by Kim Krisberg

An offshoot of Log Cabin Republicans has launched a four-week national ad campaign in newspapers around the country calling for gays to support the president with the intent, say the organization’s staff, of stimulating debate among gay men and lesbians.

It worked -- sort of. Many who responded to the ad campaign, paid for by the Liberty Education Forum and featuring commentary by LCR Executive Director Rich Tafel, did have a lot to say about it, but others couldn’t figure out what exactly the ad was talking about.

"What are they trying to say?" said David Smith, communications director at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest political gay group. "We’re baffled by it. At first we thought it came from Jerry Falwell and on a little closer inspection we saw it came from the Log Cabin people."

Across the political aisle from those "Log Cabin people" sits Chad Johnson, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats.

"Like virtually everyone else who has made a comment about the ad, the message seems muddled and I frankly don’t know what the ad campaign’s purpose is," said Johnson.

The Liberty Education Forum is a non-partisan, Washington, D.C.-based think tank "dedicated to new insights on gay and lesbian issues from a centrist perspective," according to a press release announcing the ad campaign. The think tank, says LEF’s Web site, has been evolving over the past six years since its founding as the Log Cabin Education Fund; it was officially launched this past July. Part of its mission is "to work toward achieving individual freedom and fairness for gay Americans by applying the principles of individual rights, individual responsibilities, free markets and limited government."

LEF is headed by Tafel, and its staff includes Kevin Ivers, vice president for policy and programs, who is also director of public affairs for the national gay GOP group. Ivers said LEF is a separate entity from Log Cabin and the organization’s focus is on education and fostering discussion.

Responding to those who see similarities between LEF’s mission and Republican Party ideals such as small government and a free market, Ivers said, "A lot of people support those values and lot of gay people share values," regardless of political affiliation.

The ads placed for the campaign so far have been titled "United We Stand," and have run in gay newspapers in D.C., New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco; ads have also run in the Washington Post. All of the ads so far have been excerpts from a longer commentary written by Tafel -- the commentary in its entirety can be found on LEF’s Web site.

The first two weeks of ads were subtitled "Individually We Think," with the most recent ad running in the Washington Post on Wednesday, Dec. 12, subtitled "Against the Real Enemy."

Hail to the chief

The ads so far have talked about gay politics and the movement’s agenda post-Sept. 11. The ads call on gay groups to stop attacking President Bush -- "gay and lesbian leaders can stop the incessant negative backbiting against President Bush and his administration." The campaign talks about rethinking the "old" agenda, and asks, "Do [gay groups] rise to meet the new challenges facing gay Americans in this period, even if they don’t fit what these groups have long argued was ‘the gay agenda’?"

It also suggests that the gay movement has for too long used the politics of victimization, suggesting that such a strategy alienates gays from society. "The same gay community whose political leaders demanded employment anti-discrimination laws and hate crime protections was traveling on RSVP cruises, packing warehouse circuit parties, and filling black-tie dinner halls to hear keynote addresses from Hollywood celebrities," said the first ad.

"The country at large is thinking a lot about where we’re going as a nation and gays and lesbians are no different," said Ivers. "We’re a united country today … and what is the role [the gay community] plays? Does a united country react to this old paradigm of identity politics differently?"

Ivers said LEF’s Web site has received 60,000 hits since July, with a large spike since the ad campaign began. According to LEF, the ad campaign has worked -- debate and discussion about post-Sept. 11 gay politics is flourishing at www.libertyeducationforum.org.

Tafel, who penned the ads but whose name does not appear on them, said LEF will probably be running these types of campaigns on a regular basis and he said he plans to invite those of all political persuasions from the gay community to write for LEF.

Unhealthy victimization?

Tafel said there’s a tendency in the gay movement for equal rights to use victimization to push the gay agenda -- he said this strategy is "unhealthy in the long run."

"I think that people are more united -- I’m an American, you’re an American, we have to stop the fighting between us," he said. "A lot of our strategies are of 10 years ago. It’s good to stop, look, compare, and say is this all working?"

Tafel said that talking about gays as victims makes it sound like "everybody’s against us -- that we don’t control our own destiny." He suggests that advocates should emphasize the positive. "We don’t say, ‘Look at how successful we are!’"

He said if the gay movement continues down a path of divisiveness -- criticizing the president, constantly pointing out inequalities, and pitting one group against another -- the same fate that befell the religious right after Sept. 11 could hit the gay movement. Tafel is referring to the backlash after high-profile religious conservatives blamed liberals, gays, and others for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Tafel and Ivers maintain that the ads are not advocating a certain position, just placing it in the public forum for debate. But, the opinions are certainly those of Tafel, and many gays would disagree with him, while many others reject LEF’s claim of nonpartisanship.

In a statement, Johnson of Stonewall Democrats writes that it is unlikely the Bush administration will work toward any substantial policy changes in favor of gay equality. Johnson said that LEF’s ad campaign "appeared to be an attempt to inoculate gay Republicans from this frustrating fact. Seemingly, once they realized that policy would not change, their only defense of the Bush administration was to argue that law and policy had become unnecessary in light of the event of Sept. 11. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Johnson told the Blade, "[Gays] are still second-class citizens." He pointed out that the same inequalities that prevented gays from getting married, serving in the military, and a host of others items existed on Sept. 10 and they exist today.

"I don’t think that our victimization is the crux of the GLBT rights movement, and that’s where I think LEF has it all wrong," he said. "But, of course, gay and lesbian Americans are victims of inequality under the law."

Tafel disagreed with Johnson’s take on pro-gay policy and the Bush administration, saying that it is Congress, not the White House, which determines when hate crime legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act are put up for a vote.

HRC's Smith said the opinion that the struggle for equality stems from victimization is wrong, and that his agency's work "is motivated by a desire to be treated equally under the law, which we are not."

Closet politics

"They are basically asking people to go back into the closet, to lose their identity and to not include sexual orientation in their identity," Smith added. "[The ad] struck [me] at first as being the politics of the closet. It’s as though they don’t want people to identify themselves as gay because it doesn’t matter." He said the growing number of people willing to identify as gay or lesbian is directly linked to rising public support of gay rights.

Tafel countered that he thinks coming out "is a very good thing," but he maintains that emphasizing negative aspects that gay people encounter will only make people want to stay in the closet.

"We’re Americans who happen to be gay," Tafel said.

Smith contended that the ad’s assertion that "gay organizations are not sure how to respond" in the wake of Sept. 11 are "flat wrong." He points to gay groups that have been working to ensure gay and lesbian partners of Sept. 11 victims have equal access to survivor compensation benefits.

Smith said the ad is "basically conservative ideology with a gay bow around it" and he believes the ad’s premise will be soundly rejected. He added that the material was written by someone who must be comfortable in society and doesn’t take into account real difficulties that gay and lesbian people face.

"For the most part it’s an inhospitable world out there," he said.

Tafel disagreed: "People don’t live in fear in most places."

Inside or out?

Faisal Alam, founder of Al-Fatiha, a gay Muslim group, knows post-Sept. 11 fear in a different manner from most Americans and said he does not necessarily feel included in LEF’s "United We Stand" sentiment.

"It’s a very insider/outsider feeling I have right now," he said. Alam said he has to carry his passport with him at all times now in case he gets stopped and asked for his identification -- something he never did before Sept. 11. He told the story of a gay Arab man who called the police because his neighbors were harassing him, and instead of responding to the complaint about the harassment, the police picked the man up and interviewed him for three hours about his connection to terrorism. He said he has friends who were afraid to leave the house for fear of being harassed.

"The ad seems to say we need to unite as a community … but it doesn’t talk about how that’s possible," he said.

He added that "any ostracized community that lies on the outskirts of mainstream society is a victim, if you will."

In Tafel’s expanded commentary on LEF’s Web site, he calls on gay organizations to "demonstrate solidarity with Al-Fatiha … and help them organize and grow without bragging about it or using it to fund-raise." He warns that gay groups may take advantage of the wave of anti-Arab and Muslim hate crimes to "insinuate their own legislative and political goals."

Tafel suggests that a much better strategy is to volunteer at a local mosque.

Joseph DeFilippis of the Queer Economic Justice Network of New York, which put out a statement opposing the war in Afghanistan, said in a prepared statement that Tafel’s call for a united community is questionable, characterizing the calls to stop criticizing the president as quashing freedoms.

"By encouraging people to attempt to silence any LGBT organization that criticizes the president, Mr. Tafel is actively supporting the status quo. A status quo that benefits him far more than it does the average LGBT person," he wrote.

Joohyun Kang, executive director of the Audre Lorde Project in New York City, an organization that serves gay communities of color, said she believes the ad is a narrow characterization of the gay movement and she disagrees that there was ever a monolithic gay movement before Sept. 11 that needs rethinking.

"The idea that they are sparking a new conversation is disturbing since we’ve been working with multiple identities for a long time," she said.

"The fundamental contradiction for me is that [the ad] makes it seems like there’s not systemic oppression," Kang added. "Then why are there gay groups?"

Liberty Education Forum
www.libertyeducationforum.org

Tafel said that stressing the oppression gays encounter will only hinder advocacy organizations, which, he said, should look forward to the day when their doors close permanently.

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