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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Republicans hoped the federal marriage amendment would electrify their conservative base, but two gay activists countered by spreading fear and loathing on Capitol Hill.
Jul 15, 2004 | Michael Rogers, a Washington political activist, decided several weeks ago to launch an Internet campaign to publicize the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian members of Congress and their staffs, if they favored the federal marriage amendment. Drawing on a network of informants, he began posting on his Web site the names of gay congressional staffers who work for anti-gay members of Congress. "It's about exposing hypocrisy," Rogers told Salon, adding that he was prepared for some nasty hand-to-hand political combat.
On Wednesday, however, Rogers watched with amusement as the Senate rejected further action on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage by a vote of 50 to 48. Instead of staging a clear-cut drama to rally the GOP's conservative base, as White House political strategist Karl Rove had planned, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stumbled as he tried and failed to bring the controversial measure to a vote. Moderate Republicans made it clear that on a direct up-or-down vote, they would not help their leadership reach even close to the 67 votes needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution. To avoid a resounding and embarrassing defeat, Republicans wound up filibustering their own top-priority proposal, throwing up a procedural hurdle to a recorded vote on the amendment itself in a desperate attempt by the Senate GOP leadership and the White House to save face.
Gay activists could not contain their glee at the spectacle of disarray. "They are hiding behind a procedural vote because their campaign to write discrimination into the American Constitution has been an unqualified failure," Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for gay Republicans, said in a statement. "As many as 60 senators were prepared to vote against the amendment. Rather than face certain defeat, the radical right took the easy way out ... by turning this into a largely party-line procedural vote."
John Aravosis, a Washington political consultant and former Republican congressional staff member who has been helping his friend Mike Rogers publicize his list of gay Republicans, partly through his Web site, said, "Something that was very scary became good theater overnight." Gay activists were particularly excited by Sen. John McCain's speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday night, in which he called the amendment "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans" because it attempts to usurp states' rights. "What evidence do we have that states are incapable of further exercising an authority they have exercised successfully for over 200 years?" Referring to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which recently legalized gay marriage in that state, precipitating the current battle, McCain said, "The actions by jurists in one court in one state do not represent the death knell to marriage. We will have to wait a little longer to see if Armageddon has arrived."
But with Bush forcing the fight over the amendment as a means of exciting religious conservatives, Aravosis said the matter is far from settled. And Frist warned after Wednesday's vote, "This issue is not going away." In the House of Representatives, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, vowed to pursue the amendment in September.
For these driven political reasons, Rogers said, he will not be dropping what's become known around Washington as his "outing" campaign (although Rogers insists he is merely highlighting the sexual orientation of congressional aides who are already "out"). Now, Rogers said, he plans to turn his effort against hypocrisy on a new target: married heterosexual members of Congress who rail about the need to protect the institution of marriage while engaging in extramarital affairs.
