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

A New York City real estate developer who became one of President Bush’s most visible openly gay appointees resigned in protest last week from his post as vice chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts after the president endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

“In light of the president’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, I could no longer continue serving the administration, given the impact of that proposed amendment on me and my family, should it ever become law,” Donald A. Capoccia said.

Capoccia, president of the Manhattan-based BFC Construction Corp., has been a longtime Republican Party contributor and a strong supporter of the Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay GOP group with chapters in New York and other states. Capoccia also serves as co-chair of the Republican Unity Coalition, which bills itself as a gay-straight alliance of Republican Party leaders who favor equal rights for gays.

Capoccia’s resignation comes at a time when gay Republicans — especially those working in the Bush administration, both in and out of the closet — have been shaken over Bush’s decision to back a constitutional ban on gay marriage, said Kevin Ivers, former political director of the Log Cabin group.

Although they have long brushed aside attacks by gay Democrats for working for a Republican president, Ivers said, gays working in the administration must now reconcile their longstanding loyalty to Bush while weighing their deep concern over his decision to back an amendment they believe would enshrine anti-gay prejudice into the U.S. Constitution.

“The other day, people were going along in their careers,” Ivers said. “Today, they are facing a gigantic moral dilemma.”
According to Ivers and other gay Republican insiders, a number of closeted gays faced with this dilemma work in important jobs at the White House.

“I don’t think people want to necessarily end their careers,” Ivers said. “But some of them are wondering, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Leaving the GOP
Two gay Republican leaders who asked that question in the past week announced their decision to leave their party.

John Farina, a member of the executive committee of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Republican Committee, which covers the City of Cleveland; and Mark Brostoff, a two-time candidate for city council and Republican precinct representative in Bloomington, Ind., submitted letters to local GOP leaders declaring their resignation from the party. Both cited the president’s decision to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as their reason.

“The party has been overtaken, both nationally and statewide, by hard right social conservatives that seem hell bent on moving the country in reverse on civil rights,” Farina said in his resignation letter.

Brostoff told the Indianapolis Star that he supports the overall philosophy of the Republican Party and liked working with his local Republican colleagues.

“But there’s a certain time in your life when you realize there are issues that are bigger than politics,” the Star-Tribune quoted him as saying.

Gay Republican activist David Greer said he intends to remain in his post as Bush administration appointee to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. But Greer said he would speak out strongly against the Federal Marriage Amendment. He predicted Bush would be hurt rather than helped in the upcoming election because of his call for a constitutional amendment.

Greer, as president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Philadelphia in 2000, helped organize a gay host committee to welcome Bush and the GOP leaders to that city, where the 2000 Republican National Convention was held. Greer and Capoccia were both members of the so-called “Austin 12” gay GOP activists who met with Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Now, four years later, Greer said, the president’s endorsement of the FMA has effectively ended gay support for Bush and would most likely result in a near “wipe out” of the 1 million gay votes that Bush received in the 2000 election.

“For myself, this is a line in the sand that can’t be crossed,” Greer said. “Any gay Republican who says this is no big deal, that the amendment can’t be passed, is being disingenuous.”

Added Greer, “If there is one reason for gay Republicans to exist, it is this one moment in time. We must stand up and say this is wrong for this party and this is wrong for this president.”

Gay public relations executive Charles Francis, the Bush family friend who played the lead role in founding the RUC in 2001, said the group is in “profound disagreement” with the president’s decision to back the FMA. Francis said the RUC leadership, which includes former U.S. Sen. ...