From: kls4344@ritvax.isc.rit.edu (Person in flux)
Subject: Deb Price on Bush
Reply-To: kls4344@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 23:55:37 GMT

Deb Price, a lesbian with a partner of 7 years, writes a column that appears
Thursdays in Gannett's _Democrat and Chronicle_ in Rochester, New York; below
is this week's column retyped without permission [all typos mine].

"Bush won't accept gay lifestyle as normal"

Despite warnings he was committing political suicide, President Truman put
himself at the forefront of the dominant civil rights struggle of his time: 
equal treatment for black Americans. 

As president, "Give 'em Hell Harry" couldn't "sit idly by and do nothing in the
face of injustice," writes David McCullough, author of _Truman_.  Even as he
struggled in his 1948 re-election campaign, Democrat Truman single-handedly
integrated the armed forces and pressed Congress to make lynching a federal
crime. 

Eventually, a friend from Missouri wrote to ask the president to ease up on his
push for civil rights.  Truman responded with a graphic account of racial
violence against blacks and concluded, "I am going to try to remedy it, and if
that ends up in my failure to be re-elected, that failure will be in a good
cause." 

That is leadership--defending those without power, rising above the
misunderstandings and hatreds of the day to do the right thing for the United
States of tomorrow.  

Forty-four years later, we have a president who likens himself to Truman.  But
George Bush--whose moral compass alway points to expediency--is no Harry
Truman.  This is how our "Family Values" president is responding to one of the
major civil rights movements of his time:  

o On the military ban on gay people that he could life with a Trumanesque
stroke of his pen:  "I support our policy on that, and everyone knows my
adherence to traditional family values."  

o On gay parents:  "I can't accept as normal lifestyle people of the same sex
being parents."  

o On the possibility of a grandchild coming out to him:  "I would hope he
wouldn't go out and try to convince people that this was the normal lifestyle,
that this was appropriate lifestyle."  

Bush's platform denounces gay marriage, gay soldiers, gay adoption, and gay Boy
Scouts.  

"The strategy of the campaign is fatally flawed," says New York Rep. Bill
Green, a moderate Republican who supports gay rights.  "Their arithmetic will
lose votes." 

That's already happening. 

Banned from any role in their party's convention, the gay Republican Log Cabin
Federation--by acclamation--voted against endorsing Bush-Quayle. 

As Bush searches for leaders to model himself after, he ought to listen to the
architect of Republican conservatism:  Barry Goldwater. 

"Under our Constitution," he recently said in support of a Phoenix gay  rights
ordinance, "we literally have the right to do anything we may want to do as
long as the performing of those acts do not cause damage or hurt to anyone
else.  I don't see any way in the world that being gay can cause damage to
somebody else." 

It's the 1964 GOP presidential nominee--not the current one--who is in touch
with middle America on gay issues.  A recent _USA Today_-CNN-Gallup Poll found
55 percent of voters agree with Democrat Bill Clinton's support for "equal
rights for homosexuals."  Only 27 percent said he goes too far. 

President Truman said he felt it was his duty under the Constitution to push
for equal rights for all Americans.  If George Bush can't follow that example,
perhaps someone should let him know that advocating gay rights just might be
the most expedient course this year.  Our nation is ready for change.