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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 5, 1999)
march 5.1999 » ¡m at — ,1t ITiTtJiTlneuis « resident C lintons high approval rat- ings tell us more about the G O P ’s I * image problems than they tell us about President Clinton,” assessed Rich Tafel, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans. For many people, the Republican Party has “become a hypocrite party,” he said, citing Sen. Don Nicicles’ hollow claim that merit is what counts when selecting someone for a job. Despite that assertion, the Oklahoma Republi can continues to block a vote on the nomina tion of James Hormel, who is openly gay, to become ambassador to Luxembourg. Tafel was one of three Republican moderates who discussed the future of the Grand Old Party during a Feb. 16 gathering of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Tafel urged the Republican Party to “enunci ate a values agenda” of its core principles, such as individual rights and responsibility, limited government and free markets. He called this “a message of inclusion, liberty and freedom.” He also urged the party to distance itself from the right wing, saying it’s the only way the G O P will regain the White House. “I want to send a wake-up call to the nation al leadership: The party is in trouble,” added Faye Anderson, president of the Douglass Policy Institute. “It must get out of the box of tokenism and offer seats at the table to a broader base of activists and professionals who look like Ameri ca.” She chastised the party for continuing “to follow the advice of a small group of monochro matic strategists and operatives who clearly do not understand the dynamics of an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic electorate.” f G rousing A bout the GOP Republican moderates speak out against the right w ing's influence in the party and call for a return to the party's traditional focus on smaller government and more individual liberties among independent and swing voters and send shivers down the spines of African American and Hispanic voters.” But even more dam aging, she said, was the appearance of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia at a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an offspring of the old White Citizens’ Councils that took up arms against federal troops enforcing desegre gation orders in Missis sippi and Arkansas in the 1950s. “A visit to the group’s Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Rich Tafel Internet site is a virtual return to the days of white supremacists in Anderson said this coterie failed to turn out the G O P ’s support base for gubernatorial races sheets, raining terror on black folks,” Anderson in what were supposed to be their strongholds, said. Ann Stone, chair of the 150,000- places like Alabama and South Carolina. member organization Republicans for She believes the candidacy of David Duke in a May 1 special congressional election in Choice, offered her argument to con vince moderates not to leave the party: Louisiana “will worsen the Republican image O f D ykes and D rinks ne of the strongest predictors of women’s drinking in the V_-/ general population is their relationship with their male partners,” says Tonda Hughes, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago. S o what happens when two lesbians are in a relationship? Hughes hypothesizes that if a woman “couples with a woman who is a heavy drinker or drug user, that is likely to have a big ger impact than it does on a heterosexual woman” paired with a drinking man. Hughes says this may be a result of “the close ness of the relationships that [lesbians] form." Hughes was recently awarded a four-year grant by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for the first National Institutes of Health-funded study on lesbian alco hol use. “Studying lesbians is really exciting because it is a prototype for studying women who don’t adhere to traditional gender roles," she says. “[That adherence] has been thought to be pro by B o b R o eh r “Staying in the party irritates the heck out of Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson.” She added, “The American people want government to stop butting in.” With the impeachment proceedings, Stone said, the GO P “became the party that wanted to butt into your private affairs." She called for the party to reclaim the legacy of smaller, nonintru- sive government. The three speakers were united in their opposition to the presidential candidacy of ultraconservative Gary Bauer, but Stone reserved her harshest words for Steve Forbes: “He sold out to the religious right. He reversed his position on abortion.” Tafel called Forbes the most dangerous of the candidates because Forbes has “a lot of money and clearly has no principles.” Tafel recounted numerous policy flip-flops and concluded, “I don’t think he could win the nomination, but with all of his money he could do a lot of dam- 1 » age. According to Tafel, Log Cabin is concentrat ing on the Republican presidential race “because nobody else is doing that.” He also thinks his group could have some impact on try ing to move Hormel’s nomination. Lesbian libation is featured in this advertisement in the October 1998 issue of Qirlfriends magazine tective for women in the general population against drinking. I’m hypothesizing that it may be a risk factor for lesbians." According to Hughes, “myths and stereotypes of lesbians as alcoholics and heavy drinkers are largely based on studies in the 1970s that recruited most of their samples from gay bars.” She says her study is designed to provide a more realistic pic ture of the patterns and variability of lesbian drinking habits and to provide information for developing alcohol abuse pre vention and early intervention strategies. Hughes plans to conduct detailed interviews with about 400 lesbians. She will define “lesbian” using multiple measures that look at both behavior and identity. The grant comes a month after the release of a National Academy of Sciences report outlining the need for additional research on lesbian health issues. ■ Reported by B ob R oehr Skip into spring’s new home selection. Let our relators and licensed tax consultant show you the ropes, pro viding the facts and service you need to sail through loan approval, home selection, inspections and appraisals, to closing. 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