Gay-Baiting '08

MSNBC's Chris Matthews sees a change in cultural perception in recent years, too. "I think people are thinking about it, evolving on it and I don’t think it has the scare factor, culturally, that it had," he said. "I think people have very different reactions to this thing. I think a lot of things have unintended consequences. You know, look at the Larry Craig story – it was so sad, that it made a lot of people say, 'Wait a minute. If you don’t respect individuals, they’re not going to respect themselves.' And I think that’s a very good conservative argument for marriage."

Chris Matthews

CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux says it's not just the times that have changed, but that people's concerns are different in 2008 than in previous years. "The cultural issues that resonated in previous elections aren't necessarily being emphasized this time around," she told us. "It's more pocketbook issues, it's more gas prices, it's more the homeowners' crisis, the mortgage crisis."

Suzanne Malveaux

And all that may be true. Polls, particularly of the young, suggest that cultural attitudes about GLBT issues have evolved. They've also shown that the issues Malveaux named are of greater importance to most voters than so-called "values" issues. But none of that means anti-gay messages have lost their power to galvanize key segments of the population. It may just mean they need to be re-packaged.

Same Old Hate, New Improved Packaging

Anti-gay advertising and punditry can't be as blatant or obvious as they once were. Take the tight race in Missouri's 6^th Congressional District. When Republican Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) released ads this spring attacking Democratic challenger and popular former Kansas City, MO mayor Kay Barnes for her "San Francisco values," who could blame him? Surely that old, reliable invocation of "God, guns, and gays" would still come through, especially in Missouri.

It didn't quite work out that way. While the accusations may have hurt Barnes with some voters, many people first thought the ads were jokes, some kind of Saturday Night Live skit gone horribly wrong. One local newspaper poll showed readers thought the ads were out of line, 65 to 34 percent.