Don't Get Too Comfortable (15 page)

“Anybody can be conservative on fiscal issues,” says Robert Knight, director of the conservative advocacy group the Culture and Family Institute, which sits squarely in the base of voters routinely courted with homophobic bouquets. “They're a Trojan horse within the GOP, carrying the left's message wrapped up in Republican garb. When it comes down to protecting the core of life, which is the family, they're on the other side.” CFI is an affiliate organization of Concerned Women for America, which claims to be the largest public-policy women's group in the country. The Concerned Women are at the forefront of anti–gay marriage efforts along with other far right groups like the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition, the latter whose website even has a Homosexual Urban Legends page. Homosexual Urban Legends are not apocryphal tales of gay alligators in the sewers, gay pet Chihuahuas that turn out to actually be huge gay rats, or the woman who microwaved her gay cat, but are instead a refutation of the pseudo-science, sham statistics, and downright lies that are the evil tools of the Homosexual Agenda. The page has articles like “EXPOSED: 30% of teen suicide victims are homosexuals . . . NOT!!” and “Do Homosexuals Really Want the Right to Marry?” Apparently not. Marriage is just the innocuous tip of our lethal gay iceberg. The true gay objective is to use the right to marry as a stepping-stone to “destroying the concept of marriage altogether—and of introducing polygamy and polyamory (group sex) as ‘families.'”

I have called Robert Knight to see what, if any, common ground exists between his group and its gay and lesbian conservative compatriots. Knight spent ten years at the Family Research Council and was a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation prior to that. He was also at the
Los Angeles Times
and claims to have been a McGovern-voting progressive. “I was a pretty radical guy. But I found out more and more often that my liberal friends were covering up facts in order to make their case.”

He is nothing if not a man of strong convictions (something I have always found attractive). I barely pronounce the Log Cabin name at the beginning of our conversation when he says, “Let me give you a quote here.” He slows down his delivery. “The Log Cabin agenda to promote homosexuality is utterly at odds with the GOP's self-styled image as a pro-family, pro-marriage party.”

Knight is ready with rebuttals to anything I bring up, whether it's the statement that, according to the latest studies, homosexuality is probably more a matter of chromosomes (“junk science”), or that gay men are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight men (“There is a higher preponderance of interest in sex with youth, as evidenced by the constant themes in gay publications: boys boys boys”).

Typically, Knight uses the word
homosexual
rather than
gay
, all the better to emphasize that this is not an identity but an illness, a reversible pathological behavior. Yet Knight's emphasis isn't so much on the behavior itself as on its host of negative results: depression, rampant intravenous drug use (“It's well documented”), and ravaged, incontinent sphincters (“Older gays, y'know, have to wear diapers, because they've ruined the rectum”). All of these are the wages of the homosexual's lifelong devotion to that one defining, until recently criminalized sexual act: sodomy. “Sodomy is their rallying cry,” he says.

Well, it sure is
someone's
rallying cry. A lot of our hour-long conversation is taken up with talking about anal sex. I have never spoken so much about anal sex in my life.

“The anus is not a receptable, okay?” Knight says. “Using it as an entrance instead of an exit ramp is one of the most unhealthy things you can do with your body, and yet we're pretending that this is some sort of an identity. Like you're born with a need to put your penis down a guy's butt.” He lets out a snort of incredulous
is-it-just-me-or-are-we-living-in-opposite-worlds?
laughter.

But if Knight displays an obsession with the mechanics of sodomy—simultaneously mesmerized and sickened by the tumescent, pistoning images of it that must loop through his head on a near-constant basis—he is notably impervious to an image he conjures when I submit as how HIV is transmissible through normative, upstanding, God-sanctioned heterosexual congress as well.

“Not as easily,” he says. “The vagina is designed to accommodate a penis. It can take a lot of punishment.”

My regards to Mrs. Knight.

IN HIS VIEW
, failing enrollment in one of the faith-based ex-gay “recovery” programs, there is little hope for the homosexual and absolutely no quarter for them in the party. Even the civil benefits of partnership—hospital visitation, inheritance rights, social security—would be tantamount to granting special treatment in his eyes. “If you operate on the fringes of society, you can expect a little inconvenience.”

Knight doesn't hate homosexuals, he assures me; he even has gay friends (
there's
a dinner party I'd like to see). He would feel pity for us if we were simply benighted sinners, hermetically contained within our own diseased communities. But we aren't, and this has him scared. Knight's terrified vision is of
The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom
variety. Like those Nazi-era newspaper cartoons of hook-nosed Jewish bankers in waistcoats and silk top hats fondling bags of money or greedily clutching the globe itself, Knight sees a monolithic shadow empire of homosexuals. An insinuating, pernicious threat, hell-bent on dismantling that most holy, delicate, and imperiled institution: the American Family. He will not,
cannot,
stand idly by and allow this to happen.

“You have to understand that the greatest threat to American freedom today from within is the gay rights movement. It has the potential to criminalize Christianity and to single people out for persecution if they don't go along with whatever the gay rights folks want. The Boy Scouts serve as a prime example of that: ‘Disagree with us, we'll cut your throats.'”

“
NO ONE BECOMES
a Log Cabin Republican because they assume it's going to be easy,” says Guerriero, when I tell him about my interview with Vaginal Punisher Robert Knight. Life under the Big Tent means having to countenance such virulent hatred against one, I guess. I watch
Fighting for Freedom,
an hour-long compilation of Log Cabin television clips in which Guerriero goes up against detractor after detractor. He is well-spoken and composed throughout. Holding his own against congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, one of the framers of the constitutional amendment, he suggests that she “seek counseling if a gay or lesbian in North America somehow threatens your marriage.” But when it comes to what so infuriates Barney Frank, namely making the support of the LCR contingent upon
. . . anything,
really, he exhibits a maddening propensity toward blind devotion. Sensing this, Ann Curry, on the
Today
show, asks him point-blank, “Does the President actually even risk the gay Republican vote?” His response is, “Unlike other organizations, Log Cabin Republicans are loyal. We don't expect to get our way all of the time.” On CNN with (the absolutely divine) Anderson Cooper, Mark Mead is pitted against Ken Connor of the Family Research Council. Connor plainly states that if the President alienates the pro-family base, he does so at his own peril. “The final analysis will have a chilling effect. Subtraction of many more numbers than the gay-lesbian vote.” Cooper then turns to Mead who, even after this demonstration of how it is done, puts forth a cheerful and toothless, “James Carville wrote a book on political loyalty called
Stickin'.
The Log Cabin Republicans are gonna
stick
with George Bush. He may not be able to count on Ken and some other folks, but he can count on the Log Cabin Republicans.”

I yell at my VCR, “Schmuck! Don't tell the President that!” Stating on national television that the President can use you as electoral cannon fodder and still get your vote seems as effective a piece of rhetoric as picketing a restaurant with signs that read
THE BOSS IS A REAL ASSHOLE AND THERE ARE MAGGOTS IN THE CHICKEN SALAD. WE EAT HERE EVERY DAY.

Then I calm down. I think,
This must be part of some canny strategy.

Right?

OVER THE MANY
months that I talk with and keep tabs on Guerriero, I am visited by a recurring image of him as a frog in a cauldron, surrounded by baby carrots and oyster crackers, splashing around in the gradually boiling water, unmindful of the fact that he is slowly becoming soup.

On February 24, 2004, when George Bush unequivocally calls for the constitutional amendment, I think Guerriero might finally be induced to jump out of the pot. What more needs to happen? Those seeking the Democratic nomination have also refused to go on record in support of gay marriage, so the President's remarks seem only to serve as a decisive fuck you to Patrick and his kind. When I call Guerriero up, he doesn't even bother with hello.

“Want my job, David?” he jokes.

“I don't,” I reply. “Do
you
want your job?”

I expect him to say,
No, I don't want my job, they've gone too far this time.

Instead, his answer is a simple and immediate “Of course.” His mission remains clear. “Some folks need to stand on the front lines of the Republican Party,” he says, “and that's us.”

I needn't bother pointing out that the gunfire is actually coming from behind him. He does at least admit that this is “probably a new chapter for our organization, but we're ready for it.”

Does that new chapter include withholding their endorsement of Bush for reelection? It is too early to say.

Guerriero is right about one of the very first things he told me: progress is inevitable, although things may well get a good deal uglier before they improve. Perhaps not immediately, but in a few years, the news footage of those who so vehemently oppose gay rights today will resemble the grainy images of the racists who turned the firehoses on marchers in Alabama. Why on earth, then, would one choose to take one's place in history by throwing one's lot in with the modern-day equivalents of Bull Connor?
See there? The person in the background opening up the hydrant? That's me!

I finally come clean about a theory that has been percolating in the back of my mind since that first day in the Mexican restaurant more than six months ago. I tell him, “I keep thinking to myself, ‘Patrick is so smart and so articulate and seems genuinely socially engaged. Ten years from now, I bet he's going to be a Democrat.'”

He takes no offense at this. “You and I don't come to the same conclusion. Ten years from now, I hope people will be able to look back and say, ‘You know what? A small band of pretty courageous, conservative gay and lesbian Americans stood up to their party. It wasn't easy, they were criticized, they made some mistakes, there were days when it was difficult to understand what they were doing.' I think we have an obligation as Republicans to be on the front lines of this, even if we're taken down in the process, it's worth it.”

We have that conversation early in 2004, when thoughts of being “taken down in the process” are still quaintly theoretical. The hope is that the evangelical base will have been sufficiently mollified by the President's periodic support for the amendment that by the time of the convention, the issue will have been successfully disappeared. But the prime-time presence of mediagenically moderate Republicans like Giuliani and Schwarzenegger on the convention stage cannot soften the fact that when the official GOP platform is released, it comes out unequivocally against not just gay marriage but civil unions as well.

On September 8, 2004, one week after the Republicans have decamped from New York, the Log Cabin Republicans officially withhold their endorsement of George Bush for president. Instead, they will shift their “financial and political resources to defeating the radical right and supporting inclusive Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”

ANTI
–
GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENTS
that are on the ballots in eleven critical swing states all pass with wide, decisive margins of support. Some postelection wisdom is that it is these measures specifically that really got out the vote, galvanizing people and resulting in unprecedented turnout among those most desperate to tie the flaps of the Big Tent securely shut. The Log Cabin slogan of “Inclusion Wins”—an appeal to fellow Republicans' better natures, and a reminder of the divisive culture war that is thought to have contributed to the defeat of Bush's father in 1992—seems hopelessly out of touch. To be perfectly schoolyard about it, if the exit polls are any indication, inclusion is for fags.

A week after the election, Guerriero issues a statement. “We lost,” he states plainly. “If we listen to those attempting to sanitize or sugarcoat the post-election analysis, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes and destined for more setbacks in the years ahead.”

He lays out a plan for regrouping and completely restrategizing their struggle. The community needs to focus on the heartland and not just the coasts. “Like it or not, Michael Moore, Bruce Springsteen, and Rosie O'Donnell will never convince the Iowa farmer, the South Carolina veteran, or the West Virginia coal miner to be on our side. Much more important than increasing attendance at all of our organizations' expensive black-tie dinners is the work we should be doing hosting rural barbecues and town hall meetings for honest discussions with people who disagree with us.” But the LCR should also not shy away from going on the offensive. With the marriage protection ballot measures passed and the institution fully protected as a sacrosanct pact between one man and one woman, it is time to expose the radical right's true agenda, which is the stripping away of all gay civil rights.

Reading along, Guerriero's statement seems well written, reasonable, and eloquent, and I find much to admire and agree with, like, “it should never be easier to get 5,000 people to a circuit party than it is to get 500 people to pick up the phone and call their Congressman.” He goes on to analyze the various doomed strategies and self-sabotage that lethally mired the LCR. One was in choosing their friends poorly. “While we need to continue developing progressive allies for our fight, we should be cautious about taking on all of their baggage at the same time. The gay wedge issue was effective in this election because our opponents were successful at clumping our struggle for equality in with anti-war protesters, the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, the move to take God out of the Pledge, the late-term abortion debate, and a whole range of other cultural issues. We need to talk less about all the rights we want and do not have. Instead, we need to talk more about the moral and ethical responsibilities we are ready to accept as our life-long relationships are recognized.”