The religious right goes berserk over GOP meeting with gay group

Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is no fool. He sees his job, accurately, as one of generating funds for party campaigns and operations, and reaching out to build relationships with different constituencies to build support for his GOP. His counterpart at the DNC, Terry McAuliffe, does the same thing.

With this in mind, it didn’t surprise me to read recently that Racicot had hosted a meeting with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, in March. Racicot spoke with about 300 members of the HRC and listened to the group’s concerns. According to the HRC’s political director, Racicot also discussed the GOP’s “commitment to inclusion” and his personal dislike for “gay-baiting” political advertisements.

It’s easy to dismiss Racicot’s claims of inclusiveness, particularly when it comes to gay people, because the GOP has been consistently hostile towards gays and indifferent towards their political concerns. President Bush, for example, didn’t hesitate to say during the campaign that he would never hire an employee he knew to be gay.

Nevertheless, Racicot’s outreach makes sense to me. In a nation that is closely divided along political lines, and with Bush’s re-election right around the corner, it would be foolish for Racicot to ignore a generally wealthy, politically active segment of the population that is currently disinterested in voting for his candidates. If he can persuade maybe 10-15% of gay voters to consider voting Republican, Racicot figures, the difference could translate into huge successes at the ballot box. I doubt it’ll work, and I certainly doubt Racicot’s sincerity, but I’m not surprised to see him try.

The religious right, however, didn’t look at the meeting in a pragmatic light.

“When you meet with a group that holds values that are antithetical to those of your base, you’re sending the signal that your base is being taken for granted or is not respected — that’s what Mr. Racicot has done here,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, a think tank associated with the conservative Concerned Women for America. “It would be like Al Gore meeting with the John Birch Society.”

Now I know Bob Knight and have talked to him on a few occasions. The man makes little effort to hide his obsession. Knight hates what he describes as the “gay agenda,” which he sadly believes is trying to take over America, destroy families, and “recruit” children. His paranoid fantasies are pathetic, and so are his complaints that Racicot shouldn’t even talk to a gay group.

Bob Knight, of course, was far from alone.

Focus on the Family, a religious right group created by radio talk show host James Dobson, issued a report concluding that the meeting was “basically declaring war on [the Republicans’] pro-family base,” and urging its large membership base to contact the RNC to complain about the meeting, decrying Racicot’s “embrace [of] the values of the homosexual activist movement.”

Similarly, the Family Research Council has also gone apoplectic over the meeting, condemning Racicot for speaking to a “radical organization working to advance an extremist agenda at odds with the Republican Party platform.”

The group’s director, Ken Connor, was practically hyperventilating in explaining his disgust for Racicot’s meeting with the HRC, concluding that talking to a gay group undermines the foundation of the Republican Party.

“Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president famously observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Rocicot said. “Neither can a political party divided against itself long endure. A party cannot stand for two opposite things. Yet, Lincoln’s simple lesson appears lost on Republican National Chairman Mark Racicot.” Connor added, “a party will lose its character and coherence if it strives to stand for mutually exclusive, polar opposite views on controversial issues. The GOP cannot stand for marriage, yet seek to accommodate those who would destroy it by radical re-definition.”

Connor even started threatening the GOP, saying, “If the Republican Party is seen as abandoning its defense of marriage and family, then millions of its grassroots voter base in ‘Bush country’ will stay home on Election Day.”

To hear this chorus of religious right cries, you’d think Racicot had promised that the GOP will nominate a gay Republican for president in 2008. It’s the same mistake homophobic bigots make every time. To respect a gay family, as far as the far right is concerned, is to denigrate straight families. And to even speak to a gay group is to spit in the face of the anti-gay groups.

I’d like to propose a solution to this conflict. Let’s encourage the religious right groups and activists to break off from the GOP and form their own theocratic political party. If the Republicans are getting too “gay friendly,” as Connor put it, then they should be taught a lesson, right? These religious right activists can’t be expected to vote for GOP candidates with the knowledge that the director of the party actually spoke to a gay group! They should create a new, ideologically pure party where gays would not even be acknowledged, unless they were the target of evangelism (that doesn’t count as talking to gay people, does it?).

Under this plan, the GOP can feel free to talk to whomever they please and the new bigoted party won’t have to act as if the sky has fallen.