Conservatives have castigated U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft after Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson spoke at a Department of Justice gay pride forum.

By LOU CHIBBARO JR.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a longtime ally of conservative religious groups, became the target of some of those same groups last week for allowing his highest-ranking deputy to speak at a gay pride month forum June 19 in the Justice Department's Great Hall.

"After all the work we did to stand up to the liberal mudslinging during Ashcroft's confirmation fight, this is what we get?" complained Robert Knight, director of the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute.

"Just because he is fighting terrorist threats is no excuse to allow an officially sanctioned celebration by his department of immoral, unhealthy behavior that is illegal in nearly 20 states," Knight said in a news release issued by his group. "I have to ask, why is Mr. Ashcroft, a committed Christian, using his official capacity to celebrate sin?"

Knight and other Christian conservative leaders were riled over Ashcroft's decision to continue a Clinton administration era tradition of allowing DOJ Pride, a group of gay employees at the Justice Department, to hold a gay pride month forum within the DOJ's downtown Washington headquarters. Groups such as the Culture & Family Institute and Concerned Women for America were further angered when they learned that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson spoke at the event.

"The presence of a top aide to the attorney general at an event celebrating 'gay pride' is a clear endorsement of homosexuality," said Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America. "It won't matter if we dismantle terrorism if we implode from within," Rios said in a statement posted on her group's Internet site last week.

Susan Dryden, a DOJ spokesperson, said Thompson's appearance at the event was one of many employee-related events organized by a variety of employee groups that DOJ officials attend on a regular basis.

Thompson devoted most of his remarks to the DOJ's role in the nation's war against terrorism. Another speaker, Karla Dobinski, an openly gay attorney who currently serves as deputy chief of the criminal section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, spoke about her role in enforcing federal civil rights laws.

'We're here, we're queer' at Justice Department

DOJ Pride presented Dobinski and three other openly gay DOJ employees -- Allison Nichol, Louis Stewart and Howard Griffin -- with awards recognizing them "for their long-term commitment to the work of the department as openly gay or lesbian employees."

The forum, which began at 5:30 p.m., included performances by a pianist and members of the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of Washington.

"Our theme this year was, 'We're here, we're queer at DOJ,' said Marina Colby, a member of the board of DOJ Pride.

Len Hirsch, president of Federal GLOBE, a government-wide gay employees group, of which DOJ Pride is an affiliate, said more than a dozen other federal agencies held pride month events this year. Hirsch said the events have attracted both gay and non-gay employees and have helped to foster a better understanding of issues of concern to gays. Hirsch said the events also encourage cooperation between gay employees and employees representing other minorities in an effort to improve the work environment for all federal employees.

Rios of the Concerned Women for America said the gay pride events at government agencies would have the opposite effect.

"The sanctioning of a celebration of homosexuality by a supposedly pro-family administration will only create tensions and tremors along a critical political fault line," she said in a statement. "If the Bush administration cannot uphold the most basic of family values and virtues, it risks losing pivotal support from those who have been most loyal in the past," she said.

The Washington Times reported that the criticism of Ashcroft for allowing the gay pride event at DOJ comes at a time when conservatives have faulted him for being "too timid" in advancing the conservative agenda within the Bush administration.

"People rallied behind Ashcroft because they thought he would stand up to pornographers," the Washington Times quoted Patrick Trueman, legal consultant to the American Family Association, as saying. "There hasn't been an obscenity prosecution in nearly a year and a half."

Kevin Ivers, a spokesperson for Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay group that supported Ashcroft's appointment as attorney general, has said religious-right critics of the Bush administration were becoming increasingly isolated within the Republican Party. Ivers has said Bush's outreach to all groups within the Republican Party, including gay Republicans, and the president's leadership in the nation's war against terrorism, has led to record high public approval ratings.

Culture & Family Institute
Concerned Women for America
1015 15th St. NW, Suite 1102
Washington, DC 20005
202-289-7117
www.cultureandfamily.org  

Log Cabin Republicans
1607 17th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009
202-347-5306
www.lcr.org  

News reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. can be reached at lchibbaro@washblade.com .

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