by Michelangelo Signorile
In a Washington Post column
headlined "Silence Is Golden on Gay Issues," my longtime colleague and
friend Jonathan Capehart heralds it as "a great thing" that gay issues
weren't discussed in the presidential debates this year. The Human
Rights Campaign's Fred Sainz agrees, telling Capehart, "What we're
seeing is proof positive that gay issues aren't the wedge they used to
be and furthermore, the public has moved on."
Really? Though LGBT rights now have the support of a big majority of
Democrats and independents, they're far from a non-issue for the vast
majority of Republicans, who oppose same-sex marriage, and certainly for
the evangelical base of the GOP, which helped keep Rick Santorum
competitive during the primaries.
The only reason these issues weren't discussed in the debates is that
the moderators -- members of the media -- didn't ask about them. And
far from being a "great thing," right now that helps Mitt Romney, who is
racing to the center and would rather not talk about how he's in favor
of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make gays
second-class citizens, or about how he signed a pledge from the National Organization for Marriage vowing to appoint federal judges who would rule against gay marriage.
Without having to discuss that, his opposition to anti-discrimination
laws or his support for the Defense of Marriage Act (now on its last legs in the courts), while getting the late endorsement
of the subservient and validation-starved Log Cabin Republicans
yesterday, Romney presents himself as a moderate to women, suburban
voters, independents and undecideds who might be uneasy voting for
someone with harsh views on gay rights. For many, but particularly for
those much-discussed low-information voters, seeing a gay group support
Romney, while his hard-right positions on the issues haven't been
elucidated in the general election, helps convince them that his
positions aren't as extreme as they've been made out to be.
When LGBT issues were a wedge used against Democrats, moderators and
media interviewers brought them up regularly during presidential
elections, hurling them at Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry, forcing
the Democratic candidate to either offend a part of his base or
alienate other potential supporters, while the Republican candidate
could use the issue to shore up his base. George W. Bush did just that,
and he didn't worry about alienating independents, because they either
didn't care about the issue or were as opposed to marriage equality as
everyone else.
But now that things are just about reversed, where the issue is a
wedge for the Republican candidate -- and when the Democratic candidate
actually touts his gay rights record in his stump speech on the campaign trail -- the media has decided it's a non-story? And that's a good thing? MORE.
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