Washington Blade - November 5, 2004
Chris Crain, Executive Editor

Consider this week's election toll:

President Bush was re-elected on the strength of a gay marriage ballot initiative in Ohio and a remarkable turnout among cultural conservatives nationwide.

Despite the relentless campaign and media focus on the Iraq war and terrorism, exit polls confirmed that "moral values" were the No. 1 issue for the largest number of voters in the election.

Among those surveyed at the polls, 22 percent cited "moral values" as the most important issue, and 79 percent of those voters went for Bush. Other issues trailed, including the economy and jobs, which usually decide U.S. elections, terrorism and even the war in Iraq.

Before you chortle that these same exit polls have already been proven to be amiss, after they led to unfounded optimism that John Kerry would sweep most of the battleground states, keep in mind that this very inaccuracy only serves as an exclamation point here.

The inflated Kerry numbers apparently derived from too many female voters and Kerry sympathizers, which means the actual percentage casting their ballot based on "moral values" was likely even higher.

In all 11 states voting whether to amend their state constitutions to ban gay marriage, those initiatives passed and did so handily. In eight of those states, the measures ban civil unions as well, despite President Bush's 11th hour break with his party's platform on that issue.

In key U.S. Senate races, the gay-baiting candidates - all Republicans - pretty much cleaned house. That "dishonor roll" includes Jim Bunning of Kentucky, the baseball Hall of Famer whose surrogates called his bachelor opponent "limp-wristed" and questioned his manhood.

In Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, the man Bush tapped to head his advisory commission on HIV/AIDS, warned voters that lesbians were swarming school bathrooms in southeast Oklahoma. Surrogates broadcast a TV ad featuring the Washington Blade, claiming that gay activists were trying to hide his opponent's support for gay marriage. In reality, the Democrat in the race opposed gay marriage, and the Blade article highlighted in the ad made no claim to the contrary.

In South Carolina, Jim Demint declared that openly gay teachers should be banned from schools.

In Florida, Mel Martinez, the former Bush housing secretary, gay-baited his way to the GOP nomination by declaring his primary opponent, an ardent gay rights foe, a "darling of the homosexual extremists."

Only in Colorado did the arch-conservative candidate, beer magnate Pete Coors, go down to defeat.

THE ELECTION OF 2004 is not the first time, of course, that a major political party has used a social wedge issue to energize its base. Both parties have done so for as long as the United States has been holding elections.

But the abrupt switch in strategy by Republicans, from President Bush on down the line, represents a clean break from the "compassionate conservative" of four years ago. And it worked all too well.

Over the next weeks and months, we can expect and should welcome a debate within the Democratic Party, and among gay rights groups, about the best strategy to adopt in response to Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman's cynical ploy to divide and conquer.

Some will suggest, as they have on these pages this week, that the mistake was for gays to seek too much too soon, inflaming conservatives and costing Kerry his White House bid.

If Barney Frank and others of like mind actually think that gay couples marrying in San Francisco and New York caused this conservative backlash, then they are forgetting their history.

The gay marriage ballots that passed this week succeeded by roughly the same margin as they did in Hawaii, Alaska and California in the late 1990s. No sign of backlash there.

If conservatives were inflamed, it was the inevitable result of the Massachusetts court opinion. In fact, there's evidence that seeing these real-life couples marry on both coasts actually helped more Americans see that we seek no more from the institution of marriage than they do.

The same doom and gloom exit polls also show that a significant majority of voters - 61 percent! - actually support either legal marriage or civil unions for gays.

THEREIN LIES THE future, and it is not in some disingenuous move to the middle, burying gay rights so that we hope no one notices. Or worse yet, repeating the embarrassing effort by congressional Democrats and our own gay rights groups to try desperately to change the subject whenever gay marriage comes up.

The future of our movement - and of the Democratic Party if it has the courage of its convictions - is to actually engage cultural conservatives on these issues and to make our case.

The only difference between civil unions and marriage is the word itself, or so we've been told, so let's focus our efforts on winning over the 35 percent of Americans who support civil unions so that they might join the 26 percent who back full marriage.

And if the weak-kneed Democrats choose the path of least resistance, not trusting in the basic fairness of the American people, then our gay rights groups must finally exercise some leverage within that party or - better yet - circumvent the politicians entirely and go directly to the people.

We will not win our civil rights at the ballot box by electing finger-in-the-wind politicos like John Kerry and John Edwards. We should devote the next four years to "winning the ground war," convincing the American people of the rightness of our cause.

Then when election time rolls around in 2008, the politicians who say they are our friends must be called to adjust to the new political reality, one in which they have no cause to fear defending our equality, and one in which gay baiting and cynicism will not work so well.

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