“We reached a point in the gay and lesbian civil rights movement where we need to expect more than mediocrity from the people we support. That was a threshold for us,” said Patrick C. Guerriero, president of the national Log Cabin Republicans, in explaining the group’s decision in 2004 not to endorse the re-election of President George W. Bush. “It actually sent an important message to our Democratic friends. Don’t you think we ought to expect something from the people our Democratic and left-leaning groups support?”
The comment encapsulates the rationale that Guerriero, the nation’s leading gay Republican, puts forward for his organization—that Log Cabin is making important strides among Republicans and in red state America generally, even as it has proven willing to dissent within its party, while gay Democrats have not always demonstrated the same moxie in criticizing shortcomings in their candidates.
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Guerriero explained that Bush’s decision to make a federal anti-gay marriage amendment a centerpiece of his 2004 campaign—which he attributed to the president’s political guru Karl Rove—was critical in the Log Cabin decision not to endorse him, announced right after the Republican National Convention early last September.
“There is a price to be paid in Washington when you don’t endorse an incumbent president,” he said.” But looking back on history, we felt there needed to be some stakes in the ground and we felt as an organization that we needed to say, ‘Enough is enough. You can’t have our support on Election Day. It isn’t automatic.’”
http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_453/logcabins.html
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