Few
constituencies are as eager for the Republican Party to
falter this political season as gay rights activists.
Yet as they observe the Democratic presidential
campaign and the rest of the electoral landscape,
their high hopes often are mixed with frustration.
Even as they
expect to support whichever Democrat gets the presidential
nomination, many activists are disappointed that the three
leading contenders rarely mention gay rights topics
unless responding to a question.
''They don't want
to broach civil unions, marriage, equalizing benefits
for same-sex couples,'' said Jennifer Chrisler, head of the
Family Equality Council, which supports gay and
lesbian families. ''The vast majority of politicians
don't lead, they follow.''
There are other
frustrations as well. Activists were dismayed that the
Democratic-led Congress failed to approve two
much-anticipated bills late last year -- one defining
antigay assaults as a federal hate crime, the other
prohibiting antigay job discrimination.
And at a time
when they hoped to be making advances, gays and lesbians
are on the defensive in at least two states -- facing a
likely ballot item in Florida that would ban same-sex
marriage and a measure in Arkansas aimed at barring
them from adopting children or serving as foster
parents.
Prior to the New
Hampshire primary, the Boston-based gay newspaper Bay
Windows -- which circulates across New England --
was approached by representatives of several Democratic
candidates seeking an endorsement, editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar
said.
Instead,
Ryan-Vollmar wrote a biting column asserting that none of
the front-runners -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack
Obama, or John Edwards -- had shown enough courage on
gay issues to deserve the customarily generous
financial support of gay donors.
''They've merely
settled on what the Democrats have staked out as a safe,
consensus position, just far enough ahead of where the party
was in 2004 to give a sense of progress but not so far
as to threaten Middle America,'' Ryan-Vollmar wrote.
''That's not leadership, it's poll-tested and
party-approved pandering, pure and simple.''
Rather than
donating to any presidential candidate, gays and lesbians
should give money to state and local candidates who support
marriage rights, she wrote.
Debra Chasnoff, a
San Francisco filmmaker whose documentaries often
explore gay rights themes, said gay votes are up for grabs
-- to any candidate who seeks them boldly.
''They're all
saying they're the ones for change -- and one thing this
country needs change on is having a president who's for
marriage equality,'' Chasnoff said. ''Instead, there's
silence.''
Kerry Eleveld,
news editor of The Advocate, a prominent
gay-oriented news magazine, drew a distinction between
activists with major national gay rights groups and local
activists without ties to Washington power brokers.
''The grassroots
activists are upset that the candidates haven't been
more out there, especially on the issue of same-sex
marriage,'' she said. ''The lobbyist activists think
in terms of electability. They're always going to be a
little more practical and give more leeway to the
candidates.''
The president of
the largest national gay rights organization, Joe
Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, is upbeat about the
campaign. His group cosponsored a televised forum last
August in which the Democratic candidates addressed
gay rights topics, and he believes most gays and
lesbians remain enthusiastic about the Democratic field
despite some impatience.
Solmonese also
sees an easing of antigay rhetoric across the political
scene -- a contrast to 2004 and 2006, when voters in more
than 20 states approved measures to ban gay marriage.
''Among those
people who use the politics of fear, there's typically an
element of American society that's put forward as a wedge
issue, and in this election it's illegal immigrants,''
Solmonese said. ''It doesn't seem to be us.''
Matt Foreman,
executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force, noted that the campaign rhetoric is dominated by
overarching issues -- the economy, Iraq, health care
-- that virtually all voters, including gays, agree
are paramount.
''These campaigns
are driven by polling data,'' he said.
Beyond
presidential politics and the Florida ballot measure, some
activists point to other developments as reasons for
optimism.
For example, a
grassroots group, the National Stonewall Democrats, is
working to boost the number of gay and lesbian delegates at
the Democratic National Convention. Spokesman John
Marble said the goal is to have more than 320 such
delegates out of a total of 4,049; that would be up
from 282 gay delegates in 2004.
The long-term
hope is that these gay delegates stay active in politics.
''In four or
eight years, when the Democrats are competing again, we're
hoping to present them with infrastructure we built this
year,'' Marble said. ''They'll have to interact with
our community in much deeper ways.'' (David Crary, AP)
