Nov 05, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

Gay rights leaders pored over the numbers behind President Bush’s victory over Senator John Kerry in Tuesday’s election to assess whether gay marriage provided the president with the hot-button social issue he needed to propel him to a second term in the White House.

Following Kerry’s speech conceding defeat on Wednesday, political observers with both parties joined news media commentators in an unprecedented discussion linking a gay rights issue to the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.

Citing exit polls that showed “moral values” the most important issue for a plurality of voters — ahead of the economy, jobs, terrorism and the Iraq war — some concluded that the gay marriage debate helped Bush deflect voter concerns on those other issues.

Bush won the popular vote 51.1 percent to 48 percent, capturing about 3.5 million more votes than Kerry. Projections have Bush winning 274 electoral votes compared to Kerry’s 252.

When President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared Wednesday afternoon at the Reagan Federal Building to make their victory speeches, both men were joined by their families. Among the Cheney clan on stage was the vice president’s lesbian daughter Mary, and her partner Heather Poe.

Mary Cheney appeared in excellent spirits during the rally, clapping along with the audience and for the president. Poe, while smiling, did not join in applauding the president or vice president during the course of their speeches.

Because neither woman has consented to interviews, gay observers often resort to reading into their brief public appearances to gauge their mood and their views on the campaign.

After Senator Kerry directly referenced Mary Cheney — though not by name — in the final presidential debate, the Cheney family and the Bush campaign reacted aggressively, suggesting Kerry would say anything and offend familial privacy to be elected.

The exit poll results, conducted by a consortium of news media outlets, showed that “moral values” was cited by the greatest number of voters (22 percent) as the most important issue in the presidential election, drawing commentary from pundits on both ends of the ideological spectrum.

“It’s unfortunate, but it’s just one of those situations where the community’s interests were not met by the outcome of the election,” said Jeff Trammell, the Kerry campaign’s national outreach director to the gay community.

“The lesson to our community is that we have an awful lot of work to do,” said Trammell, who is gay.

Other gay activists joined Trammell in concluding that the Bush campaign strategy, devised by White House political director Karl Rove, of using gay marriage as a “wedge issue” to bring out more evangelical, Christian voters who lean toward the president appears to have worked.

National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman disputed this assessment, pointing to election return data showing that more votes were cast for the presidential candidates than were cast for ballot initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage in most of the 11 states where the initiatives were on the ballot.

Foreman noted that 199,435 more votes were cast in Ohio in the presidential race than in that state’s highly publicized initiative to ban gay marriage.

“This shows that it was the presidential race that pulled people to the polls, not the initiative,” Foreman said. This appears to refute the so-called Rove “wedge issue” strategy, Foreman said.

Politicians fanned the fire
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he believes the marriage issue prompted more conservative voters to turn out for Bush. Frank blamed the decision by gay-supportive elected officials in California, New York, New Mexico and other places to issue marriage licenses to gay couples without the official legal authorization to do so, saying it played into the hands of Republican strategists like Rove.

He said it hurt Kerry in the election.

“That created an appearance that this was getting out of control,” Frank said.

Frank said he favored efforts in Massachusetts and other states to file lawsuits to overturn laws banning same-sex marriage but said it was counterproductive to issue marriage licenses in areas where courts had yet to rule on the matter.

“It’s clear that the conservatives won a big victory on Tuesday,” Frank said. He said he was fearful that Bush was now in a position to push through enough Supreme Court appointments to place in jeopardy the Lawrence vs. Texas ...