Aug 17, 2007  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Karl Rove, a man who critics say orchestrated “divisive” and “unfortunate” campaigns against gay marriage, announced this week he is leaving the White House.

A key political adviser to President George Bush, Rove said Monday he would step down at month’s end. The move came after senior aides were told to leave by Labor Day or stay the remaining 17 months of Bush’s term, according to media reports.

Gay activists said they were thankful that Rove, 56, chose to leave early.

“Karl Rove perfected the political strategy of distort and divide and too often the lives of gay Americans were used as fodder for that strategy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Rove earned his legacy as a hero of the anti-equality, anti-gay right wing, and will forever be remembered for that.”

A longtime Republican strategist who repeatedly used the gay civil rights movement to his benefit, Rove is widely seen as having masterminded the 2004 campaign against gay marriage.

That effort, which resulted in gay unions being banned in 11 states, was designed to drive conservative voters to the polls and increase Bush’s popular vote tally. Although the effort did not appear to tip any states in Bush’s favor, it was nonetheless considered successful.

In the aftermath of the 2004 election, Christopher Barron, who was then the political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “It’s hard to argue with results.”

But that campaign, said National Stonewall Democrats spokesperson John Marble, will be remembered as “one of the most anti-gay campaigns in American history.”

He said Rove, whom Marble described as “the architect” of the 2004 effort, made it difficult for Americans to have “an honest discussion” about gay issues in the months and years that followed.

“It poisoned the well of public discourse,” Marble said. “Republicans made sure that gay families were demonized and millions were spent demonizing gay families.”

Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, said such campaign strategies were proven ineffective two years later, when vehemently anti-gay voices, such as Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, were defeated.

He said a majority of Americans now support certain gay rights and protections, and the 2004 campaign might mark the final time any “anti-gay strategy” is used on the national stage.

“It’s disappointing and unfortunate that Karl Rove pursued the strategy he did in 2004,” Sammon said. “He went down that course and divided the country and it was a mistake, and I think history will judge him harshly because of it.”

Rove’s anti-gay strategies were not limited to the 2004 election.

Marble said Rove in 1994 helped Bush defeat Democratic Texas Gov. Ann Richards, a divorced mother of four, by allegedly planting or encouraging rumors that she was a lesbian.

“It’s a well-known episode in Texas history,” Marble said, “and one of the first examples of how Karl Rove would use sexual orientation as a political tool.”

Six years later, Bush opposed gay rights and protections during a presidential campaign that Rove helped guide.

And after Bush won reelection in 2004, a coalition of conservative religious leaders pushed Rove to prioritize the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have banned same-sex marriages. Bush endorsed the proposal, but it was defeated.

Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor, said those earlier and later efforts were not as effective, though, as Rove’s strategy in 2004.

That plan to bar gay marriage, he said, allowed Bush to drive voters while avoiding taking “a hard-core, gay-bashing position.” Wilcox noted Bush discussed marriage “in high-minded language” that emphasized opposite-sex unions as “good for the family.”

He said Rove’s finely crafted lines played well among conservative religious voters, even though the strategist was not among their ranks.

“Rove is, himself, a confessed atheist,” Wilcox said. “So this is not a true believer going out and mobilizing the crew. This is a person who strategically noted the value.”

Wilcox said it’s unclear whether Rove, whose stepfather reportedly came out as gay after divorcing Rove’s mother, personally opposed gay rights.

But critics, including Marble and Sammon, said such distinctions are irrelevant.

“It doesn’t matter,” Marble said. “I’d rather look at his actions than what his attitudes are. I think his actions speak much more clearly than any words he could ever say.”

Sammon agreed. He said Rove’s focus on “wedge issues” such as gay rights were part of his plan to create “a permanent Republican majority,” but that plan backfired.

“By any measure, I think Karl Rove was a failure in what he tried to accomplish,” Sammon said. “He was focused on winning one election, but the impact of the decisions he ...