Nov 05, 2004  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

The Republican campaign strategy of using gay marriage to help energize social conservatives appeared to pay off Tuesday, as the GOP expanded its majorities in both houses of Congress. Several newly elected GOP senators are virulently hostile to gay rights.

In South Carolina, Republican Jim DeMint, who said in a campaign ad that the “government cannot approve and promote homosexuality,” won handily over Democratic challenger Inez Tenenbaum.

In early October, DeMint found himself on the defensive and during his first campaign debate with Tenenbaum, he advocated banning gays from teaching in public schools. But like DeMint, Tenenbaum also favored a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

In what the pre-election polls showed to be a close race, Republican Oklahoma Senate candidate Tom Coburn trounced his Democratic opponent, Brad Carson.

Coburn, who most recently chaired the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS, has said that the gay “agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today,” and noted in a speech this August, “lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

Brent Minor, a gay member of PACHA, said while he disagrees with Coburn’s comments on gay issues, he said Coburn will “take the lead” on the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act and other important AIDS issues.

Republican Jim Bunning won a Senate victory over his Democratic opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, after Bunning surrogates engaged in some last minute gay baiting, including questioning Mongiardo’s sexual orientation.

Republican State Senate President David Williams said that Mongiardo, a 44-year-old bachelor, was “limp wristed” as compared to Bunning, a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher. Bunning won by 18,000 votes in a race where 1.7 million votes were cast.

In Florida, former U.S. Housing Secretary Mel Martinez (R) won a narrow victory over his Democratic opponent, Betty Castor. Martinez defeated his primary challenger, Bill McCollum, after asserting that he was “the new darling of the homosexual extremists,” for sponsoring hate crimes legislation while a member of the House of Representatives.

Daschle ousted
Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) lost his Senate seat to Republican challenger John Thune. Thune, an evangelical Christian who has said he does not believe in evolution, charged in July that gay marriage would mean “it’s going to be taught in the schools as the moral equivalent” of a marriage between a man and a woman.

With the loss of Daschle as minority leader, Democrats began the process this week of finding a replacement.

Immediate speculation centered on Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), the party’s Senate whip, as Daschle’s likely successor. Reid scored a 63 percent pro-gay favorability rating on HRC 2004 Congressional Scorecard; the same score as Daschle.

Also mentioned as a possible candidate for the party’s top Senate post is Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who scored a 75 percent on HRC’s recent scorecard.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s razor-thin victory in Alaska boosted the Republican majority in the Senate from 51 to 55, still short of the 60 votes needed to block Democratic Party filibusters.

GOP House majority grows
Republicans also picked up four seats in the House of Representatives, and Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), the author of the Federal Marriage Amendment, easily defeated her opponent, Stan Matsunaka.

All three gay members of the House, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) were re-elected.

Despite the setbacks for gay rights advocates, some said that Tuesday’s defeats will help energize gay voters.

“We can make it hell for Bush and no, it is not our fault that he won,” said Robin Tyler, co-founder of DontAmend.com, a Web site dedicated to defeating the Federal Marriage Amendment.

“We deserve our civil rights. This is not a time for pity. It’s a wake up call. Our struggle is on the front burner and we have to be committed. We shouldn’t blame ourselves and act like victims. We are not victims.”

According to a CNN survey, 22 percent of voters cited “moral values” as the most important issue of the campaign and 79 percent of those voters went for Bush.

Despite the gay baiting in the campaign, Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, insisted that the term “moral values” ...