<< Back 5/8/02 Scaring up votes for the GOP By Scott McLeod It’s good for politicians to be open, to listen to all their constituents and consider the needs of even a small minority of the population, isn’t it? Well, state Republican Party officials obviously don’t think so. They sent out a somewhat bizarre press release taking Sen. John Edwards to task about his rating from a gay and lesbian advocacy organization. I want to write about that press release and its wording, about how it crosses a line in attaching guilt by association, about how it seems to be more directed toward gays and lesbians than Edwards. A state political party that will do that seems somehow to have missed out on the social changes that have occurred in this country in the last 20 years or so. At the very least, it seems obvious that they just do not care about those 16,198 households in this state who checked the box in the 2000 Census for “same-sex households.” But I also want to write about the fax machine at a newspaper office. Forget the spam emails, we have a more conspicuous problem with trash fax. It drives up the count on our copier (perhaps the leasing company is behind this), eats up toner and wastes paper. And still they come. Our two worst offenders are from the political realm — the N.C. Republican Party and Democratic Sen. John Edwards. Both of them force us to make daily treks to the trash cans out in back of the office. The state’s GOP sends an endless stream of attacks on Erskine Bowles and Dan Blue, doing everything within their power to smear the two senatorial candidates who pose the most serious challenge to the coronation of Liddy Dole as Sen. Jesse Helms successor. We are provided a steady stew of creative mudslinging, each one full of words like “liberal,” “left-wing,” “radical,” and, of course, “Ted Kennedy.” There must be a course GOP public relations guys take somewhere that lists key code words to rally the collective conservative ire. Edwards, on the other hand, torches the fax machine with a different message. The unannounced-but-sure-to-run-at-some-point presidential candidate is in a frenzied state of self promotion — Sen. John Edwards sending money home for needed projects, Sen. John Edwards visiting Afghanistan, Sen. John Edwards getting a hug and a slap on the back at a barbecue dinner in eastern North Carolina. It’s designed, certainly, to convey the image that the senator is tireless and very, very important. And, perhaps, a bit pompous. Out of this daily tedium came a fax last week that got my attention. As Edwards is not officially running for anything, the GOP has mostly left him alone. But this time, they pulled out the stops: “You are known by the company you keep, and our Junior Senator keeps company with some of the most left-wing political activists in our nation., including radical gay groups. This goes to show once again that John Edwards is out of step with North Carolina,” said Bill Cobey, the state GOP chair. Cobey was talking about an organization called the Human Rights Campaign. They are a gay and lesbian rights organization, but to call them “radical” is true only if you believe the gay lifestyle is radical. And that’s the point I’m trying to make, I guess. Look, each of us has to decide for themselves what role gays should have in the military, whether benefits should be extended the partners of gays who are in government or private service, and whether gays should have the right to adopt children. As I’m one who thinks people are biologically typed as heterosexuals, homosexuals or bisexuals, I don’t believe any kind of legal discrimination should exist. Frankly, I don’t think our government should try to regulate sexual preference regardless of whether it is biological or by choice, but that’s what effectively happens when some couples are given more benefits and legal rights than others. If a monogamous, stable homosexual couple wants to adopt a child, they should have the right. A judge should decide on the request based on its merits, not on whether the couple is gay. It’s pretty easy to see that way too many heterosexual couples have failed miserably at raising children. Is a child better off being shuttled to numerous foster or group homes until they reach adulthood? There are people who continue to think homosexuality is not natural, that it is sinful. There are others who will just never be comfortable around people different from them. The state GOP knows that, and they are playing on those fears. But this column isn’t about gay rights, and it’s not about John Edwards or moral relativity. It’s about the direction this culture will take, about whether we continue to embrace diversity or veer off track and become a country where phobias of all kind remain written into law, and it’s about how our political leaders will frame this important debate. And it’s also about a fax machine, and the fact that sometimes a mountain of trash can produce a nugget of enlightenment. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)