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By: LOU CHIBBARO JR
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Eight Democratic senators listened to complaints last week from gay activists that they and their party colleagues have hindered progress on gay rights, according to several participants in the meeting.
The activists say that by remaining passive or by taking ambiguous and "tortured" positions on same-sex marriage and other hot-button gay issues, the senators and other Democrats are hurting the gay rights movement.
The sometimes-blunt remarks by the activists came at a March 16 meeting on Capitol Hill organized by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in her role as chair of the Senate Democrats’ Steering & Outreach Committee. The meeting was closed to the media and public.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also attended, along with leaders of more than 20 prominent gay rights and AIDS organizations.
"We talked about the way [senators] appear to be largely passive, doing nothing affirmative on LGBT issues … in ways that actually are problematic for us and harmful to the work that we do," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, who was among the those who spoke at the meeting.
Cathcart said he told the senators the gay and AIDS groups appreciated the Democratic senators’ overall support on gay and AIDS related issues. But, he said, he also told them that gay leaders were worried that Senate Democrats and the party were not responding in a visible and assertive way to attacks against gay marriage and other gay rights efforts by conservative Republicans and conservative religious advocacy groups.
Cathcart was referring to statements by most Democratic senators, as well as most Democratic members of the House of Representatives, that they oppose gay marriage but support civil unions or domestic partnerships.
Howard Dean, chair on the Democratic Party and a former presidential candidate, has also said he opposes gay marriage while supporting civil unions.
Jim Manley, a spokesperson for Reid, said the meeting was part of the Democratic senators’ regular outreach efforts to constituency groups, including gay and AIDS groups. He said the meeting marked the third time the Steering & Outreach Committee has met with gay and AIDS group representatives during the past four years.
"These are important meetings for Senator Reid and the committee," Manley said while declining to comment on the issues discussed at the meeting.
Clinton’s office did not return calls seeking comment by press time.
Diana Bruce, director of policy and government affairs for the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families, said she and other representatives of AIDS groups briefed senators on issues such as the pending reauthorization of the Ryan White AIDS CARE Act.
Others briefed the senators on gay-related issues such as the status of a federal hate crimes bill and efforts to repeal the Pentagon’s "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy on gays in the military.
The meeting took place three months before a scheduled June 5 vote in the Senate on the Marriage Protection Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
The amendment is expected to be defeated, just as the Senate and House failed to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, a similar proposal, in 2004. But Democratic Party strategists have expressed concern that Republican supporters of the amendment and their allies among conservative religious groups will seize on the issue to attack Democrats in the upcoming 2006 congressional elections.
Cathcart said he understands the senators who attended the meeting don’t believe they are advocating discrimination, but he said their position for civil unions rather than same-sex marriage was similar to the "separate but equal" policies that barred African Americans from attending public schools designated for whites only.
"One of our concerns as a group is that they don’t necessarily hear enough back from the community on how we hear and perceive the sometimes tortured and hair-splitting positions they try to take," Cathcart said. "We are tired of being seen as the embarrassment to the party."
The meeting also follows complaints by gay Democratic activists that Dean, as Democratic Party chair, abolished the party’s gay and lesbian outreach desk as part of a party reorganization that eliminated all constituency "desks."
Dean’s decision to eliminate the gay desk, along with his statements claiming the party opposes gay marriage, prompted New York gay Democratic activist Jeff Soref to resign last year from his position as chair of the Democratic Party’s Gay & Lesbian Americans Caucus.
Eliza Byard, deputy executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, said ...
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