Since exit polls from the last election have shown that 31 percent of gay and lesbian voters cast their ballots for Republicans, at least one gay Republican group wants conservative politicians to pay the piper.
GOProud—the gay Republican group made famous for hosting Ann Coulter for a night of live anti-gay ridicule—has partnered with the leaders of 16 Tea Party groups to pen a letter to incoming Republican leaders “asking them to announce a cease-fire on their pursuit of social and cultural issues.”
“On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the tea party movement,” the letter read. “This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check… Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party’s message and use it to push their own agenda—particularly as it relates to social issues.”
A new CNN poll shows that the authors of the letter are right in saying that the election was not a mandate for the Republicans. Of those polled 70 percent said their vote was a “rejection of the Democrats” with only 17 percent saying they voted to give Republicans a mandate.
But, mandate or not, social conservatives say they still expect Republicans to put social issues in the forefront.
“Social issues should be at the very top of the list of priorities for the new Congress, along with sensible fiscal policies,” Concerned Women for America leader Penny Nance responded in her own letter. “I’d like to know which one—support for the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, eliminating taxpayer dollars from funding embryonic stem cell research, or defunding Planned Parenthood—the signers of the GOProud letter have a problem with.”
Actually, GOProud, like most fiscally conservative voters, are, according to their website, concerned with cutting capital gains and corporate tax rates, free-market health care reform, and privatizing Social Security. Oh, they want “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed as well—but that may be deemphasized as they seek support on these other matters.
GOProud’s letter is at once bold and insulting. Bold because they have walked into the lion’s den and asked kindly not to be eaten for supper. Insulting because it shows that even gay and lesbian people will give up fighting for their civil rights if it means a few more bucks in their pockets or a few more chickens in their pots.
GOProud, however, has sadly underestimated both their influence and their opponents on this issue. While gay voters did help the Tea Partiers in their takeover of the House, they still played a miniscule role—not enough of a role to make them king makers by any stretch of the imagination. Also, they seemed to miss the memo that Tea Partiers are, by and large, religious conservatives.
Polls show that nearly half (47 percent) consider themselves part of the religious right, with more than 80 percent identifying as Christian. Nearly two-thirds say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases and only 18 percent support marriage equality for gays and lesbians. So, while GOProud and the Tea Partiers they helped to elect may agree on many fiscal issues, there remains a wide gap on social issues.
Part of the problem here is that Tea Partiers spent most of their campaigns talking about fiscal issues and not the social issues. Those gay and lesbian voters who wanted their vote to be a “rejection of Democrats” and voted for Tea Partiers because of their fiscal sensibilities have just sent a passel of anti-gay Republicans to the Hill.
That includes Missouri Congresswoman elect Vicky Hartzler who “was the spokeswoman and public face of the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, which successfully amended the state constitution to include a ban same-sex marriage (which was already banned by statute) in 2004.”
The new Congressman from Florida, Alan West, compares homosexuality to adultery and opposes the lifting of DADT, and Mississippi’s newest Congressman Alan Nunnelee is proud of his work to prevent gay couples in the state from adopting children.
Instead of pushing against social issues in Congress and in elections, perhaps GOProud should have been informing its constituents about the true nature of these candidates. Sure, they may give gay people a tax cut, but they’ll work to ensure that they remain second-class citizens in every other aspect of life.
That should give any gay person who voted Republican in the past election pause.
