The Election Choice for LGBT Citizens Cannt Be More Stark

Click image to enlarge Party Platform comparison

In my October, 2012 VEER column (which will be on distribution stands on October 15th) I look at length on the incredible stark contrast between what the Romney/Ryan ticket and the GOP platform offers to LGBT Americans and what the Obama/Biden and Democrat platform offers them   On the GOP side, the candidates and the platform oppose every single issue and policy that would make LGBT Americans full citizens and protect them from firing at will and other forms of discrimination.  In sharp contrast, the Democrats support virtually every pro-LGBT position.  A column in Salon takes a similar view and one has to wonder how any LGBT citizen could vote for Romney/Ryan and other GOP candidates given the reality that the GOP seeks to deny us our civil rights, bar any recognition of our life partners, and re-implement an anti-gay version of the Jim Crow laws.  Here are column highlights:

It will be quite interesting to see what the exit polls show this year, because 2012 is different. For the first time, no spectrum of dreary grays. The colors are black and white. At last, gay voters have a choice, not an echo.

President Obama started slow on gay rights. He opposed marriage equality, dragged his feet on the military-service ban, and let the Justice Department file a brief defending DOMA that could have been written by his predecessor. But then he made up for lost time. He went out on a limb jurisprudentially by abandoning his legal defense of DOMA. He and the Democratic Congress got the military ban repealed. He used executive authority to provide some benefits for same-sex partners of federal workers. Above all, he came out this year in support of gay marriage — and, in its platform, his party did the same.

Separately, those policy changes were important, but they add up to something altogether historic.  

Then there is Romney. Whatever his attitude in private, his public posture has been that of a throwback. He opposes gay marriage and civil unions and favors a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. That puts him where George W. Bush was in 2004 and, please note, several clicks to the right of Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, who opposed the constitutional amendment (as did Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney). He says he hires without regard to sexual orientation but seems to oppose a federal non-discrimination law, much the same position that George W. Bush took in 2000. (He hired an openly gay foreign-policy spokesman, but the guy lasted less than two weeks.) He opposed repealing the military ban, although he says he would not revisit the decision. His running mate and his party’s platform promise to defend DOMA.

Perhaps most significant, Romney remains on the pre-1960s side of the cultural divide separating those who are comfortable with gay people and issues from those who squirm.

In moving as decisively as they have on gay rights, the Democrats are following the country. As recently as 2004, according to Gallup, 54 percent of the public thought same-sex relations were morally wrong, versus 42 percent saying they were morally acceptable. The converging lines met in 2008, however, and never looked back. This year, the 2004 numbers are precisely flipped; 54 percent morally approved of homosexuality, only 42 percent disapproved.

To put the matter bluntly, the Republican Party is becoming an isolated bastion of anti-gay sentiment.  .  .  .  We do know this: If any Republican in the 2012 field had the potential to lead the party away from its growing isolation on gay equality, it was Mitt Romney. By choosing instead to pander to the anti-gay right, he made gay voters’ choice easier . . . .

The bottom line in my view: any LGBT citizen who votes for a GOP candidate is like a Jew voting for Adolph Hitler or a black voting for the Imperial Wizard of the KKK.  The would be GOP supporters can wring their hands and make excuses, but the bottom line, as I said, is that a vote for today's GOP is a vote for self-destruction and marginalization.   I'm sure some readers will not like my assessment, but those who are disgruntled by my views need to look at themselves in the mirror and ask "WTF am I doing?"