Goldwater Was Right: Republicans Must Show Greater Tolerance Toward Gays

As the Republican Party seeks to rebuild itself in the aftermath of 2008, it must seek to build broader coalitions and embrace a wider audience. This is long overdue with regard to Republican policies toward gay issues; if the Party gravitates back to its tradition of inclusion and freedom, it will be able to make gains in an unlikely demographic.

As a gay college student, I find that I agree with the Republicans on the majority of issues, and that many gay and lesbians that I know share my views. That is because, contrary to what many may believe, we are like all other Americans. We are mothers and fathers, police officers and soldiers, football fans and gun owners. We have soaring property taxes caused by radical teacher's unions, out of control costs of healthcare for our families and college for our children, and are watching our government mushroom beyond its defined purpose and threaten to doom future generations. During times like these, many of us see that the Democrat's promises of more big government and higher taxes will only make these problems worse. Why then, did 73% of gay and lesbian voters support Barack Obama? Simple. The Republican Party, by ideology and attitude, sends the message that it is not the party of limited government, but of discrimination against the life and livelihood of every gay man and woman.

No where is this clearer than basic legal protections, where 37 states have no legal recognition whatsoever for same-sex couples. This means that gay and lesbian families living in these states can't get joint medical benefits, equal custody of their children, or even hospital visitation rights. Just over the summer, Janice Langbehn was on a vacation in Florida with her partner Lisa Pond and their three children when Lisa suffered a brain aneurism. When Janice and her children tried to visit Lisa at the hospital, they found that they were unable to; Florida has no legal recognition for same-sex couples, thus Lisa died without her family at her side. Such situations are the reality that gay and lesbian Americans face everyday, and are often caused by Republican policies. In New Hampshire, Republicans blocked a civil union bill every time that it came up for a vote, and civil unions were not enacted in New Hampshire until Democrats took control of both houses and the governor's office. Such a situation has occurred in Republican controlled states throughout the country. In Arizona, John McCain spent 2006 campaigning for Proposition 107, defeated by voters, which would have banned civil unions and domestic partnerships in addition to same-sex marriage. In Florida, Republican governor Charlie Crist supported a similar ballot initiative, Amendment 2. Since when did being conservative mean that you had to stand in the way of a family visiting their dying loved one? What does this have to do with limited government?

Republican positions are just as bad with regard to workplace discrimination, where, 31 states have no protection against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. In these states, gays and lesbians can be fired by a homophobic employer, or bullied by fellow employees with no recourse. This can easily be solved by adding sexual orientation to the list of federally prohibited forms of discrimination, as Congress attempted to do last year. These efforts were blocked by Republicans in the Senate, as were similar attempts throughout the 1990's. How can any reasonable person expect gays to vote for a party that wants to deny them legal recognition and protection against bullies and bigots at work? The loss of Republican votes is not limited to just gays, however. Can the millions of parents of gay and lesbian children vote for Republicans who hold these positions? What about the growing number of young people who have a very close gay or lesbian friend?

Aside from just policy issues, appealing to gay and lesbian voters becomes additionally harder when confronted with seemingly perennial anti-gay statements from prominent Republicans. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) demonstrated this recently upon meeting with a group of students from Fairfield University. When asked to clarify his stance on civil unions, he went into a diatribe about gays being filled with "lust" and having "one hundred sexual partners each year." Whether believing such nonsense stems from the Senator’s ignorance or his own personal life is not clear but its result is: he alienates voters that otherwise may be attracted to Republican policies. Aside from Coburn, Republicans from Mike Huckabee to Rick Santurum to Sally Kern have spewed hate in the past and demonstrated that they have a level of contempt for gays and lesbians.

In order to build a viable 21st century party capable of appealing to all types of Americans, the Republicans must look back to the times when compassionate conservatism didn’t mean spending like a Democrat, but being accepting of others. Gerald Ford understood the importance of reaching out to gay and lesbian voters and helped to start the Republican Unity Coalition, a 1970's-style gay-straight alliance, dismantled years later at the behest of religious extremists. Charles Francis, who helped Ford start the Coalition, later remarked that they "…felt homosexuality should be a non-issue. To our chagrin it became the issue, and the Republican Party stopped wanting to build any bridges to gays." Ronald Reagan transcended the urgings of religious extremists and, as governor of California, helped defeat the anti-gay Bragg Initiative. His presidency was about shrinking government and defeating America's enemies, not stopping two people who loved each other from having equality under the law. Barry Goldwater believed in “freedom and freedom alone,” and remarked in the early 1990's that "To see the party that fought communism and big government now fighting gays, well, that's just plain dumb."

Goldwater was right. Let's move the party away from fighting the very people who can support it, and turn our attention to solutions to the 21st century's problems.

Jonas Stankovich is an undergraduate student at the Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University
Jonas.Stankovich@gmail.com