GOP Gays and the 'Finkelstein Phenomenon'
The issue arguably cost John Kerry the presidential election, and Kansas has just become the 18th state to constitutionally ban it, yet there are reasons to feel optimistic about the granting of full civil rights to people who have chosen a life partner of the same sex.
Even as the heartland state was enshrining bigotry in its constitution, a bipartisan legislative majority in Connecticut this month approved same-sex civil unions -- and, unlike the laws allowing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont, this one was not in response to a court order.
More important, we continue to see public expressions of what I am calling the Finkelstein Phe nomenon: The slow but inexorable societal acknowledgment that gay people are real people living real lives, not an abstraction or a subculture. And many of them are Republicans.
Arthur Finkelstein, for example, is an enormously effective right-wing GOP political operative who revealed recently that in December he took advantage of the groundbreaking and much-maligned Massachusetts law to marry his longtime partner. When asked why, he cited "visitation rights, healthcare benefits and other human relationship contracts."
Finkelstein, in the past, must have conveniently forgotten his own interests when he helped engineer the election of known conservative gay-bashers such as Jesse Helms. He represents -- along with Dick Cheney's highly regarded lesbian daughter and the Log Cabin Republicans -- yet another example for conservatives of how being gay is much more fundamental than a "lifestyle choice." In fact, it is just another manifestation of the human experience.
Acknowledging this, the Connecticut Legislature granted gay couples the same tax advantages, family leave privileges, hospital visitation rights and other benefits now reserved for heterosexual married couples. And although the state's Republican governor did manage to have an amendment inserted into the bill defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman, the law's opponents were right when they said that this partial civil rights victory will ultimately lead to the legal acceptance of gay marriage.
"It's hard to believe that the train, as it rolls down the tracks, is going to stop at this station," complained state Sen. John Kissel, who voted against it. "Going down this track has a price to it."
