Apr 28, 2006  |  By: MATTHEW TSIEN  | COMMENTS     

THE NATIONAL GAY & Lesbian Task Force has done it again. It issued another dubious research project, this time proclaiming that the GOP offers nothing to African-American voters besides a seductive anti-gay marriage agenda.

Some might say that all the gay Democrats offer blacks is a stilted condescending paternalism called "compassion" and an oxymoron called "gay marriage"—something nearly 70 percent of black voters oppose.

The problem is that African-American voters and most gay Democrats do not see eye-to-eye on gay marriage, but the Task Force can’t figure that out. So instead they publish a paper trying to spook blacks about Republicans as the mid-term elections approach.

Entitled "False Promises," the Task Force report argues that the GOP fails miserably in improving the lives and liberties of black Americans. This is the conclusion of a handful of obscure gay activists with marginal scholarship achievements and who view their sexuality as a substitute for accurate research.

What the NGLTF research overlooks is that GOP economic policies have created an emerging black middle class, with tremendous growth in minority-owned firms, minority managers in the private and public sectors, and record numbers of minority homeowners and stockholders.

For this we can thank the Republicans’ supply-side economics, which is oriented toward growing the private sector as opposed to encouraging life-long dependency on government assistance programs.

FURTHERMORE, DR. WALTER Williams, who chairs the Economics Department at George Mason University and is black, has conducted research that says if you subtract all the income earned by black Americans in the United States and form a separate nation, that income would represent the 14th richest nation in the world.

Simply put, African Americans today are more educated and wealthier than they were before the supply-side era of Republican economics took over. While the GOP can never match the Democrats’ overheated rhetoric every election about hate and racism, Republicans are responsible for creating a vast and diverse emerging black middle class.

So why then do gay activist groups issue research papers that echo the unoriginal and increasingly unreliable assertion that the GOP cannot improve the economic life of black Americans? The answer is desperate electoral politics.

IT IS WELL KNOWN among electoral behavior analysts that if the GOP starts taking one out of four black voters, instead of the usual, dismal one out of 10, Republicans will have an unshakable majority.

The Democrats must continue to carry at least 85 percent of the black vote or they become not just a minority party, but a marginal party. Gay political power would in turn be diminished if blacks left the Democrats enough to adversely affect the party’s competitive edge.

Hence, the allied gay Democrats chime in with public policy positions that essentially portray black Americans as pitiful, and blame it on the GOP.

Has a black vote of 25 percent for Republicans ever manifested itself to demonstrate its affect on electoral politics? The answer is yes.

In 1994, when a historic GOP landslide captured the U.S. Senate, the House, the majority of governorships and parity in the state legislatures, roughly 25 to 30 percent of the black vote went for the GOP in a few key states.

That’s the real motive behind NGLTF’s history of questionable research studies regarding black America. The Task Froce is merely trying to prevent a defection, however small, of black voters from the Democratic to the Republican column.

In a polarized 50-50 electorate when every half-percent of the vote really matters, a defection rate of one out of every four black voters would devastate the Democratic Party and dilute its electoral competitiveness.