From the Free Times (Columbia SC)
Oct 1-7, 2003
pages 3, 7
"My Turn" column
Gay Hate Gets a Makeover
By Ed Madden
I don't have Republican hair. That's what I said to Becci Robbins when we walked into the annual banquet of the Palmetto Family Council on Sept. 25. All around us were white faces, blue blazers and red ties. Frat-boy hair, golf-course hair, the occasional Baptist minister coif. No gel. Nothing spiked. In my academic tweed and spiky haircut, I felt a little out of place &8212; though the fact that I was a gay man having dinner with almost 500 folks who abhor gay people probably had more to do with it than the haircut.
The Palmetto Family Council is a conservative think tank affiliated with Focus on the Family, a national organization run by James Dobson. According to its promotional materials, Focus on the Family realized in the late 1980s that it needed a presence in state capitals in order to push its agenda into law. The group needed "policy institutes" to shape opinion and policy at the state level.
While Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell alienate their fellow Americans with scriptural diatribes, Dobson and his cohorts go on CNN using the language of social science and "research" to pander to the same anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-divorce agenda, ignoring real needs and demonizing real families.
The Palmetto Family Council, South Carolina's institute, has learned well. As one speaker euphemistically described the strategy in the council's August audio journal, "principled persuasion" means the substitution of "scientific" for scriptural language in order to increase public credibility.
The council's research can be effective and convincing. Their statistical linkage of "father absence" to various social ills seems credible, for instance, and their work against gambling seems admirable. But the extensions of logic they offer &8212; if everyone was in a traditional family, would we really empty our prisons? &8212; seem, at best, specious. Worse, this research is consistently linked to a much broader, if not so apparent, radical social agenda.
Beneath the polished public persona of statistics, doctorates and good haircuts, it's the same old grab bag of viciously conservative politics. In their own materials, they decry science education that teaches that "we somehow rose out of a primordial goo," and executive director Oran Smith sneers at gay and lesbian lives as "the kind of thing you'd rather not have to discuss at all."
The banquet itself was telling. It was boring. No attacks of "the gay agenda" (whatever that is), no bloody photographs of fetal tissue projected on the wall, no fulminations against feminists and liberals &8212; none of the stuff I'd come to expect, having grown up in the movement. As Robbins pointed out to me after the event, everything was couched in coded language guaranteed not to alienate the mainstream, but still sure to solidify the support of those who share the radical agenda.
The theme of the event was "Celebrating Families." The keynote speaker was Steve Largent, former NFL football star and U.S. representative from Oklahoma. Salon magazine dismissed his political career as "undistinguished," noting that he spent most of his time attaching anti-gay and anti-abortion amendments to any bill he could. Largent's only claim to political fame, other than telling Newt Gingrich that he wasn't intimidated by him, was his sponsorship of the Defense of Marriage Act, the opening salvo in the war on gay and lesbian families, which President Clinton signed into law seven years ago.
Largent's speech was dull &8212; the kind of "qualities of leadership" after-dinner speech one expects from coaches and ex-athletes.
Between random anecdotes and scattered quotations &8212; including the requisite quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. &8212; Largent praised the PFC, comparing it to a sea wall protecting the family from the assaulting waves of media and culture. "Every now and then," he added, referring to the recognition of gay and lesbian civil unions, "a hurricane comes through."
Moving from marine to military metaphor (and from redundancy to logical fallacy), Largent said that attempts to "redefine the definition of marriage" would include "everything and anything." And he called gay and lesbian civil unions a "full frontal assault" on the family.
"Assault"? These folks are gearing up for a cultural war.
Surveying the crowd, I shouldn't have been surprised by the number of elected officials who stood for recognition. After all, the PFC has money and power. Among the special guests was Gov. Mark Sanford, who once shared a Bible study group with Largent in their days in Congress. Sanford was there to introduce his old friend, but he also assured the audience, "The reason that I'm here is that I, along with my wife Jenny, admire what you're doing."
The PFC speakers announced two major initiatives at the event. First, they're trying to get 1,000 families to commit $100 per year to the organization, transforming the think tank into a more powerful membership organization. (One audio article called the new members "foot soldiers in our movement.")
Second, Smith called for a marriage project to create a "state energized for marriage." Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The only specific goal mentioned was lowering the divorce rate. However, given Largent's fundamental connection to the anti-gay agenda, neither Smith nor Largent ever had to say the word "gay" for the whole audience to know why he was there, and what other strategies will be part of that marriage project. As a gay man with inappropriate hair and politics sitting in that room (and a partner sitting at home watching Will and Grace), I knew precisely what was happening, and I knew precisely whose life, liberty and pursuit of happiness would be at stake.
In the language of conservative politics, "marriage" has become the new code word for the war on gays and lesbians.
An educator, writer and activist in Columbia, Ed Madden is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. He serves on the board of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Columbia.