- Carolyn Lochhead and Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Washington -- The small band of 11 gay men and one lesbian, Republicans all, who set out more than four years ago on a highly personal crusade to reconcile homosexuals and the Republican Party, today concedes utter failure.
One is leaving the party. Another resigned his Bush administration post. Their leader refuses to talk to the media. Few will even vote for President Bush. Most feel profoundly betrayed.
For the Austin 12, as they call themselves, Bush squandered a precious chance to broaden the GOP and deliberately harmed the gay civil rights movement at a historic turning point.
Bush may win re-election because of his stance, the members of the Austin 12 say, but they are certain the damage to gays and their party will take years, if not decades, to reverse.
The president's endorsement in February of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage broke the group's spirit and shattered its support for Bush. To back an effort to insert into the nation's founding document words that would exclude gays and lesbians was -- for them -- unforgivable.
Charles Francis, the group's leader, compared the response among gays to the way California Latinos walked away from the GOP after Proposition 187.
"The stampede you hear will be 1 million gay voters who voted for President Bush -- gone, and their families gone, and their friends gone," Francis warned before Bush's endorsement of the proposed constitutional amendment.
The Austin 12 got their name from their April 13, 2000, meeting with then Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the first presumptive GOP presidential nominee ever to meet publicly with gays. Bush emerged from that meeting to declare at a high-profile news conference that he was "a better person" for it, and he promised to embrace gays in his administration.
Speaking extensively about their experience for the first time, the members of the Austin 12 say they saw a warm and open man without animus toward them, who they believed could lead their party out of the culture wars. They pledged their support, facing thinly veiled scorn from largely Democratic gay activists and raw hostility from largely Republican conservative Christians.
Members of the Austin 12 interviewed by The Chronicle ascribe the president's decision to back the same-sex marriage ban to a political calculation: The 1 million gays and lesbians who voted for Bush in 2000 are outnumbered by the 4 million evangelicals who stayed home.
"When I think back about that conversation I had with him about setting up a better world for gay and lesbian babies, he's taken a huge step back, because he now has unleashed the forces that he kept at bay in the early years of his administration," said Brian Bennett, who came out while a top aide to former Rep. Bob Dornan, the famously anti-gay Orange County congressman.
"The really hateful types -- the Dobsons, the Sheldons, the Bauers -- he set them loose to call for an amendment and to go after us in 50 states as well," Bennett said. "So they now have a cause celebre, and they have a president of the United States backing them, and they're whipsawing gays and lesbians in every one of these states. And that is reprehensible."
The catalyst
The evolution of Bush and the gay movement began with Francis, a Washington public relations professional, solidly Republican and openly gay. Francis had never been active in gay causes or politics, but he knew the Bushes through close family connections in Texas. His brother, James, managed Bush's campaign against former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. Charles Francis got to know Bush on family fishing trips.
Dismayed by the anti-gay climate in the Republican Party and the damage he believed it had done to GOP causes, Francis came out to Bush in a personal letter. Sensing that Bush had a big future, Francis offered his help in dealing with gay issues as a conservative.
In the 2000 GOP primaries, Bush was running to the right of Sen. John McCain, speaking at Bob Jones University and refusing to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, the chief gay GOP group, which had endorsed McCain. But when the primary contest ended and Bush shifted to the center as a "compassionate conservative," Francis saw his chance.
Francis handpicked the Austin 12, many of whom were Log Cabin members and, for the most part, connected to politics.
"It was Charles who persuaded me," recalled activist David Greer, "Charles' belief and his personal relationship with the governor."
"You didn't expect things to change overnight," Greer said. "But just the fact that there was a meeting was the victory. ... I was proud to be part of it, proud to be able to speak directly about these issues to somebody who was going to be leader of the free world. It sent chills down my spine."
The night before the meeting, the group met in a conference room of an Austin law firm. Rather than confront Bush with a laundry list of policy demands, they chose a more personal appeal. Each would tell his own story.
As Virginia political consultant Scott Huch put it: "We knew the way we had to approach it was to reach his heart."
The meeting
At Bush campaign headquarters, they were met by Bush political czar Karl Rove and communications director Karen Hughes. Bush bounded into the room, warmly greeting each member of the group -- and promptly boasting that he would become the next president.
Carl Schmid, a lobbyist from Washington, D.C., talked about his lesbian sister raising three African American children with her partner and the problems facing gay couples who want to adopt. "He said he appreciated it, and said, 'It's true that love can come in other forms,' " Schmid said.
Jim McFarland, a Milwaukee lawyer, told Bush how coming out as gay while serving on the City Council changed the views of many of his conservative friends and colleagues. Bush nodded and agreed. "He felt that it was important that people who are gay should be more open with other people about their experiences so people can learn from that," McFarland said.
Bush told the group he was frustrated that people labeled him anti-gay.
" 'I just don't understand how my views could be so misunderstood,' " Huch recalled Bush saying. " 'I'm not a hateful person. I'm not a bigoted person.' "
Bush was told he could change that impression. Let people know lesbians and gays are welcome in your campaign and in a future administration, they told him. They even suggested he use the phrase "sexual orientation is not a factor" in hiring decisions. Bush adopted the phrase.
They asked that there be no gay-baiting at the national convention, but an openly gay speaker instead.
"(Bush) looked over at Rove and said, 'We have no problem with that,' " Huch recalled. "He asked, 'Who would be a good speaker?' "
The group recommended Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona. A few months later, he was at the podium.
Bush delivered on other requests. He kept former President Bill Clinton's anti-discrimination executive order for federal employees, despite intense pressure from conservatives to revoke it. He included gays in his administration. Austin 12 member Scott Evertz became his AIDS czar, and Michael Guest ambassador to Romania. Austin 12 member Donald Capoccia was named to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.
By Schmid's count, Bush appointed more than 40 gays or lesbians -- less than a third of the number appointed by Clinton, but a record for a Republican White House.
Other moves followed. Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked a federal hate crimes provision to allow the death penalty in the Shenandoah National Park murders of two lesbians. Bush signed the Mychal Judge Act after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks allowing death benefits for same-sex partners of public safety officers.
The White House sided with gays on lifting the District of Columbia ban on domestic partnerships. "After years of us fighting ... we were able to accomplish it under a Republican president and Congress," Schmid said. "I can't say I was without disappointments, but to be in the middle of it and to see progress ... at least I saw some positive movement along the way."
McFarland called Bush's first years in office "the best any Republican administration has ever done" on gay issues.
The Austin 12 overtures burnished Bush's image as a moderate and provided hope that he was helping to make gay issues safe for Republicans. Even the liberal Human Rights Campaign praised several of Bush's actions. The steps were small, but the White House was quietly supportive -- and, in what many say was more important, kept religious conservatives at bay.
Energized by the success of the Austin 12, Francis formed the Republican Unity Coalition, a "gay-straight alliance" with GOP stars: Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter; GOP operative Mary Matalin, then working for the vice president; former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming; and former President Gerald Ford.
The group held party-sanctioned events at the 2000 convention and issued a "Cody Statement" declaring that traditional Republican principles of freedom and family should apply without regard to sexual orientation, which it sought to make a "nonissue in the Republican Party."
David Catania, a District of Columbia council member, said he raised $70,000 for Bush, and Schmid recalls countless media interviews to help improve Bush's image with gays and moderate Republicans.
Yet looking back, the Austin meeting held an omen: At the outset, Bush said he would not support same-sex marriage. Greer said the group saw it almost as "a throwaway line."
They told Bush, "We're not here to discuss that," Schmid said. "At that time, it wasn't an issue. We didn't have Canada, we didn't have Massachusetts. It wasn't even on the radar screen."
Turnabout
It was not until spring 2003 that concerns about the administration began to emerge for members of the Austin 12 -- two months before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Lawrence vs. Texas that overturned state sodomy laws, decriminalizing homosexuality.
That April, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., warned that if the court overturned sodomy laws, legalized polygamy, incest and other acts would be next, an assertion that outraged gays.
A few weeks later, Matalin suddenly did an about-face and defended Santorum on national television, declaring that Catholicism teaches one to "love and accept the individual, but you cannot accept the act."
Matalin went on to accuse gays of "raising the tolerance bar" by criticizing Santorum, going so far as to compare that to calling the pope a bigot.
Without explanation, Mary Cheney suddenly resigned from the unity group.
When the high court issued its Lawrence decision in June, evangelical conservatives leapt on Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, accusing the court of inviting same-sex marriage and taking sides in the culture war.
In November, the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued its decision requiring the state to grant civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples. By this time, conservative evangelicals -- leaders of the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition and Concerned Women for America -- said they had handed Bush an ultimatum: Endorse a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, or their constituents would stay home in 2004.After San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing same-sex marriage licenses, the president, on Feb. 24, announced his endorsement of just such an amendment.
Few believed Congress would have the votes to pass it, and Bush had a quintessentially Republican argument against it -- made by Vice President Cheney in 2000 -- that marriage is a state issue. But Bush sided with federal intervention.
The Austin 12 said his imprimatur unleashed the forces of the conservative opposition, which rolled through state legislatures with copycat amendments that have become and are becoming law. "That's the power of the bully pulpit," Greer said.
It has never been easy being a gay or lesbian Republican. Rebecca Maestri, once an aide to former Sen. Alphonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., said she told Bush in Austin that day, "It's more difficult for me to come out to the gay community as a Republican than it is coming out to my Republican friends as being gay."
"I'm called a self-hater," said Maestri, chairwoman of Log Cabin's Virginia chapter. "This is the gay community that is supposed to be for diversity and tolerance, but I represent the evil empire, I guess. I'm the Uncle Tom of the gay community."
But she had hope in Austin, when she said Bush told the group, " 'You know, I'm just a guy from Midland, Texas, and I don't understand this stuff. Help me.' "
"It's hard for me to say it's been a disaster, but I think that any therapist would tell you I'm in denial if I don't," Greer said. "It just hurts to say it and hurts to face it."
Capoccia, a New York real estate developer and ally of New York Gov. George Pataki, resigned his position on the arts commission. Catania has been the most outspoken. Last month, he endorsed Kerry for president.
"My heart has left the party, my head has left the party," Catania said. "The party as it is now is not one I can support."
Other members will stay in the party, while actively denouncing Bush.
"That doesn't mean I support Kerry, either," said Daniel Stewart, mayor of Plattsburgh, N.Y. "It means I can't support George Bush anymore. I have just had it. He hit my soul, he hit my heart. I'm not going to stand there and violate my own conscience to help get someone elected."
Most will stay in the party to fight where they say the battle counts.
"I believe in the principles of the Republican Party, and I won't be railroaded out of the party just because of my sexual orientation," Maestri said.
"Why should we abandon Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other leaders who are in the party taking heat for standing up for gays and lesbians?" Bennett said. "They have the courage to stand up for me in my party. What good would I be for them, who are in some ways jeopardizing their political futures by standing up for me, if I cut and run?"
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