The Changing Boundaries of Gay Rights

Paul Singer

The world is changing despite the efforts of many in the Republican Party to drag America back to some of the worse abuses and callousness of the Gilded Age.  One only need look at GOP efforts to slash the social safety net for the less fortunate, allow large corporations to run amok without consequences, disenfranchise minority voters, and fuel soaring wealth disparities to see it happening.  But no all Republicans are intent on going back to a time when there was less equality and gays in particularly were - when not openly criminalized - supposed to stay not only inferior but invisible.  A column in the New York Times looks at the efforts of billionaire Paul Singer to force the GOP to pick up the gay rights banner.  Here are column excerpts:

[Paul Singer] was announcing a new project to be funded, at least at the outset, by him and other conservative donors but to be run by the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T. advocacy group in Washington, which is much more closely affiliated with Democrats. The initiative will be dedicated to fighting the victimization of gays and lesbians internationally. But it will also show that there are Republicans — not a majority, but an increasingly impassioned minority — who are intent on progress and justice for L.G.B.T. people. They won’t surrender that cause to Democrats, and they believe that Republicans who do so are resisting a future that’s both just and inevitable.

“Unless America engages in a terrible, terrible retreat from freedom, towards fascism, communism, whatever — some totalitarian harsh state — this seems inexorable,” Singer told me, meaning equal rights, including the spread of gay marriage, for which he has campaigned with particular energy.

Although Singer declined to discuss specific conversations with individual politicians, other Republicans have told me that he is close to, and has discussed gay rights with, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who recently backed off a legal challenge to gay marriage in that state, which became the 14th in which gays and lesbians can legally wed. 

I’ve also been told that Singer has had such talks with Senator Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who came out for gay marriage, citing his love for his gay son. Singer also has a gay son — and a gay son-in-law. The two men are married. 

His vision of how Republicans must evolve was echoed in a subsequent conversation that I had with Daniel Loeb, another New York hedge-fund billionaire who has given lavishly to conservatives. Loeb is Singer’s principal financial partner in the H.R.C. international project; Singer has already committed $1.5 million, and Loeb has promised a similar amount over its first years.

When I asked Loeb if opposition to gay rights would increasingly hurt Republicans in elections, he said: “Absolutely. It’s where the country’s gone, and if they don’t go with it, they’ll lose a very important demographic. They already have lost some young people.” Surveys show that more than 70 percent of Americans under 30 favor marriage equality.

All of the 55 senators in the Democratic majority have endorsed it, as have four Republicans, excluding Portman, who appears to be leaning that way. His vote would give supporters the 60 they need to overcome a filibuster. 

BUT the bill’s odds aren’t great in the House, whose Republican majority is more conservative on gay rights than the Republican electorate nationally seems to be.

[T]o appeal on a national level to independent voters, young voters and minorities, the party badly needs to amend its ossifying image as an archaic refuge for scolds at odds with modernity itself. An embrace of gay rights, even a partial one, is a great place to start. It could give Republicans a chance to stanch some of the bleeding from the federal shutdown and from continuing rifts over immigration. 

[T]he international initiative has a fascinating wrinkle. In addition to training L.G.B.T. advocates outside the United States and publicizing the failings of especially repressive countries, it intends to name and shame American religious zealots who sponsor antigay campaigns abroad. So Republican money may wind up challenging a constituency within the party. (We’re most definitely not in Kansas anymore.)

In Singer’s view, gay rights are consistent with a Republican philosophy of individual liberty, and gay marriage is “an augmenter of social stability, family stability and stability in raising kids.” In other words, it’s conservative. 

All in all, he has pumped more than $17 million of his own money over the last decade or so into gay rights. And he privately tells Republicans leaning toward pro-equality positions that if they face fire from antigay groups, he’ll help them round up retaliatory funds.