NATIONAL

HRC spokesperson worked for outspoken marriage foe
Media director called ‘passionate’ gay rights advocate

LOU CHIBBARO JR.
Friday, October 28, 2005

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group, earlier this year hired as its media relations director the former press secretary for a Democratic congressman from Oklahoma who voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

HRC Communications Director Steven Fisher said HRC hired Brad Luna, 28, for the media relations post because Luna is a seasoned press spokesperson and skilled election campaign adviser who is openly gay and a “passionate gay rights advocate.”

Fisher said the story behind Luna’s rise as native Oklahoman to become press secretary for former Rep. Brad Carson (D-Okla.) and later chief spokesperson for Carson’s unsuccessful 2004 race for Oklahoma’s U.S. Senate seat would likely convince skeptical observers that Luna is the right person for the HRC job.

But Fisher and Luna himself acknowledge that, at first blush, Luna’s association with Carson would likely raise questions about HRC’s decision to hire Luna.

Marriage opposition touted

When the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage — known as the Marriage Protection Amendment — came to the House floor for a vote in October 2004, Carson was in the midst of a heated U.S. Senate race against former congressman Tom Coburn, an anti-gay Republican and former chair of President Bush’s HIV/AIDS advisory council.

The Senate seat became vacant when incumbent Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) chose not to seek re-election.

In a news release issued from his Capitol Hill office on the day he voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, Carson called marriage a “hallowed institution between one man and one woman.”

“As a life-long Southern Baptist,” Carson added, “I firmly believe that marriage must remain a consecrated union between one man and one woman. I was the first member of the Oklahoma delegation to publicly call for a ban on gay marriage. Today I cast my vote against gay marriage. I am committed to maintaining the traditional definition of marriage throughout the United States.”

A short time later, HRC gave Carson a rating of 11 out of a possible 100 in its 2004 congressional scorecard on gay and AIDS-related issues.

In addition to voting for the anti-gay marriage amendment, Carson declined to co-sponsor the Employment Non-Discrimination Act or a hate crimes bill.

His 2004 scorecard rating represented a decline from his 2002 rating of 50, when Carson did vote against a proposal to repeal D.C.’s domestic partners law.

Luna said he was in Oklahoma working on Carson’s Senate campaign at the time of the House vote on the Marriage Protection Amendment, and he did not write Carson’s strongly worded news release.

Luna said he urged Carson not to support the marriage amendment and frequently called on him to be more supportive on gay rights, but said he knew instinctively that the political reality in Oklahoma required

Carson to distance himself from gay rights to remain a viable candidate for public office.

“I grew up in Oklahoma,” Luna said. “I saw firsthand how extremists use our issue to divide the country and as a weapon against the candidates they oppose.”

Luna said he has been openly gay since he started work on Carson’s House staff in January 1999, when Carson first took over the House seat that Coburn voluntarily gave up as part of a pledge to follow a self-imposed term limit. He served as Carson’s chief spokesperson in Washington until November 2003, when he returned to Oklahoma to work on Carson’s fledgling Senate campaign as press spokesperson.

Gay support backfired

Gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein of D.C. said he recommended Luna for the HRC job. Rosenstein said he met Luna while Luna worked on Carson’s House staff and was impressed with his skills then and during the stint on Carson’s Senate campaign, which Rosenstein supported.

Rosenstein provided unintended ammunition for Coburn’s successful effort to defeat Carson in the Senate race. Rosenstein wrote an opinion column for the Washington Blade calling on gays to support Carson’s campaign. He wrote that Carson — an opponent of gay marriage — would be generally supportive on gay issues than Coburn.

A group formed by social conservative leader Gary Bauer called Americans United to Preserve Marriage seized on Rosenstein’s column in a television attack ad against Carson during the peak of the campaign, saying the column showed that Carson backed the homosexual agenda. The ad, which showed the Blade’s front-page logo, described the paper as a “radical homosexual newspaper” sympathetic to Carson.

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