Hillary’s
Stony Silence
One week after the fact, Schumer blasts Rick Santorum
Gay
City News, May 2-8, 2003
487 Greenwich St., Suite 6A, New York, NY 10013
Fax: 646-452-2501
Email: Editor@gaycitynews.com
By Paul Schindler
With the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting that “It would
appear the worst is over for Senator Rick Santorum,” it is time to ask
whether Democrats in the United States Senate responded to the Pennsylvania
Republican’s recent anti-gay outburst in an Associated Press interview with
the vigor that the LGBT community has the right to expect of them.
More than ten days after the Santorum story broke and in
the face of numerous unreturned phone calls from gay press
organizations—including Gay City News and Gay USA cable news—it is clear
that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York’s junior senator who each year
receives a rousing reception in the Fifth Avenue gay pride parade, has failed
the test of leadership on this issue.
The silence from Clinton and her press spokespeople is
all the more glaring given that even Santorum’s Senate office has responded
to gay press inquiries. And, of course, Santorum comes from the wing of the
Republican Party that so bedeviled her husband’s presidency and impeached
him over a private sexual matter.
Clinton’s New York colleague, thankfully, has been
willing to go on the record on Santorum, though only after some prodding.
Democrat Chuck Schumer’s office did not respond to several requests for
comment last week, as Gay City News’ Duncan Osborne prepared a story
published on April 25. In response to a follow-up inquiry on April 30, his
office said a statement was being prepared. About an hour later, Schumer
released the following comment: “Senator Santorum should start by stepping
down from his leadership position, and then he and the rest of the Republican
caucus should commit to an agenda of equal rights and equal dignity for all
Americans, including supporting the Hate Crimes Act.”
On May 1, Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy and
Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter reintroduced the Hate Crimes Act in the
Senate.
In the AP story, Santorum said that gay sex is a threat
to the American family and particularly warned about the risks that Lawrence
v. Texas, the challenge to the Texas sodomy statute currently before the U.S.
Supreme Court, posed.
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to
consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you
have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right
to adultery. You have the right to anything,” he said.
Kennedy, who is as good a friend as the LGBT community
has in the Senate, may have set an unfortunate precedent in the days after the
Santorum flap began when he dismissed the Pennsylvanian’s outburst, arguing
that the controversy was first and foremost a test of Republican leadership.
Surely Kennedy and his fellow Democrats knew that, absent
clear and unambiguous denunciation from their side of the aisle, Santorum, who
as conference chair is the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, would
likely survive in his leadership post. Kennedy’s posture suggests the
possibility that Democrats might prefer to keep Santorum in place as a poster
boy for G.O.P. intolerance, just as Newt Gingrich’s tenure as House speaker
was an important anti-Republican rallying point.
But Democrats will never be able to use Santorum’s
homophobia against him later if they are silent now.
In fact, Democrats with the strongest incentive to make a
partisan issue out of Santorum’s remarks—those aiming to enter the 2004
presidential sweepstakes—have spoken up. Leading contenders, including
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, North Carolina Senator John Edwards, former
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean,
issued harsh criticism of Santorum quickly in the wake of the Associated Press
story.
But beyond the statements by Schumer, Kennedy, and the
presidential hopefuls, the Senate Democrats have not assumed a high profile on
the Santorum matter. Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota issued a
brief statement, as did Iowa’s Tom Harkin, and the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee, chaired by New Jersey’s Jon S. Corzine, called on
Santorum to step down from his leadership post.
The relative silence by other Senate Democrats raises the
troubling prospect that members of the minority party are unwilling to take on
a leading majority party Senator who they believe is likely to hold onto his
power.
And so, a vicious cycle of homophobia is maintained.
As the Trent Lott scandal over his praise of Strom
Thurmond’s segregationist past unfolded last fall, Democrats increasingly
sensed his vulnerability—based on the assessment that such racist nostalgia
was dead on arrival politically—and over time piled on.
In contrast, even as Kennedy and others argue that
Santorum’s homophobia is passé, the conclusion that they have also
calculated that is not lethal for a political career, even at the highest
levels of the federal government, is inescapable.
That is unfortunate, and it may also be that our
community and our friends did not adopt an aggressive enough strategy in
responding to Santorum. David Smith, spokesperson for the Human Rights
Campaign, which did the highest profile agitating about Santorum’s comments,
last week told Gay City News, “The country, public opinion, as well as the
body politic does not consider what he said an egregious enough offense to
cost him his job.”
The comment was good political analysis, but that
perspective, publicly articulated by the nation’s leading LGBT advocacy
group, may have signaled to Democrats that our community was not setting a
particularly high bar for the outcome of the debacle.
This week, Smith said he thinks politicians “greatly
underestimated the depth of anger in the gay community nationwide” over the
Santorum matter.
Advocacy on the ground here in New York City has been
even more disappointing. On April 25, a number of local leaders—most
prominently State Senator Tom Duane, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, and
Councilmembers Margarita Lopez and Christine Quinn—gathered on the steps of
City Hall to denounce Santorum in no uncertain terms. None of those assembled,
however, could account for Clinton and Schumer’s silence on the issue to
date. Lopez, usually uncompromising in her advocacy, seemed to forgive the
senators’ inaction by saying it took time for steam to build up last fall
against Lott.
Miller, who will likely try to move from the Council
speakership to the mayor’s office in the 2005 election, said he would be
raising the issue with Clinton and Schumer. But, Miller’s office did not
return a follow-up phone call inquiring into the results of that effort.
It is not unfair to ask our leaders to do their political
homework before the press conferences.
Matt Foreman, also on hand and in the process of
transitioning from his post at the Empire State Pride Agenda to the leadership
of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, declined Gay City News’
invitation to comment on the failure of New York’s U.S. senators to speak
out against Santorum.
None of this criticism should mask the verdict that
Republicans—with some notable exceptions—largely failed the test that
Kennedy said faced them.
The national Log Cabin Republicans were unforgiving
toward Santorum, calling his statements “divisive [and] hate-filled,”
terming his effort to explain them away “woefully inadequate,” and finally
calling on the Pennsylvanian to resign his leadership spot.
Less convincing was the LCR assertion that, “The
discriminatory remarks made by Senator Santorum clearly do not reflect the
compassionate conservatism promised by our President.” Santorum, of course,
was defending the Texas sodomy statute under challenge at the U.S. Supreme
Court for an arrest that happened while Bush was governor. At the time of the
arrest, the future president called the statute “a good statement of
traditional values.”
When the president commented on Santorum, he dismissed
the storm by calling him “an inclusive man.” Other leading Republicans
also tried to obscure what is a very clear issue. Don Nickles, the Oklahoma
senator, said, “I think some people tried to distort his remarks.”
Utah’s Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said,
“There is a legitimate issue over whether the right to privacy should apply
to homosexual relationships or not. Why would you hold it against Santorum?”
True to form, however, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay,
the Texas fire-eater, was the most unabashed in his support for Santorum.
“I think Senator Santorum took a very courageous and
moral position based upon principles and his world view,” he said.
A handful of Republican Senators, it must be noted,
distinguished themselves in standing up to Santorum.
Maine’s Olympia Snowe termed his comments
“unfortunate,” saying they “undermined Republican principles of
inclusion and opportunity.
She was joined in criticizing Santorum by her Maine
colleague Susan Collins.
Another New Englander, Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee,
said, “I thought his choice of comparisons was unfortunate and the premise
that the right of privacy does not exist—just plain wrong. Senator
Santorum’s views are not held by this Republican and many others in our
party.”
Republican moderates in Congress are a lonely breed these
days, and Chafee, Collins, and Snowe now face potential retribution from one
of their most powerful leaders. Yet they took the chance at rocking the boat,
and it’s a shame that the sometimes exasperatingly cautious Hillary Clinton
was not willing to do the same.
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