Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet

A Republican strategist who has served in several key positions during his 17-year career on the Hill said: "Most of these Congress members would be perfectly happy if they didn't have to vote on another gay issue. For some it is an issue. For some . But the truth is, a lot of members are more tolerant than their voting records would have you believe. Look at [Rep. Roy] Blunt [R-Mo.], [Rep. Eric] Cantor [R-Va.], [Rep. Adam] Putnam [R-Fla.]. They know gay people. They have gay friends. But they speak out against gay rights. They have to. That's where the votes are." All three voted to amend the Constitution to define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

Like most gay Republican staffers interviewed for this article, the veteran strategist requested anonymity so he could speak freely about gays working within the GOP. Several Republican lawmakers declined to be interviewed about the subject, as did Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.

"You can't be a Republican and say that you're for gay rights on the Hill," the veteran strategist said. "You can say it behind closed doors. But you can't say it in public." That principle may explain why no fellow Republicans have publicly argued with Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a vocal opponent of gay marriage who is blocking President Bush's nomination of Judge Janet Neff to the federal bench because Neff once attended a commitment ceremony for a lesbian couple.

"To be gay is a political issue and the party has to take a political stand," the strategist said, explaining how he works within a party whose social policy is at odds with his own. The "issues that matter greatly to me" are national security and foreign policy, he said.

For years, he said, he has existed somewhere between "don't ask, don't tell" and "we're here, we're queer, get used to it."

"I don't hide the fact that I'm gay," he added, "but I don't let it define me either, politically or personally." But he finds it troubling, especially in light of the page scandal, that the party's most conservative voices speak so loudly against "the so-called homosexual agenda," and the more mainstream, moderate Republicans -- including the Congress members that he's worked for -- take the conservatives' cue.

Some gay Republicans, such as Duncan, the former Ney staffer, say "it's all just politics."

"My boss's public position didn't bother me at all. If that's the sacrifice that I have to make to keep my party in power, so be it," said Duncan, who now is a law student at George Mason University.

Others, such as the veteran strategist, take it more personally. "Does it gnaw on me? Yes. Is it painful sometimes? Yes. How can I stand it? Well, you can't make change from the outside," he said.

Sullivan, for one, has called for an end to this compartmentalizing. The GOP has been riding two horses for too long, he said, "relying on gays to staff and support" them "while relying upon gay-baiting" to win elections, he said. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out there's a conflict there," he added, "and now is as good as time as any to get off one horse -- the gay-baiting one."

In the summer of 2004, days before the vote on the defeated constitutional marriage amendment, the liberal blogger Mike Rogers posted on his Web site a list of Republican staffers and members of Congress who he claimed were closeted. To gay Republicans on the Hill it was "an outing scare." A worried chief of staff for a Republican senator, upon seeing his name on the list, approached his boss.

"I told him, 'You need to be aware of this, it's out there,' and he said, 'I don't care, just do your job well,' " recalled this staffer. "And I gotta tell you, there are a lot of Congress members who approached me" after the list was made public "and said, 'This is unfortunate, this is unfair, but don't worry about it.' "