Cabin Fever

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of conservative gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans, has been getting asked one particularly humorous question a lot these days: "So who are you going to vote for? John Kerry or Ralph Nader?" After all, he and his group of gay Republicans have seemingly been hung out to dry by the Bush administration and its backers in Congress. This week Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate pushed for but failed to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. A procedural vote on the proposal needed 60 votes to pass but went down on Wednesday by a vote of 48 votes backing the amendment to 50 against. Still, Guerriero and his fellow gay conservatives have been left feeling beleaguered by all the antigay rhetoric that surrounded the Senate debate. "I do a lot of soul-searching," Guerriero admitted. "Our membership is ticked off."

Mind you, that does not mean Guerriero is going to leave his Log Cabin post or the Republican Party. Growing up in a middle-class Boston suburb, he feared that his sexual orientation would thwart his political ambitions, especially as a budding young Republican. But unlike generations of gay and lesbian conservatives before him, he has refused to stay in the closet and has been successful. However, he is furious that the GOP – of which he and others have remained loyal to for so long – seems to be completely shunning gay men and lesbians while catering to a far-right agenda in which advocating the opposition of gay rights has become a favored means for raising campaign funds.

Guerriero, who declined to tell Advocate.com how he will vote in the upcoming presidential election, said he was heartened this week by a group of moderate Republican senators, including Arizona's John McCain, Maine's Olympia Snowe, and Rhode's Lincoln Chafee, who refused to support the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. In fact, such senators, who did not want the Constitution tampered with, were key to ensuring that the measure died. In a stirring floor speech McCain said, "The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans." He added that the amendment "usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them."

The developments provided an embarrassing defeat for Bush and the Republican leadership, including majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who were advocating for the measure. "What we've seen in the last several days is that there are voices that will stand up against intolerance and actually take a different position than their president and their leadership in the midst of an election year," Guerriero said.

With questions about the war in Iraq, terrorism, and the economy looming large in this election year, many voters and lawmakers have seemed unconcerned about marriage rights for gay men and lesbians. Antigay groups and lawmakers have been hoping to turn the issue of same-sex marriage into the next "abortion issue." During debate on the amendment proposal, Santorum pleaded with his fellow lawmakers that "the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance. Isn't that the ultimate homeland security – standing up and defending marriage?" But this week he and other amendment supporters learned that if there had been an up-or-down vote on the bill, as many as 60 senators were prepared to vote against it. So they turned to a procedural vote instead.

The week definitely had its bizarre moments as gay-hating senators tried to push through the FMA. In a move to get "celebrities" to show their support for the amendment, Santorum held a press conference and could only coax such people as actor Dean Jones (Herbie, the Love Bug) and singer Pat Boone. The press release chimed in that Boone is "the second most popular singer in the United States in the 1950s – second only to Elvis Presley." Meanwhile, Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas told an audience that gay marriage "does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right.... Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."