Bush's anti-gay move provokes backlash
By Deb Price / The Detroit News from the Web, July 13, 2004
Stay-at-home mom Laurie Copeland is a lifelong "pro-gun, less government" Republican who voted for George W. Bush in 2000.
This year, though, she will be voting for someone else, her lesbian sister.
Copeland, who lives in Missouri -- one of the battlegrounds expected to determine the next president -- says Bush lost her vote when he joined the push to amend the U.S. Constitution so her sister, Jane, and her partner, Chris, could never legally marry in this country.
"If it were 20 years ago, I'd probably be right there with them," Copeland, 43, says of the anti-gay amendment's backers.
What caused her change of heart? -Her sister came out 15 years ago, Copeland says, an act that set the entire family on a journey to reconcile their "very ignorant" beliefs about homosexuality with the Jane they loved.
"The joke in our family is that Jane and Chris have the best marriage of all of us," says Copeland, who adds that she supports same-sex marriage because one of her kids might end up being gay.
Laurie Copeland represents a "sleeping giant," contends Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay political group.
HRC hopes to boost not only gay votes this election -- 4 percent in 2000 -- but also to signal all politicians that they risk losing the support of voters who care about someone gay if they take anti-gay stands.
In 2000, when Bush distanced himself from the intolerant wing of his party and won the gay Log Cabin Republicans' endorsement, he received 25 percent of the gay vote, or 1.1 million votes, a GOP record.
But in the run-up to what's likely to be another cliffhanger, Bush is calculating that pushing the amendment gains him more votes on the far right than it costs him elsewhere.
"Bush greatly underestimates what he's attacking here. He's awakening a sleeping giant," warns Jacques, whose group is spending $10 million to elect the Kerry-Edwards ticket and other gay-friendly politicians, defeat anti-gay marriage initiatives, such as in Michigan, and showcase all-important swing voters like Copeland.
While it's too early to know how big the "sleeping giant" will grow, far more Americans will walk into voting booths this year knowing someone gay than in 2000 -- 86 percent versus 73 percent, according to Los Angeles Times polls.
Surveys are consistent: Voters are more likely to support gay rights if they are aware of knowing someone gay.
And most Americans don't want the Constitution amended: A Pew Research Center poll, for example, found 32 percent favor same-sex marriage, 21 percent oppose both gay marriage and amending the Constitution (the Kerry-Edwards position) and only 36 percent favor an amendment (Bush's stand).
How much the "sleeping giant" beefs up depends on those of us who're gay. An HRC survey in February found that just 4 percent of gay people are out everywhere, even though 77 percent of us think of ourselves as being out.
What's more, we understandably tend to shy away from talking to heterosexual friends, relatives and co-workers about how anti-gay laws hurt us.
Just 46 percent, for example, talk to siblings about gay rights.
Tami Decator, a mother of two in the battleground called Ohio, should dispel any doubts about the power of those conversations.
The lifelong Republican and Bush 2000 voter is "very close" to her gay brother, Terry.
Yet she knew nothing about the amendment, or Bush's support for it, until her brother explained it would prevent him from ever marrying.
The result? Bush lost her vote.
"Whether we agree with gay marriage doesn't matter," Decator says. "A lot of people don't agree with issues like abortion or cigarette smoking, but we don't put it in the Constitution."
Politicians need to get the message: The U.S. Constitution isn't a plaything, and anti-gay attacks can be hazardous to one's political health.
Deb Price can be reached at (202) 906-8205 or dprice@detnews.com.
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