft.

Baldwin, who spoke to reporters on the Stonewall Democrats conference call, was one of the 15 voting members on the drafting committee who created the first draft of the document at a meeting in Cleveland the week before the platform committee meeting in Pittsburgh. She described the 2008 platform as a broader and more substantive document in terms of LGBT issues than its 2004 counterpart. As with past platforms the 2008 platform neither explicitly supports nor opposes same-sex marriage, but it calls for "equal responsibility, benefits and protections" for all couples. Baldwin said the drafting committee felt that language left room for support for a range of policies to protect LGBT families. Baldwin also said the language opposing "all attempts to use this issue [of same-sex marriage] to divide us" was intended to show opposition to all of the federal and state efforts to ban same-sex marriage.

"In Cleveland there was, recognizing where we are in the nation right now on this, with this being a more nationally-focused document and these battles occurring in the states, we felt it most important to emphasize the opposition to attempts to use the issue of same-sex marriage to divide us, in other words both the Federal Marriage Amendment but also the battles that are going on in the states, and just make a very strong statement of full equal responsibility, benefits and protections for all families, including same-sex couples, without getting into the very specifics of how different states are trying to achieve that, some through marriage, some through civil unions, and certainly others with a long way to go," said Baldwin.

The platform's stances on DOMA and gender identity discrimination not only break new ground, they also set an ambitious agenda for the Democrats that so far has not gained traction in the Democrat-controlled Congress. The platform's call for an end to discrimination based on gender identity and a comprehensive ENDA bill comes after House leadership stripped the gender identity language from ENDA last fall, concerned that it did not have enough support to survive efforts to stop it by Republicans. Congress has also taken no action on DOMA, which passed in 1996 with substantial Democratic support and was signed by former President Bill Clinton. But Kaplan said from what he was able to see there was little controversy around adding either of those positions to the platform.

"Our Massachusetts delegation all showed up and they were all supportive," said Kaplan.

Sanchez said he also found no opposition. During an opening cocktail reception for the committee he said he went from group to group and spoke with people about the gender identity language, among other issues, and he said everyone seemed comfortable with it.

"As far as knowing any level of detail, many people did, some did not, and I was happy to fill in the gaps about why it was important. ... But I certainly didn't want to be at a reception of more than 100 people and not use it as a chance to talk with people about important inclusions that hadn't been there in the past," said Sanchez.

Log Cabin: GOP platform is dead to us

While the Democrats are expected to ratify their platform later this month, the Republicans are still drafting theirs. But Log Cabin Republicans Director of Programs and Policy Jimmy LaSalvia said there would be no organized effort to try to push for pro-LGBT language and to remove anti-gay positions from the platform. The 2004 platform included a lengthy section strongly opposing marriage equality and supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment. LaSalvia said rather than work to block similar language from being included this year, Log Cabin will focus on planning its visibility events for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul next month.

"Honestly, the platform isn't a priority for us," said LaSalvia. "We are working hard to have a significant presence in Minneapolis, and we have chosen to put our efforts in other areas so we can have a substantive impact on the activities at Minneapolis/St. Paul this year. The truth is the day after it's written nobody cares about the platform, so we've chosen this year to engage in more substantive ways."

But Sanchez said he believes the party platforms have more than symbolic significance.

"I believe that the platform is the foundation for the party, and as people look at what the party stands for, that is the document [they consult]," said Sanchez.

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