Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet

In the weeks since the Foley scandal became Topic A on the Hill, the early sense of panic among gay Republicans -- "Start of a purge?" wondered the National Journal -- has ebbed. At first, Patrick Sammon, head of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, feared that the public might be influenced by the likes of onetime presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and Perkins of the Family Research Council, both of whom have linked homosexuality with pedophilia. Some gay Republicans cringed when they heard former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) tell Fox News that the House leadership wasn't quick to react to Foley because they would have been accused of "gay-bashing."

Sammon said such remarks seem to have roused what he called "the usual suspects" but have not influenced the general electorate, a majority of which favors equal rights for gays but opposes same-sex marriage, according to recent polls from the Pew Research Center. But Charles Francis, once a big fundraiser for Bush and a founder of the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight alliance of GOP leaders, dreads that a backlash -- not just toward gay Republican staffers but also toward closeted Republican members of Congress -- will ensue. The Foley scandal, Francis said, is "a turning point" among Republicans that "to support a congressman who's in the closet makes no credible sense."

The House ethics committee was asked this week to expand its investigation of the page scandal to look into contacts between pages and Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), the only openly gay Republican congressman.

The veteran Republican strategist said he worried about the implications of that.

"These are two gay Republican House members," he said. ". . . The worst-case scenario is this all plays to the ugly stereotype that some people have about gays."

Kolbe, who declined repeated requests for an interview and who is retiring after this term, has been friendly to gay staffers on the Hill, at one point hosting at his home near Capitol Hill a welcome-to-the-House wine and cheese reception for members of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association.

At the height of the "outing scare" two years ago, a young gay Republican staffer for a House committee said he approached Kolbe and thanked the lawmaker for simply being out.

While the public may have been in the dark before the Foley flap, "there's been a tremendous shift on the Hill in terms of being gay and being out about it," said Mark Agrast, a former top aide to former representative Gerry Studds, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the first openly gay member of Congress. Studds, who served in the House for 24 years, was censured by the House in 1983 after he admitted having had an affair with a 17-year-old page. Studds died Saturday.

"Maybe the Republican Party will come out about its true feelings about what many of them call 'the gay lifestyle,' " said Agrast, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and was one of the founding members of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association.

"Sure, many Republicans might cloak their homophobia in the language of 'Well, some of my best friends are gay,' " Agrast added. "But many Republicans who speak out against gay rights aren't really being honest with the public as to how they feel about gays."