Big Gay Picture: The Coming Republican Anti-Gay Crap-fest

The Big Gay Picture is a monthly feature at AfterElton.com that looks at larger trends in gay male entertainment, culture, and the media. The views expressed represent only the opinions of the author.

Republicans got creamed in the last election. Democrats didn’t just win the presidency and strengthen their majorities in the House, Senate, and on the state level; they even won on “social issues” with conservatives on the losing side of initiatives involving abortion, affirmative action, and death with dignity in Colorado, South Dakota, and Washington State.

With one glaring exception.

It wasn’t just that the anti-gay Proposition 8 narrowly passed in California. Bans on same-sex marriage also passed in Florida, where supporters of the ban needed a whopping 60% of the vote to amend their state constitution; they got 62%. And in Arizona, which just two years ago became the only state to ever reject a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (probably because it also banned civil unions), a new ban passed by more than ten points.

Thirty states have now amended their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. Marriage is still legal in Massachusetts, and now in Connecticut where that state’s supreme court recently made a favorable ruling, but only because amending those state constitutions is much more difficult.

Photo credit: David McNew/Getty Images

If you were a Republican strategist staring out over the wreckage of your party and saddled with an agenda that has been roundly rejected by the country, what would you do? But first assume you’re unencumbered by ethics or any sense of shame, as most Republican strategists seem to be.

For almost as long as the “culture war” has existed, pundits on both the left and the right have been saying the country is tired of cultural battles and is ready to move on. But the truth is, it’s just the pundits who are tired of it, since it never resonated with them to begin with. The Republican base wasn’t flooding those Sarah Palin rallies because they wanted to get a look at her new designer shoes. They’re not giving Sean Hannity high ratings and turning Ann Coulter books into bestsellers because of their thoughtful analysis.

No, the culture war is absolutely still brewing, and same-sex marriage is now the eye in the center of that hurricane.

In short, prepare for an anti-gay s***storm, coming soon from the Republican Party near you.

Worse than what they’ve already done? Worse than Karl Rove’s cynical behind-the-scenes efforts to get anti-gay initiatives on swing state ballots in 2004, in order to drive evangelicals to the polls to help Bush win reelection? Worse than the slurs and willful misrepresentations that came during the nasty campaign in support of Proposition 8?

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Next Page! A new "gay" Southern Strategy?