Jan 23, 2004  |  By: BRYAN ANDERTON  | COMMENTS     

Hastings Wyman’s political career is a study in contradictions. Once an old-school conservative from the South, he spent many years working in the Republican Party, including five in which he served as an assistant to the late staunch political conservative U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.

But later in life, he came out as gay and started a weekly political column about gay rights. Readers nationwide became aware of his views.

“Today, I suppose I’m more Libertarian than anything else,” Wyman, 65, says of his current political leanings. “I tend to be more liberal on social issues, racial issues, sexual issues, and I tend to be more conservative on financial issues and homeland security issues. I tend to be pulled all over the place.”

Last month, Wyman retired his weekly “Capital Letters” column, which began in 1993 in the Washington Blade and later was syndicated in gay newspapers across the nation. But he has certainly not left politics altogether.

He still writes and publishes the “Southern Political Report,” a newsletter he founded in 1978, and says he hopes to write a book about Southern politics in the near future.

Wyman began writing gay political commentaries for the Blade in 1993 with a monthly column called “The Gay Agenda.” In 1997, that column morphed into “Capital Letters,” which was syndicated in many gay news outlets. His last column appeared Dec. 29.

Wyman says that gay political activists have come a long way in the past decade.

“I think the main change has been that it’s become much more pragmatic,” he says. “One of the reasons I started writing the column was because of the debate over gays in the military. The entire debate showed enormous weakness in the gay community’s political skills.

“I called the legislative aides of a number of Southern Democratic senators who might have been considered swing votes on that issue, and none of them had gotten more than a handful of letters. They were receiving no pressure or anything of significance,” he recalls. “I don’t think that happens now.”

Now, Wyman says groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force are much more effective, despite criticisms they might receive in some circles.

“A lot of people in the gay community don’t like it. They see the Human Rights Campaign as too ‘establishment,’” he says. “But they know what they’re doing … In this country, that’s the way you get things done.”

Mark Mead, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said Wyman has been effective in his own way.

“His insight and his political acumen was always dead on,” Mead says. “He is unique in that he was able to bridge the rough-and-tumble world of Capitol Hill politics, but was always able to address gay and lesbian concerns as well.”

Wyman says the most pressing issue facing gays right now is “making sure the debate over same-sex marriage doesn’t erupt into some sort of major anti-gay movement,” which he believes is unlikely, but still possible.

A lifelong passion
He first became interested in politics at around the age of 13, when Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president — although he says he doesn’t remember exactly what sparked that interest.

Born in Aiken, S.C., in 1939, Wyman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in American government, and then attended the University of South Carolina Law School.

After graduating, Wyman practiced law in his hometown of Aiken, where he was elected chair of the county Republican Party. He later worked as a field representative in the South for the Republican National Committee, and went on to work for several prominent Republicans, including Thurmond.

Wyman recalls his experience with Thurmond, whom he worked for as a legislative assistant from 1967 to 1972, as “an exciting time,” and admits that he was much more conservative at that time.

In 1978 he founded the “Southern Political Report,” a bi-weekly newsletter that analyzes government races throughout the South, as well as issues that are unique to that region. He says growing up in the South hugely influenced his political viewpoints.

“I think it shaped them very greatly,” Wyman says. “I grew up at a time when the South was really very different from today. It was completely segregated. South Carolina, in particular, was very, very conservative. It was the only world I knew.”

But Wyman’s world was turned upside down in the late 1980s. At age 50, he left his wife of 21 years and came out as a gay man. He and his partner, Doug Garner, have been together since 1997.

“He’ll be sorely missed,” Mead says. “There is no one who has the breadth of political knowledge that he does. Someone may step in, but it will take them decades to get to the point where Hastings is.”