October 18, 2004

The Republican Party is fomenting intolerance.

Rep. Jim DeMint, South Carolina's Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, was asked in a recent debate whether homosexuals should be able to teach in the state's public schools. "I don't think they should," he responded, arguing that "we need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values."

A few days later on Oct. 5, he added a new group unfit to teach: single pregnant women living with their boyfriends.

DeMint apologized for his comments about single women -- but apparently not for his intolerance toward gays and lesbians.

The media, to the extent they have covered the controversy, have generally viewed DeMint's comments as an isolated case of campaign foot-in-mouth disease.

But it turns out that DeMint's anti-homosexual comments that sparked the controversy were merely a defense of the South Carolina Republican Party platform.

"Although we support tolerance," the platform states, "we do not agree that unnatural or unhealthy sexual practices ought to be legitimized or promoted in the classroom, nor do we believe that known practicing homosexuals should serve as teachers in public schools."

South Carolina is not the only state with anti-gay planks that go beyond the same-sex marriage controversy. Other examples, according to the Seattle Gay News, include:

-- Oregon Republican Party platform: "We believe all forms of homosexuality and the so-called homosexual agenda are morally wrong and damaging to society in the long term."

-- Iowa Republican Party platform: "We support a landlord's right to refuse leasing property to cohabitating homosexuals based on moral grounds."

-- Texas Republican Party platform: "Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country's founders and shared by the majority of Texans."

The GOP's anti-gay stance shows how far to the right the Republican Party has lurched.

Even President Ronald Reagan, credited with fathering the current Republican Party, spoke out against a ballot initiative when he was governor of California in 1977 that would have outlawed the hiring of gay teachers.

Which raises an intriguing question: Would Reagan be too liberal for today's hard-core Republican conservatives?

Barbara Miner is a Milwaukee-based journalist who writes frequently on social issues. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.