TOP6NEWS - August 31, 2004

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1-NEWS:  RNC approves pro-family platform

2-NEWS:  Log Cabins trying to increase pressure on GOP

3-NEWS:  Michael Reagan is pro-m

4-NEWS:  VA rep drops re-election bid over claims of homosexual activity

5-NEWS:  More on 4th Circuit allowing LA amendment

6-OP-ED:  M. Coles on litigation strategy

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1-NEWS: RNC approves pro-family platform

Social Conservatives Wield Influence on Platform
By ROBIN TONER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NY Times
Published: August 31, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/politics/campaign/31platform.html
Republicans approved a platform yesterday that puts the party firmly on the record against legalized abortion, gay marriage and other forms of legal recognition for same-sex couples, reflecting the political clout of social conservatives and setting up a stark contrast with the Democrats for the fall campaign.

The platform also hails President Bush's fight against terrorism, advocates making his tax cuts permanent and calls for the creation of personal investment accounts in Social Security as part of a new "ownership society'' that Republicans assert will give Americans more responsibility and control over their financial lives.

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Gay rights and abortion rights groups restated their dismay. Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, declared, "It's one of the most discriminatory platforms in modern history.'' She added, of Mr. Bush, "He's counting on the fact that most people won't be reading the letter of the law of the Republican platform."

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Social conservatives, who pushed Mr. Bush to endorse a federal constitutional amendment against gay marriage earlier this year, pushed for even stronger language in the platform, and succeeded. Mr. Bush has indicated that he embraced a constitutional amendment opposing same-sex marriage only as a last resort to prevent courts from deciding the issue and said that states should be free to recognize same-sex civil unions or domestic partnerships. But the platform, as amended by the conservatives on the platform committee, condemns not only gay marriage but also state recognition of other same-sex unions as well.

At a news conference yesterday, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a group of social conservatives, said that the push to strengthen the platform's opposition to same-sex civil unions was partly a response to Vice President Dick Cheney's statement last week that he personally favored leaving the issue up to the states.

"We are obviously troubled by the vice president's comments last week, which in ways led to the strengthening of the language in the platform,'' Mr. Perkins said.

Mr. Kerry has said he opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposes a constitutional ban on it. The Democratic platform declares, "Marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years and we believe it should continue to be defined there."

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In a gesture to moderates, the Republican platform added a "unity plank," acknowledging that party members of good will might disagree. But the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, and Republicans for Choice faulted the plank for failing to specify the divisive social issues: abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.

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2-NEWS: Log Cabins trying to increase pressure on GOP

The story doesn't directly mention this, but the Log Cabins have launched a commercial with Reagan. It's at:
http://www.logcabin.org/logcabin/hope.html

Log Cabin fever
The GOP's gay contingent mobilizes in a bid for an inclusive party platform.
By Anne-Marie O'connor
LA Times Staff Writer
August 30, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/la-et-oconnor30aug30,0,3608216.story
NEW YORK — With their crisp suits and clean-cut boy- and girl-next-door demeanor, the leaders of America's best-known gay Republican organization give little warning they're gearing up for a high-noon showdown at the OK Corral.

Encamped at the Republican National Convention, the Log Cabin Republicans are awash in patriotic décor. There is red, white and blue bunting. Red, white and blue flowers. Red, white and blue balloons kissing the ceiling, as Log Cabin delegates pose for photographs with an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.

Articulate, educated and well mannered, these very circumspect gay Republicans suggest that they are the ones who are safe as milk and American as apple pie.

The people off kilter, they suggest, are the social conservatives who back a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which the Log Cabin Republicans say is "anti-family" and "targets part of the American family for discrimination."

Bring on the cameras: This posse is ready for C-SPAN.
"We have a war going on that is dividing this country," Patrick Guerriero, the group's executive director and the former mayor of Melrose, Mass., said as he prepared for a panel on the eve of the convention that was, in fact, covered by C-SPAN.

"We're asking President Bush and the Republican leaders to address where they stand," said Guerriero, 36, whose crisp navy-blue suit and tie seem borrowed from the playbook of the Heritage Foundation. "Are they with the exclusionist voices of [the Rev.] Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer? Or are they with the inclusive voices of the prime-time speakers?

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3-NEWS: Michael Reagan is pro-m

A separate peace
Michael Reagan vows his Republican convention speech won't fuel a family feud
By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Times Staff Writer LA Times
 http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/inside/la-et-oconnor31aug31,1,7153968.story
For years, Michael Reagan, the older son of Ronald Reagan, felt unloved and unwanted. His parents divorced when he was 3. Two years later he was packed off to a boarding school where, he says, he was so lonely he cried himself to sleep. Sexually abused at age 7, he felt shame and self-loathing, compounded by Bible passages that convinced him he would never go to heaven.

He grew up so angry he smashed a childhood bicycle and later took a sledgehammer to his new car. Well into his 40s, his "rage came to a full boil," and he often yelled at his wife and young son.

Then, he says, he found salvation through the love of his family and his "adoption" by God. He embraced conservative values and became a syndicated talk-radio host who today tells listeners: "I am homophobic."

Reagan has become a strong opponent of gay marriage, saying its validation of homosexuality will push young people into sex that will inflict the "guilt and pain that I have lived with all my life."

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To Reagan, however, the appearance is a milestone in "a long personal journey of redemption."
Tough-guy demeanor
On a recent day, redemption found him in a small office in the San Fernando Valley, a few miles from the sunbaked stream of cars on the Ventura Freeway, broadcasting "The Michael Reagan Show." Although the show isn't broadcast in Los Angeles, it is carried by more than 180 stations nationwide, including Santa Barbara's KTMS 990.

"Pravda has arrived!" he announces as a journalist walked into the office.
Reagan had just finished a live on-air segment on a news report that Bush's twin daughters were invited to the same-sex wedding of their beautician. "You wouldn't go to a gay wedding, would you?" he asks his daughter Ashley, a pert, ponytailed 21-year-old who was helping out in her father's office this summer before her senior year in college.

"Dad, Victor's gay. Who cares?" his daughter replies, referring to her mother's hairdresser.
"Victor's a nice gay," Reagan retorts, turning to a journalist and warning: "If that appears, I'll have to throw you off the roof."

"Dad, you shouldn't make threats," his daughter says.
"I think threats are good," Reagan says cheerfully. "I think people who send viruses should be taken out and killed. You should be able to send a bomb back through your e-mail."

This tough-guy demeanor is his standard radio shtick. But Reagan says he didn't start out as a bomb-thrower. He recalls being a simple, happy little boy, the adopted son of busy Hollywood stars Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, watched over by a nanny and two playful dogs, Scotch and Soda, while his sister Maureen lived at boarding school.

Then came his parents' divorce.
After that, Reagan says, he saw his father every other Saturday. When his father's new girlfriend, Nancy Davis, arrived on the scene, Reagan hoped to be part of an "Ozzie and Harriet"-style family. Instead, his father and stepmother had two more children, and he felt even more marginalized.

Reagan was a vulnerable 7-year-old, hungry for fatherly attention, when an after-school camp counselor lured him away from the other children and sexually molested him, he says. The man took nude photographs of him and showed them to him in a darkroom bathed in a dim green light, he says.

Reagan says he worried for years that the photos would someday embarrass his family. Thus began a life of secrets and shame as well as a phobia of the color green, Reagan said in his book "Twice Adopted" (published by Broadman & Holeman Publishers of Nashville), which will go on sale this fall.

His book suggests that same-sex marriage could place young people at an increased risk of the kind of trauma he suffered.

"If same-sex marriage becomes accepted as having equal validity with traditional heterosexual marriage, what kinds of social pressure will our children and grandchildren have to face?" he writes.

"What happens to your kids and grandkids after they try a homosexual experience on a dare?" he continues later. "They will experience guilt and pain in the aftermath, just as I did. The second they have had a sexual relationship with the same sex, in their own minds and in the view of society, they will be labeled homosexual. They'll never rid themselves of it."

"That's why today I can honestly say on my show, I admit it; I am homophobic,' " he writes.
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4-NEWS: VA rep drops re-election bid over claims of homosexual activity

U.S. Rep. Schrock drops re-election bid over ''allegations''
By LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 31, 2004 | Last updated 1:10 AM Aug. 31
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=74982&ran=126361
VIRGINIA BEACH — U.S. Rep. Ed Schrock abruptly announced his retirement late Monday, citing unspecified allegations that “called into question my ability to represent the citizens of Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.”

The two-term Republican did not answer questions or address the allegations.
A Washington-based activist claimed on his Web site that Schrock engaged in homosexual activity, but offered no evidence. Schrock has refused to confirm or deny the allegations for two weeks.

“After much thought and prayer, I have come to the realization that these allegations will not allow my campaign to focus on the real issues facing our nation and region,” he said in a written statement. “Therefore, as of today, I am stepping aside and will no longer be the Republican nominee for Congress in Virginia’s Second Congressional District.”

Republicans leaders scheduled a special meeting for tonight to choose a replacement candidate.
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5-NEWS: More on 4th Circuit allowing LA amendment

Court OKs Vote on La. Marriage Amendment
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2004
Filed at 11:12 p.m. ET

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-30/1093912754123570.xml&storylist=national
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A state appeals court ruled Monday that a proposed amendment to the state Constitution banning gay marriage should remain on the ballot, overturning a lower court ruling and sending the issue to the state Supreme Court.

The ruling came in one of three lawsuits filed by gay activists to keep the amendment off the Sept. 18 ballot.
John Rawls, a lawyer for the activists, said he planned to ask the state's highest court to consider the three cases together.

The ``Defense of Marriage'' amendment, passed by state lawmakers earlier this year, would also ban state officials and courts from recognizing out-of-state marriages and civil unions between homosexuals.

Louisiana already has a law stating that marriage can be only between a man and woman, but supporters of an amendment banning gay marriage want to protect that law in the state Constitution.

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6-OP-ED: M. Coles on litigation strategy

Don't just sue the bastards! A strategic approach to marriage
by Matthew A. Coles
Director, ACLU Lesbian & Gay Rights Project

http://www.gay.com/families/article.html?sernum=459&navpath=/channels/families/commitment/
A lot of people don't understand why the ACLU and other groups working on equality for LGBT people haven't just gone into court everywhere to get same-sex couples the ability to marry. But there are good reasons not to do that.

1. If we just sue in as many states as possible, we are likely to lose a lot of the cases.
To get the courts to strike down a law, you have to convince them that the law violates one of the specific rights in either the U.S. Constitution or the state's constitution. There are two possible legal arguments we can use in marriage cases: the "right to equal protection" and the "right to marry."

Equal protection: Under equal protection, courts most often strike down laws only if the court is "suspicious" of the government's reasons for discriminating. Typically, the courts are "suspicious" of discrimination based on race, sex and national origin. Odd as it may seem, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't decided whether discrimination against gay people is suspicious, and neither have most state supreme courts. To make matters worse, most of the lower-court cases have said discrimination against gay people is not suspicious.

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Bottom line: If we bring marriage cases in courts that typically haven't been very protective of constitutional rights or that aren't familiar with sexual orientation issues, we are likely to lose a lot of the cases.

2. Even though same-sex couples can't marry now, we set ourselves back even further if we take cases and lose them.
It will take longer to get the right to marry in states where we lose: As society gets more used to same-sex couples being married, it will be easier to win cases in states that look iffy now. In a few years, the cases just won't seem like such a big jump. If we go ahead and lose cases in those states now, the courts will have to overrule themselves later to go our way. That means it is likely to take longer to get a good decision than it would have taken if we hadn't brought a case early on and lost it.

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It will hurt gay people on other issues: In cases about other issues, such as teachers, adoption or custody, we use the argument that the Constitution protects LGBT people from discrimination. Frequently, that argument helps to get courts to decide our way on nonconstitutional grounds. If we bring a marriage case in which a court says that the Constitution does not protect us, those arguments will be much harder to make successfully in cases about other things.

Bottom line: If we bring marriage cases and lose, it will take us longer to get good marriage decisions, and it may hurt us with other issues we bring to court.

3. The Supreme Court is unlikely to straighten this out soon.
The odds at the U.S. Supreme Court are just not that good right now. Four justices have said in writing that they do not think the Constitution requires states to marry same-sex couples. That means that to win we would have to get all of the five who haven't said anything publicly yet to side with us.

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Bottom line: The best way to win the marriage for same-sex couples is to win in as many states as we can before we head to the Supreme Court.

Right now, poorly thought-out lawsuits stand to do far more harm than good to the LGBT community. We must be smart about when, where and how we file lawsuits demanding marriage equality. Rash, badly conceived lawsuits could mean that the couples in our community who desperately need the protections marriage would grant them end up having to wait for many more years. Those families deserve nothing less than a considered, careful approach.

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