The gay voter's guide to the GOP

How should a right-wing homosexual vote in the upcoming primaries and caucuses? Salon rates the Republican candidates for gay friendliness.

Editor's note: This story has been updated since it was first published.

By Michael Scherer and Ben Van Heuvelen

Read more: Republican Party, Rudy Giuliani, Gay Culture, John McCain, Politics, News, Alan Keyes, Gay Marriage, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Michael Scherer, 2008 election, Mitt Romney, ron paul

Sept. 21, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Imagine this: You are a gay man or a lesbian woman who just can't stand Democrats. Maybe you are rich and you don't want anyone to raise your taxes. Perhaps you are just determined to stay the course in Iraq, privatize Social Security, and drop oil wells into the Alaskan wilderness. Jack Abramoff might even be an old drinking buddy.

It doesn't really matter. Whatever the cause, you are in a quandary. Your only viable choice in the coming presidential election is to vote for a Republican, and that means voting for a party that has spent much of the last decade casting you and your way of life as an assault on the wholesome goodness of the American family. "Homosexuality is incompatible with military service," declared the 2004 GOP platform. "Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country."

What is a right-leaning homosexual to do in this presidential election? Start by taking a closer look at the candidates in the Republican field. There is substantial variation, and not just in their positions on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Call it the Giuliani-Keyes Spectrum of Gay Friendliness. On one end, there is Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor who has lived with gay friends, favors gay domestic partnerships, and sometimes dresses in drag. At the other end, there is Alan Keyes, who calls lesbians "selfish hedonists," even though his only daughter is a lesbian. There exists, shall we say, a veritable rainbow of variation in between.

In service to the one in four gay voters who chose George Bush over John Kerry in 2004, and anyone else who might want to know, Salon now presents its first ever Gay Guide to the Republican Candidates.

Rudy Giuliani: The Party Bender

About a year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rudy Giuliani donned a wig and a dress so he could squeal with girlish delight when real estate mogul Donald Trump nuzzled his fake breasts. It was a harmless comedy sketch for the charity dinner of the Inner Circle of City Hall, a press club for New York City reporters. But the mayor's antics spoke directly to his notable comfort with all things gender-bending and socially liberal. A few months later, after his estranged second wife, Donna Hanover, kicked him out of the mayor's residence, he moved in with two close friends, a wealthy gay couple. According to one of the men, Howard Koeppel, Giuliani even agreed to marry the men "if they ever legalize gay marriage."

As mayor, Giuliani marched in gay pride parades, and after he left office he continued to keep up relations with the community, even penning a 2002 letter to one gay group to commemorate the "triumph" of the 1969 Stonewall riots, when the New York gay community fought back against a police raid of a Greenwich Village gay bar.

Since becoming a presidential candidate, however, Giuliani has tried to distance himself from his socially liberal past. On the stump, he now emphasizes his opposition to same-sex marriage, though he also opposes a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, putting him in the same camp as most of the Democratic presidential candidates. In April, his campaign came out against New Hampshire's civil union law, even though Giuliani says he continues to support domestic partnerships that give gay and lesbian couples legal rights similar to those of marriage. Giuliani has dodged the issue of gays in the military, by saying "now isn't the time" to revisit the policy, given the war in Iraq. He pushed for a hate-crimes law in New York to punish crimes motivated by homophobia, but he has dodged questions about his support for the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. As for the Supreme Court, Giuliani says he plans to appoint judges to the Supreme Court in the mold of Antonin Scalia, who wrote a famous dissent arguing that the government should have the right to prosecute sodomy between consenting adults.

The specific issues aside, Giuliani's candidacy is seen by religious conservatives as a direct threat. Were Giuliani to win the nomination, many conservative Christian leaders, including Focus on the Family president James Dobson, have promised to withhold their support, suggesting the potential defection of many of the "values voters" so crucial to GOP victories.

John McCain: The Almost Agnostic

Back in March, John McCain sat in the Straight Talk Express, fielding questions from reporters about his views on gay and lesbian issues. As the coach coursed through Iowa, the Arizona senator mostly dodged and weaved.

Had he ever dressed in drag during college? "No. At the Naval Academy, it was frowned on." Did he have an opinion on Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, having a child? "No opinion." What did he think about recent comments by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that homosexual acts were "immoral"? "He said he regretted those statements ... so I don't want to say I wished I had said them." What would he do if one of his own daughters said she was gay? "That's one that really is a family matter."

Though the exchange was not satisfying for the press, it aptly summarized McCain's approach to gay and lesbian issues. With rare exception, he has avoided engaging in the politics of sexuality through much of his political career, evidently because he doesn't really see much role for government in these matters. As he put it, "I've never talked about people's private lives or their personal conduct."

During his 2000 run for the White House, he fused this sentiment with sharp attacks on the right-wing evangelical elements of his own party, whom he dubbed "agents of intolerance" for stoking the culture war. "Political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value," he said at the time in Virginia Beach, a military community that is also home to evangelist and erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson. "We are the party of Ronald Reagan, not Pat Robertson."

As he prepared for the 2008 campaign, McCain attempted to rebuild some of the bridges he had burned to the party's religious base, though he has had little tangible success. At Pastor Jerry Falwell's invitation, he spoke at Liberty University, where homosexual relations can be grounds for expulsion. In 2006, he supported an amendment to the Arizona Constitution to ban gay marriage, which failed at the ballot box.

In the Senate, McCain has been an ardent opponent of a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, arguing his case on federalist grounds. "The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans," he declared in 2004. "It usurps from the states a fundamental authority." McCain has declined to take sides in the debate over civil unions in New Hampshire, though in the past, he has voted against the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate-crime laws. He also supports the current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military and opposes ENDA, because he thinks it could "open a floodgate of litigation."

That said, there is little doubt that a McCain presidency would avoid any crusades against gay and lesbian rights. For this reason, among others, Focus on the Family's Dobson has also promised not to vote Republican if McCain wins the party's nomination.

Next page: "If people are looking for people who are anti-gay, they aren't going to find that with me"