Fox is a second-year law student and a member of the LGBT Mentoring
Program and GALA.
By Ryan Fox
Very strange. The conservatives are mad at vice presidential
candidate Dick Cheney. How did this come to be? After all,
he’s a paragon of corporate-conservative virtue. He made tens
of millions of dollars as chief executive of the Halliburton oil
company, served as Secretary of Defense in a Republican
administration, and amassed an extremely conservative voting record
in Congress.
Yet now Cheney is getting the evil eye from conservatives like
the American Family Association and Jerry Falwell. Why? He dared
disagree with the Republican party line on same-sex marriage. Yes,
he climbed way, way out on that political limb in the vice
presidential debate a few weeks ago and suggested the unthinkable:
that it would be okay for a state to decide to allow gay marriage.
Nothing more.
Cheney did not talk about changing federal law or the
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” or getting hate
crimes protection for the LGBT community. He simply suggested that
the vice presidential candidate in a “compassionate
conservative” campaign can “tolerate and
accommodate” different types of relationships.
At first, this is heartening news. If you are a gay voter, it
does one good to see someone in a position of great national
prominence stand up against his party’s platform and support
your civil rights. It’s heartening, that is, until you
realize that the support doesn’t go very far.
Gov. George W. Bush is steadfastly opposed to same-sex marriage
and Cheney, despite his limited personal tolerance of it, has
stated that he would be “happy to support [Bush’s]
policy.” But it is this, this small glimmer of hope from the
Republican VP candidate, is what I hold onto when I start to worry
about what will happen if Bush wins the election.
 Illustration by JASON CHEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Everyone, aside from the Log Cabin Republicans, knows that
Bush’s stances (against hate crimes legislation, adoption by
gay parents, and in favor of “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell”) make him unfavorable to most gays. In addition, his
statement that he will appoint only “strict
constructionists” (a term favored by Nixon that is basically
code for Thomas/Scalia-type conservatives) to the Supreme Court
make him the decided anti-choice of the gay voter.
(Sidenote here: By “gay voter,” of course, I mean
one who cares enough about lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender
rights to make voting decisions based in large part on the
candidates stance on these issues. I think this group should
include most who are members of the LGBT community; I think your
feelings on your tax status should come secondary to your feelings
about being fired based on your sexual orientation or about which
judges will be deciding what exactly you can do in your
bedroom.)
So what is the choice of the gay voter? Well, Mr. Gay Voter, you
have two choices, Ralph Nader and Al Gore. Harry Browne of the
Libertarian Party might be a viable alternative, but most voters
know very little about him and his smaller government political
philosophy is, by his own admission, in opposition to what many of
us consider to be traditional gay rights issues, such as hate
crimes legislation and anti-discrimination laws.
Al Gore is the clear choice for many of us. The majority of
voters that I know who care strongly about gay rights are behind
Gore. Gore has trumpeted his support for the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act, and for hate crime laws. He has certainly
wooed the Human Rights Campaign, a Gay and Lesbian political group,
that has what basically amounts to a Gore advertisement on its Web
site, dressed up as a comparison of presidential candidates.
Sadly, though Al Gore can’t go the full mile for the gay
cause. He has publicly, even frequently, stated that he is against
gay marriage, even while still saying that gay issues are civil
rights issues. I find this very disappointing.
Even for those gay voters who don’t consider this our most
pressing concern, I still think it says a lot about respect. The
fact that Gore is willing to go to bat for some civil rights laws
but goes out of his way to state that he is against marriage shows
that he does not empathize with the desire for gays and lesbians to
feel civil support for their relationships.
While hate crime and discrimination laws are more practical
laws, marriage (or civil union) laws provide more abstract proof of
support; they say that the government understands the equivalency
of same-sex and opposite-sex relationships.
So, while even Cheney (and Democratic vice presidential
candidate Joe Lieberman, by the way) are willing to keep an open
mind on the issue, Gore’s straightforward declaration
demonstrates that he truly doesn’t understand.
Nader seems to be better, in this regard. He states simply on
his Web site, “I think homosexuals have the right of civil
union.” In addition, he has come out in favor of hate crimes
laws that protect gays and lesbians, anti-discrimination laws, and
other LGBT issues. On PlanetOut’s political scorecard, Nader
was the only candidate (of five) to get a seven out of seven rating
in Gay Rights support.
There are two issues that undercut Nader’s desirability,
though. The first is the feeling by many Gay Rights leaders that
Nader’s stance on LGBT issues was reached relatively recently
and that his lack of long-term support for the issues may signal a
lack of commitment. Some have pointed out that as recently as 1996,
Nader referred to Gay Rights issues as “gonadal
politics.”
The second issue is concern over Nader’s electability.
Hitting below five percent in most polls, he has no chance of being
voted into the White House. For that reason, many gay advocates
have suggested that Nader is dangerously pulling us toward a Bush
presidency by taking away votes from Gore.
These two statements have not dissuaded me from considering
Nader, though. In fact, I’ve come to believe that neither of
these two criticisms matter at all, at least for those of us at
UCLA. Why? Because at the moment, Gore is expected to win
reasonably comfortably in California. (Notice how little the
candidates have been campaigning out here compared to the
Midwest?)
Since even the slimmest margin will mean Gore gets every
Californian electoral vote, support for Nader is unlikely to cost
Gore the state. Therefore a vote for Nader should be considered as
much a vote for his issues as for the candidate himself.
And this is why I am leaning (somewhat) toward a Nader vote on
November 7.
I look at it as the “have your cake and eat it too”
vote, where I can speak my mind on the issues feeling confident
that it won’t hurt the chances of the electable candidate I
support. You can call it chicken, I’ll call it pragmatic.
Either way, I know it’s safe, and I’ll feel good about
it the next morning.