Ken Mehlman's revelation comes as GOP redefines itself
BY CHUCK RAASCH • August 29, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Ken Mehlman's announcement that he's gay comes at a challenging and potentially redefining period in the Republican Party he chaired from 2005 to 2007.
The tea party, the biggest driving force in the GOP at the moment, has for the most part detoured around social issues like gay marriage. The issue, which prompted Mehlman to go public with his sexuality, might be a generation or two away of being settled for good -- and if generational trends hold, the final resolution probably won't be in line with the preferences of Republicans who now actively oppose letting gays marry.
Mehlman says he will attend a fundraiser in California next month to raise money to fight California's 2008 successful ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. Legal challenges to that initiative are working their way through the courts.
"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with that part of my life," Mehlman told the Atlantic magazine in announcing his homosexuality.
He headed up George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 before chairing the RNC. As chair, he tried to reach out to demographic groups and coalitions that had spurned the GOP, including blacks and Hispanics. But during that same period, in state after state, Republicans drove conservative voters to the polls with ballot initiatives that defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.
The 2004 Republican National Platform, adopted while Mehlman was running Bush's campaign, advocated changing the Constitution to prohibit gays from marrying and opposed letting openly gay men and women serve in the military.
On marriage, it said, "We strongly support President Bush's call for a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage, and we believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage."
It also reaffirmed the Defense of Marriage Act affirming one state's right not to recognize a gay marriage in another state.
On military service, the GOP platform said, "We affirm traditional military culture, and we affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service."
Mehlman's public announcement already is stirring fresh debate over public officials who defend policies that are anathema to their own realities.
Current RNC Chairman Michael Steele said he's "happy" for Mehlman.
"His announcement, which is often a very difficult decision which is only compounded when done on the public stage, reaffirms for me why we are friends and why I respect him personally and professionally," Steele said in a statement issued through a spokesman.
Mehlman told the Atlantic that those who oppose gay marriage have understandable reasons for doing so.
But his coming out comes at a time when the party he led faces new, and in some cases, likely irreversible changes in attitudes toward gays.
First, the tea party movement that could help propel Republicans back into power in congressional elections is primarily focused on taxes and the size of government, not on abortion, gay rights or other social issues.
"We only focus on fiscal issues, constitutionally limited government and free markets," said Jenny Beth Martin, a spokeswoman for the Tea Party Patriots, one of several loosely connected tea-party groups. "Politicians on both sides of the aisle have used social issues to distract us, and while they focus us on that, they are taking our money behind our backs."
In a detailed 2009 study of Americans from 18-29, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that one of the greatest differences between this "millennial" generation and older Americans is its attitudes toward gays and gay marriage.
While some 54 percent of those younger than 30 said they had a close friend or relative who was gay, only 44 percent of baby boomers said they did and only 26 percent of those older than 65 said they did.
And younger Americans expressed far more tolerance of gays marrying than did older Americans. Some 65 percent of those younger than 30 with close gay friends or relatives said they favored gay marriage. Fifty-one percent of those older than 30 did.
The issue might not die with the millennials. Remember that during the economic turmoil of the 1970s, few people predicted the "culture war" of the ensuing decade.
But the Republican Party already faces potential long-term alienation from a large percentage of Hispanic voters over the immigration debate. Can it afford to lose 20-somethings in the debate about gay rights?
Raasch writes from Washington for Gannett. Contact him at craasch@gannett.com or visit www.facebook.com/raaschcolumn.
8/29/2010
Ken Mehlman's revelation comes as GOP redefines itself | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
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