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Well, really, there are many, many problems with the Log Cabin Republicans, but let's stick to some of the more fundamental issues they ought to have with President Bush:
1. As governor of Texas, he threatened to veto any legislative effort to overturn the state's blatantly anti-gay sodomy law (which restricted only same-gendered sexual conduct, not heterosexual sodomy). The Supreme Court's review and invalidation of this law has put the marriage debate front and center, and marriage/civil unions is one of the primary goals of the LCR. This also tends to be one of the issues more moderate to conservative gays feel passionately about, as anti-gay marriage laws are one of the more obvious obstacles to complete integration into the mainstream of American life. It is telling that the Federal Marriage Amendment is going to be up for vote next month in the Republican-dominated congress. Whatever happened to the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, or ENDA, that would have added sexual orientation to the list of protected categories in employment matters?
2. There are major issues that have a profound impact on lesbians and gay men that are unlikely to be addressed through reform of the marriage laws. First, there is the issue of employment discrimination, which really ought to be a pressing matter. A gay kid kicked out of his home at the age of 18, suddenly left without a familial support system or any other kind of financial assistance, does not need to run into homophobia on the job. But of course this is not a major concern for the libertarian-minded LCR, many of whom are probably skeptical of civil rights legislation that protects any group.
3. There are pressing issues that do not involve matters of sexual orientation per se, but are indirectly related to gay and lesbian issues. For example, rising STD rates including HIV, especially among gay and bisexual males and even more pronounced among gay and bisexual males of color. Epidemiologists and health education experts need reliable studies of sexual trends across all groups to identify problem areas and recommend effective courses of action for behavioral modification. It is clear that ideology is more important than science in this administration, and increasingly in the Republican congress. The grants for these studies are being scrutinized by ultraconservative Republicans who believe that studying sexual behavior is equivalent to promoting it.
4. Very early on, the Bush administration sought to subsidize discriminatory religious organizations (for example, the Salvation Army) while exempting them from local statutes that protected gays and lesbians from discrimination. It is one thing for conservatives to argue that the Boy Scouts are a private organization that is free to discriminate; it is quite another to seek to use taxpayer money to subsidize that activity.
Unfortunately, the LCRs are not concerned with these issues. It has become difficult to see just what they are concerned with. If they support President Bush this fall, they will have abandoned their most basic principles for...what, exactly?
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