Senator Says LCR Puts Homosexual Agenda Before GOP Welfare
by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
March 16, 2004
(AgapePress) - A high-profile Republican Senator is accusing a homosexual Republican group of jeopardizing the party's re-election chances.
The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) recently began running a series of advertisements critical of President Bush's support of a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage. The Republican homosexual rights group has already been lobbying to discourage support for the amendment among Republican officeholders, and on March 10 LCR launched an ambitious national campaign to stop the passage of what it calls "an anti-family Constitutional amendment."
While the LCR claim they are working for a better Republican Party and a better country, Kansas senator Sam Brownback feels their actions are hurting the party they claim to support. He feels the group's differing opinions about the Federal Marriage Amendment should be kept within the GOP family.
Last month Brownback commended President Bush for his stand what the senator called "his bold and principled stand in support of a constitutional amendment protecting marriage." He went on to say that he was looking forward to working closely with Bush to enact this important piece of legislation. "Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman," he declared, adding, "Protecting marriage is essential to the long term health of our families and culture."
However, the LCR very publicly disagree, claiming an amendment banning "homosexual marriage" would turn back the clock on homosexuals' civil rights. LCR Executive Director Patrick Guerriero says the religious right wanted a culture war and the LCR's national anti-amendment advertising campaign is their way of fighting back.
"We have launched this unprecedented campaign effort because the exclusion and discrimination embodied in this amendment violates the principles upon which the Republican Party is founded," Guerriero says.
The LCR began in California 27 years ago, created to fight against the Briggs Initiative, a ballot measure that would have prevented homosexuals from being public school teachers in California. The first Log Cabin activists enlisted the help of Ronald Reagan, who publicly opposed the initiative, and they succeeded in defeating it. The group has since grown into a leading agitator for "homosexual civil rights."
Along with its growing national base, the LCR maintain an experienced political staff in Washington, DC, and boasts, "We may not win every fight in Washington, but our voice will not go unheard." The group works within the Republican Party to advocate "a more inclusive GOP" and to press homosexual equality issues, but also concentrates on building alliances within the larger homosexual community as well.
The Log Cabin group apparently has no qualms about crossing party lines to form these alliances, notwithstanding Senator Brownback's concerns for GOP solidarity. In explaining its purpose and objectives, the group notes on its website, "Despite our political differences with those on the left, some of the issues at stake are too important to let petty partisanship impede real progress."
Brownback, who is a cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment in the Senate, says he knows the Democrats will try to exploit this division within the Republican Party, which he feels would almost certainly damage George W. Bush's re-election chances.
