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Can The GOP Go Gay?

“Go gay.” That is the advice of two of the Republican’s current cheerleaders for a more inclusive progressive social agenda. Of course, many of us in the LGBTI community have been pushing this idea for a while, and had that advice fall on deaf ears. Certainly no one has offered us a book deal. However, it is time for the Republican Party’s most vocal advocates of equality to realize that the part is tearing itself into the smallest factions, and that most of those factions are focused in on nothing more than hatred.

In truth, the calls from Meghan McCain and Steve Schmidt have not fallen totally on infertile soil. New York Assemblywoman Janet Duprey has declared that she will now support same-sex marriage. This is a reversal for the Republican who once opposed marriage equality. This is not unheard of in the North East where the number of Republican Representatives in the United States Congress now amounts to none, and most of the remaining Republicans in the Senate are very moderate indeed. In 2010, the number of Republicans from New England will drop by one as Judd Gregg leaves the Senate behind. In Vermont’s closely watched battle over civil marriage, many Republicans in the Vermont House and Senate crossed political lines to vote first for the bill and then for the override.

For the national Republican Party, is it realistic to begin discussing marriage rights as the way to move forward? If the tea bag protests were any indication, probably not. Many of the tea baggers were holding up signs equating President Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler and a Fascist. Of course, they never quite grasp what Fascism is, nor what Adolf Hitler’s political platform included. As a hint, it included allowing for rampant unregulated business, religious intolerance (not just against Jews) and limited government for everything but the military and policing. In fact, they seemed oblivious to the fact that they were, indeed, defending and supporting fascism as a political ideology (sans the dictatorship.) However, what else should we expect from people who are oblivious as to what tea bagging is, and to why MSNBC and The Daily Show were busy engaging in, as Jon Stewart put it, scrotum based humor.

Given that, can the GOP become the Grand Ol’ Party of Pride (or GOPride)? Probably not. In order for the Republican Party to become inclusive of gays, lesbians, and transpeople, they must first jettison the core of the party into space. We saw the kind of party the Republicans have become in the rallies around Governor Sarah Palin. These people are not even welcoming to racial minorities what makes people think that they are going to be welcoming to the “perverted sexual deviants”. After all, that is how many within the Republican base see gays, lesbians and transpeople. One of the leaders of tea bag flop (Vermont had more people show up to support same-sex marriage than to protest taxes) was Richard Army, a man who once, on the floor of the House, referred to Representative Barney Frank as “Barney Fag”. Anyone want to take bets on how open he is to supporting LGBTI equality?

While it would be foolish to say that the Democrats do not have their own detractors on the issue of LGBTI rights, they are more accepting. Certainly Ruben Diaz of New York and the Democrats who crossed the party line to vote against the marriage equality bill in Vermont are testament to that, the DNC is certainly a lot more inclusive and open than the RNC has been of late.

The GOP has wedded itself to the Religious Right, and is finding divorce rather hard to come by. Unfortunately for Ms McCain, Mr Schmidt, the Log Cabin Republicans and their splinter group GOPride, and even GOP Chairman Michael Steele, the social liberals in the Republican Party are the whisper heard in the swamp- heard but quickly ignored.