Salon: Burning down the Log Cabin

[kskiska]

Assailing the "cabal of geniuses" who cooked up the gay marriage ban, one of the GOP's only openly gay leaders breaks with his party.

By Eric Boehlert

President Bush's decision to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage continues to have unintended consequences inside the Republican Party. The latest fallout came last Thursday when the openly gay District of Columbia councilmember David Catania, who is credited with pumping new energy into the often dormant Republican Party in Washington, resigned his leadership position after the party chairman refused to certify Catania as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Catania remains, for now, a registered Republican, but he says he will not vote for Bush.

"I've spent six and a half years trying to build this local party," Catania told Salon. "This was not an easy decision or one I came to lightly. But in the end I just couldn't see any way I could stay."

D.C. Republican Party chairwoman Betsy Werronen, along with other party leaders, according to the Washington Blade, a gay weekly, had "picked Catania and other local gay Republicans to run on an uncontested slate of delegates and alternate delegates to the Republican Convention in New York City in late August. D.C. Republicans elected the slate at a party caucus that same month. Werronen also appointed Catania to represent the D.C. GOP convention delegation on the party's national platform committee."

After Bush moved to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Catania announced that he would not support Bush for reelection. On Thursday, Werronen, who had described Catania as a "shining star" of the Republican Party, stripped him of his delegation status. He then walked away from his D.C. party leadership position, fed up with the national party apparatus and what he calls "this cabal of geniuses who have cooked up ways to exclude Americans."

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/03/david_catania/index.html