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
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