BURNIN' DOWN THE HOUSE

Here, from Salon.com, is the beginning of an article about, and interview with, David Catania, a former "shining star" in Washington, D.C.'s Republican Party.  The article is titled "Burning Down the Log Cabin" as he was (is?) a member of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group I have never in my life understood.  Should you be unaware of the group, it is an organization for gay/lesbian Republicans.  Oxymoron?  You'd think so, but no, they exist.  And apparently they didn't actually disembark from a ship in Roswell, New Mexico and spread from there across the country.  Their website looks pretty good, actually, sounds like people I could get behind, maybe?  My feeling is that it's like any other Republican organization:  people who can say:  "I got mine, how YOU doin'?" Although this guy sounds almost like a real person.  Here's the beginning of the article:        

June 3, 2004  |  President Bush's decision to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage continues to have unintended consequences inside the Republican Party. The latest fallout came last Thursday when the openly gay District of Columbia councilmember David Catania, who is credited with pumping new energy into the often dormant Republican Party in Washington, resigned his leadership position after the party chairman refused to certify Catania as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Catania remains, for now, a registered Republican, but he says he will not vote for Bush.

"I've spent six and a half years trying to build this local party," Catania told Salon. "This was not an easy decision or one I came to lightly. But in the end I just couldn't see any way I could stay."

D.C. Republican Party chairwoman Betsy Werronen, along with other party leaders, according to the Washington Blade, a gay weekly, had "picked Catania and other local gay Republicans to run on an uncontested slate of delegates and alternate delegates to the Republican Convention in New York City in late August. D.C. Republicans elected the slate at a party caucus that same month. Werronen also appointed Catania to represent the D.C. GOP convention delegation on the party's national platform committee."

After Bush moved to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Catania announced that he would not support Bush for reelection. On Thursday, Werronen, who had described Catania as a "shining star" of the Republican Party, stripped him of his delegation status. He then walked away from his D.C. party leadership position, fed up with the national party apparatus and what he calls "this cabal of [Republican] geniuses who have cooked up ways to exclude Americans."

It's a painful separation for someone who was personally summoned to Austin, Texas, in 2000 to share some face time with candidate Bush. During the primaries Bush refused to meet with the openly gay Log Cabin Republicans, who had endorsed his rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. But after effectively securing the nomination, and anxious to bolster his "compassionate conservative" credentials, Bush in April 2000 invited a handpicked group of 12 gay activists to his Texas campaign headquarters. Designated a GOP "Maverick" for being under 40 and raising more than $50,000 for Bush, Catania was among the so-called Austin 12. Thanks in part to their hard work, Bush won 25 percent of the gay vote in 2000, or 1 million votes, according to exit polls.

A white councilman in a city whose population is 75 percent minority -- and a Republican elected official in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 9 to 1, Catania is used to operating as the odd man out. But he says the Republican Party, and specifically the form it takes during reelection mode, has become intolerable for gays. "The fact of the matter is, there ain't no there there anymore," says Catania. 
               
The article is 4 Salon pages long, so you'll need either a day pass or a subscription to read the whole thing.  I regard this as Catania coming to his senses; it seems a hopeful thing to me.  If, indeed, there are other highly placed gay or lesbian folk in the Bush organization let's hope this will serve as an example to them.  It can't be a comfortable position at this moment in our time.  Clearly the Log Cabins don't want this entirely negative amendment placed in the Constitution.

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On the other hand, this essay reflects mine and my partner's thoughts on the subject of marriage.  i've tried to say this before, but never succeeded in such an articulate setting-forth of ideas as i find here.  this essay is from Common Dreams:

Why We're Not Getting Married

by Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow

We love each other, and we've been in a committed relationship for nearly twenty years. We are residents of Massachusetts. But we're not getting married. We fully believe that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, and we celebrate the fact that a significant barrier to our full citizenship has fallen. In not taking advantage of this new right, however, we can more comfortably advocate for the kind of society in which we would like to live.

Those who have fought for gay marriage have made clear that, in the U.S., important benefits are tied to marital status. Over 1000 federal benefits attach to marriage benefits relating to social security, inheritance, tax status, child custody, and the like. Further, other significant benefits most notably, health care are often linked to marriage. Opening up this status to gays and lesbians makes an enormous difference to those in committed relationships in which at least one partner has access to benefits or resources to share.

But focusing on the right to marry perpetuates the idea that these rights ought to be linked to marriage. Were we to marry, we would be contributing to the perpetuation of a norm of coupledness in our society. The norm marginalizes those who are single, single-parents, widowed, divorced or otherwise living in non-traditional constellations. As the language of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision itself makes evident, a focus on gay marriage can reinforce a dangerous tendency to definea particular form of family as the "basic unit of society."

Seeking expanded benefits through marriage also contributes to what amounts to the increasing privatization of responsibility of caring for children, the elderly, the ill and disabled. Thus, the Massachusetts decision argues that gay marriage is good for society because children ought to be raised by two parents. But such arguments can be, and have been, used to justify repressive "marriage promotion" policies that attempt to control and punish single mothers receiving welfare benefits. At the same time, they lead us to neglect our social responsibilities to provide adequate child-care, day care, elder-care, etc. that would allow all adults who want to work to be able to do so. And a focus on increasing the numbers of people who can get access to health or retirement benefits through their spouses can easily lead us to ignore or deny our societal responsibility to provide basic health care and old age security to all our citizens, regardless of marital status.

It's not easy to walk away from these benefits especially in a world in which they don't come easily. We are fortunate, in that we do not need to rely on one another's employers for our health coverage, and this allows us the luxury of deciding not to marry.

Nevertheless, as feminists and as lesbians, we have considered ourselves to be part of social movements that were modeling a variety of ways to be in the world, and to be in meaningful relationships, other than through marriage. At this moment, when there is so much focus on celebrating the right to marry, we want to hold up a vision of a society in which basic rights are not tied to marriage, and which there are many ways to organize one's intimate life, marriage being only one of them.

Judith Plaskow (judith.plaskow@manhtattan.edu) is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in New York, and Jewish feminist theologian. She is the author of 'Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective', and co-editor, with Carol P. Christ, of 'WomanSpirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion' and of 'Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality'.

Martha Ackelsberg (mackelsb@smith.edu) is Professor of Government and Women's Studies at Smith College, Northampton, MA. She is the author of 'Free Women of Spain: Mujeres Libres and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women' and numerous articles on feminism, families, and social change.