OutRight
by Dale Carpenter

TheTolerance Party
The GOP is more tolerant of the rights of gays to exist, even if they want this existence to stay in the closet.

When George W. Bush finished his acceptance speech, with its stirring proclamation, "I believe in tolerance," the first song to play was a Latin tune recently popularized by Ricky Martin. It was the perfect ending to the closet convention.

Bush never spelled out who should be tolerated or what form that tolerance should take. It wasn't meant for women or racial minorities, since Republicans had already openly embraced them and it would be odd for a modern politician to say he "tolerates" women and racial minorities.

That leaves gays to be tolerated. So gay Republicans welcomed yet another in a parade of subtle signs that the party wants them. Others were free to interpret Bush differently.

"I believe in tolerance" is a long rhetorical distance from Pat Buchanan's declaration of a "culture war" at the same convention just eight years ago. But there is something peculiar and halting about this new brand of GOP tolerance. It asks gays to come inside-but to sit still once there.

Tolerance doesn't hate gays. In fact, it loves them...in the closet. Despite all the hoo-ha from skeptical gay organizations and activists, that is progress.

Under Bush's tolerance, gays will not likely be arrested in their homes because the antigay Texas sodomy law he supports is only a "symbolic gesture," he says. The new tolerance preserves symbols of disapproval but is embarrassed to act on them.

So gays can serve in the military as long as they keep quiet. George Bush and Dick Cheney Don't Ask as long as you Don't Tell. That's the bargain the military struck with gays under President Clinton. It has written the closet into American law. And it's one old chestnut the new Republicans refuse to crack.

The closet, often defended as a situs of "privacy," is prized real estate for both moderate homophobes and ashamed gays. It is a space in which the former may declare they are tolerant and the latter may pretend they aren't despised.

The closet is detested by true-believing gay-haters who would prefer to pursue and punish the homosexuals they find there. The military's antigay witchhunts are a model for this. It's clear Bush is not a true-believing gay-hater.

So Republican congressman Jim Kolbe, the most respected and respectable openly gay officeholder in the country, was allowed to speak to the delegates. It was much better than eight years ago, when no openly gay person spoke. It was better than four years ago, when a gay person whose homosexuality was known to his friends, but not to delegates, spoke.

Kolbe's address was purchased at the price that he could not acknowledge his homosexuality, or talk about gay issues, or even use the word "gay," from the lectern. Tolerance could let an openly gay man speak under the illusion that he isn't gay. He could be out and remain in the closet at the same time.

So Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of the party's vice presidential nominee, was allowed to sit with her parents in the convention hall. Gay activists, in an understandable but pathetic yearning for affirmation, scoured seating charts to determine whether Mary's partner had been allowed to sit near her. She wasn't there. That would have put Mary on a par with her sister, whose heterosexuality was shamelessly paraded before TV cameras in the form of her two children. Tolerance isn't ready for equality.

Lynne Cheney, Mary's mother, announced how proud she was of her "hard-working" and "decent" daughter. But then she denied her daughter had ever publicly acknowledged her homosexuality, an assertion so contrary to the public record, it had the ring of pathological self-delusion. Tolerance prefers not to admit publicly what everyone knows. If it can't have the reality of the closet it will have the form.

The national Republican platform states the new tolerance doctrine perfectly: Gays should have "no standing in law." It's not really that gays should be persecuted; it's that they shouldn't be recognized at all.

The Republican Party, the organizational embodiment of conservatism in this country, has learned a valuable lesson from its two consecutive defeats in presidential elections. Homosexuals are among us and they will not be eliminated by any means acceptable to the American people. The question now for conservatism is, what is to be done with them? One option is to pursue a religious crusade against gays, investigating them, kicking in their doors, praying for their souls when they speak, and calling them "errant," as Jerry Falwell puts it. Another option is to welcome gays into the institutions of American life, like the military and marriage, connecting them with mainstream values. Bush hinted at the latter option when he said that his tolerance came from, not despite, his religious faith.

Writing from the conservative end of the spectrum, former Houston resident and law professor Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994 and has won three Vice Versa awards for excellence in gay writing. Now working as a law professor in Minneapolis, he can be reached at OutRight@aol.com.