OutRight
by Dale Carpenter
A Million Gays for Bush

Hard to believe? Here are some reasons why ... and reasons why it could be good news for the whole gay community if the Dems don’t take our vote for granted

Gays are abandoning the orthodoxy of the gay civil rights establishment. Defying the near hysteria against George W. Bush generated by many gay political organizations and leaders, and despite a propaganda barrage for Al Gore in the gay media, more than a million gay voters backed Bush in the presidential election. Further, the number of gay Republican voters appears to be growing. What does this mean for gay rights?

First, consider the numbers. About 103.8 million Americans voted for a presidential candidate on November 7. According to a national exit poll, 4 percent of these voters, or almost 4.2 million, were willing to self-identify as gay. Of the self-identified gay voters, 70 percent said they voted for Gore and 25 percent said they voted for Bush.

That comes out to just over one million gay votes for Bush, enough to deliver Florida (which is still under dispute, as of this writing) and New Hampshire. Even conceding Florida to Bush, a Gore win in New Hampshire would have been enough to elect him. So if Bush wins, it’s plausible to say gay voters made the difference.

But even the one million total likely underestimates the actual gay vote for Bush. This is so for two reasons. First, the social stigma attached to homosexuality reduces the number of gays willing to "come out" to pollsters. It’s likely that a disproportionate number of these uncounted closeted voters, because they are less connected to the attitudes of the gay civil rights establishment, support Republicans.

Second, even among openly gay voters, the social stigma attached to voting Republican reduces the number willing to admit they backed the politically incorrect candidate. No one wants to be compared to a Jewish Nazi or a black Klansman, as gay Republicans have been. So a million gay votes for Bush is a floor, not a ceiling.

Further, the gay Republican vote is growing. In 1992, after Pat Buchanan declared a "culture war" against gays and others, the GOP got just 14 percent of the gay vote. In 1996, when Bob Dole requested the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP got 23 percent of the gay vote. This year, when Bush actually met with gay Republicans, it stands at 25 percent.

The hand-wringing about this development has already begun. Columnist Michelangelo Signorile asks, "Why are many gay people easily sucked in?" He suggests two explanations. One is that gay activists should have made the case for Gore "more forcefully." Yet it’s hard to imagine how gay political groups could have pushed harder for Gore. Millions of dollars were spent warning gays that their civil rights–and their very lives–were in danger if Bush won. In fact, it appears there is an inverse relationship here: As the Republican Party tones down its antigay rhetoric, gay activists ratchet up their anti-GOP rhetoric.

Signorile also suggests gay activists should have made their case "without the condescending attitude that, as lackeys for Gore, they often possessed." That would be welcome, but it’s not likely gay activists are capable of it. The very idea that gay voters have been "sucked in" by the sinister Republicans, as Signorile puts it, suggests gay activists think these voters are too stupid or too ignorant to appreciate their real interests.

Signorile’s second explanation for the large gay Republican vote is that gays, unlike more reliably Democratic voters, "aren’t disproportionately poor and marginalized." What a pity. If the preconditions for monolithic loyalty to the Democratic Party are poverty and marginalization, we can be forgiven for straying from the fold.

Here’s a simpler explanation: A million gay voters walked into their polling places and decided that, on balance, Bush was the better choice.

There are plausible and defensible reasons for that choice. Perhaps gay issues were peripheral to these voters; they may have considered taxes and the future of Social Security more immediately relevant to their lives. Or perhaps many of them concluded that, while Gore was better on gay issues, he was actually unlikely to get anything done on them. Or perhaps on the issues on which Gore was said to be preferable–like employment discrimination protection and hate crimes laws–they disagree with the wisdom of the policy. Or perhaps they were so disgusted by the Clinton-Gore administration’s two great gay-rights legacies–the antigay military exclusion and the Defense of Marriage Act–that they decided to punish the Democrats.

It’s not that these gay Bush voters are stupid, it’s that they dissent from the approved gay view of what’s important in the world. It’s not that they don’t care about gay rights, it’s that they define gay civil rights on their own terms. It’s not that they’re easily sucked in by deceptive Republicans, it’s that they’ve been taken for granted by the Democrats. I know this is hard for gay activists in Washington, D.C., to believe, but not every gay person wakes up thinking life would be great if only Congress would pass a hate crimes law.

The Democrats are in no immediate danger of losing their gay majority. Only two minority groups–blacks (90 percent for Gore) and Jews (79 percent for Gore)–are more steadfast. By most accounts, a 70 percent endorsement is still a landslide.

But it’s increasingly clear that at least a significant minority of the gay vote is up for grabs. That should make both Democrats and Republicans work harder for our support. Whatever your politics, it is a welcome development.