Dec 31, 2004  |  By: KEVIN NAFF and KEN SAIN | COMMENTS     

Marriage wasn’t the only gay story making headlines in 2004. From New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey’s announcement that he is gay to the “down-low” phenomenon, it was a big year in gay news.

Presidential candidates debate gay issues
Gay issues, most notably marriage, played a role throughout the 2004 presidential campaign. In a discussion of homosexuality during an October presidential debate, President Bush and Senator John Kerry grappled over whether people are born gay or choose their sexual orientation, with each calling for compassion while opposing gay marriage.

Both said that gays should be free to live as they choose, but Bush reiterated his support for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which Kerry opposed. During the debate, Kerry referenced Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

“[S]he would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as,” Kerry said. “I think if you talk to anybody, it’s not a choice.”

Kerry’s reference to Mary Cheney drew a sharp rebuke from her mother. Lynne Cheney, speaking to a cheering crowd at a rally in Pittsburgh, called the Kerry reference a “cheap and tawdry political trick” that left her to conclude he was “not a good man.”

Just before the election, the president hinted in a television interview that he has no objection to states adopting civil unions, a rough equivalent to marriage that gay rights advocates have mostly opposed as amounting to second-class citizenship.

Outing campaign hits Capitol Hill
Mike Rogers, a D.C.-based gay activist, launched an outing campaign in 2004 targeting closeted members of Congress and their staff members he perceived to be anti-gay. He was joined in the effort by fellow activist John Aravosis.

Congressman Ed Schrock, a conservative Republican congressman from Hampton Roads, Va., quit his re-election bid in August over allegations that he is gay, which Rogers posted to his blog.

Schrock, a two-term congressman, cited unspecified allegations that “called into question my ability to represent the citizens of Virginia’s Second Congressional District.”

Rogers alleged on his site that Schrock is gay and had called into a local phone sex line. A graphic audiotape purportedly of Schrock calling a phone sex line was included on Rogers’ site to download.

Schrock, who is married, has opposed gay civil rights, earning a “0” score on the Human Rights Campaign report card for the 2001-02 session of Congress.

Schrock wasn’t the only target of the campaign. Jonathan Tolman, a senior aide for the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, chaired by conservative Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, was outed.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressmen Mark Foley of Florida and David Dreier of California were also targeted in the campaign, which panicked many gay Hill workers and prompted some staffers to contact Capitol Police for help in ending Rogers’ phone calls and e-mails.

None of the three members of Congress cited by the campaign would confirm whether or not they are gay, but neither would they confirm they are heterosexual.

Robinson becomes bishop
Early this year, V. Gene Robinson, who is gay, assumed the post of bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church after a contentious year of church infighting.

In an effort to prevent a schism in the Anglican Communion over Robinson’s consecration, an international church commission released the Windsor Report in October urging apologies and reconciliation.

“There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together. Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart,” states the Windsor Report, released by the Lambeth Commission of the Anglican Communion.

The report came after a yearlong discussion and review by 17 primates of the Anglican Communion. The U.S. Episcopal Church represents 2.4 million members of the Anglican Communion, which includes 77 million people worldwide.

The archbishop of Canterbury ordered the commission to meet and issue a report after church provinces throughout the world — particularly in Africa and Asia — objected to Robinson’s consecration, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop who is also living in a committed relationship.

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