by Lisa Keen - Keen News Service

The Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. Sept. 1-4 launched a second “cultural war,” several political pundits said following the convention. But it is unclear if the LGBT community will be a target.

Gays were a considerable focus of the first “cultural war,” the designation declared at the Republican convention in 1992 by then-right-wing presidential contender Pat Buchanan, who derided Bill Clinton’s Democratic National Convention as the “greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.” He characterized Bob Hattoy, a gay speaker with AIDS from Los Angeles, as a “militant leader of the homosexual rights movement.”

Fast-forward 16 years to this year’s GOP convention and the nation heard wild applause for family values and jeers against “activist judges” whose legal decisions are purported to promote social policy experiments from the bench. Among the prominent speakers was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, long considered supportive on LGBT issues, who mocked Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with an effeminate tone and gesture.

“Next time, try it a little gayer,” quipped Comedy Central’s Daily Show host Jon Stewart about Giuliani’s performance.

The undisputed star of the convention was not Republican presidential nominee John McCain but his surprise vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. A virtual unknown in national politics, Palin delivered a Buchanan-style speech that derided Obama as a “community organizer” who had no responsibility compared to her time as a small-town mayor.

Convention speakers also blatantly co-opted phrases from the Democrats, stressing, for instance, that the GOP wants “change” and that the Democrats just don’t “get it.”

Ironically, while the GOP was waving its social-conservative/family-values flag, the convention also conveyed a madcap mixture of conflicting images: the war-hero presidential nominee who was willing to be identified in his introductory convention video as a “mama’s boy” by his 96-year-old mother, and the party’s first-ever female vice presidential nominee who seemed to enable the party’s exploitation of her Down Syndrome infant and her unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter.

Meanwhile, backstage, there was a quiet outreach to gay voters and independents who prefer a more politically moderate pitch.

Two top McCain campaign officials made brief remarks before events hosted by the gay Log Cabin Republicans. LCR President Patrick Sammon said he had no doubt they appealed to the group because they know the race with Obama is very close. Polls conducted Sept. 2-6 showed McCain and Obama essentially tied.

“John McCain will lose this election unless he gets enough independent votes,” said Sammon after McCain’s national political director, Mike DuHaime, spoke at an LCR event.

“On behalf of Senator McCain and the campaign,” DuHaime thanked an audience of about 200 at a Log Cabin lunch, Sept. 2, for the organization’s endorsement of McCain. DuHaime added that both the campaign and a McCain administration would be “inclusive.”

Senior McCain advisor Steve Schmidt, who previously advised California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and whom Sammon likened to President George Bush’s former chief strategist, Karl Rove, paid his and the campaign’s “respects” to Log Cabin, adding that the gay group was “an important one in the fabric of our party.” “I admire your organization,” said Schmidt. “Keep fighting for what you believe, because the day is going to come. ... We are the party of freedom. We will keep fighting as a party to reach it in full.”

Schmidt also shared that he has a lesbian sister and that she and her partner are important to him and his family. (See logcabin.org for more.)

Exit polls indicated that George W. Bush won 25 percent of the gay vote in 2000 and 23 percent in 2004. A recent Harris poll, however, suggested McCain might get as little as 10 percent of the gay vote this year. Sammon disputed that poll, noting that it was based on the Web responses of only 178 LGBT people and therefore was not a reliable indicator of the gay vote.

“McCain will easily surpass Bush’s vote,” said Sammon. “He’s a much more inclusive candidate.”

Sammon also said he continues to hear anecdotal evidence that many LGBT Democrats who initially supported Hillary Clinton might cross party lines to vote for McCain.

But the harshness and mocking tone of Palin’s speech and that of other speakers at the convention probably did little to woo moderates, some pundits later said. Additionally, several speakers misrepresented well-known positions, political pundits noted. For instance, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that McCain “doesn’t want to change the definition of marriage,” implying that Obama does. In fact, Obama is opposed to same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, reaction to the Log Cabin endorsement of the McCain-Palin ticket drew strong criticism from several LGBT groups. EqualityGiving.org, a website that provides financial and educational resources for pro-LGBT concerns, suggested that Log Cabin misrepresented McCain’s opposition on the Federal Marriage Amendment. EqualityGiving said McCain’s opposition was based on his defense of states’ rights and noted he actively supported a similar anti-gay amendment proposed in Arizona in 2006. McCain currently supports the anti-gay initiatives in Arizona and California (Prop. 8) this year, as well.

The Human Rights Campaign responded to the endorsement by pointing out that the Republican Party “has declared in its platform that they want to pass the federal marriage amendment.”

HRC noted that the Republican Party’s platform “also calls gay and lesbian Americans unfit for military service, supports policies that would allow faith-based organizations to deny us jobs and services using federal dollars, and attacks judges who acknowledge our equality under the law.”

Sammon acknowledged that the GOP platform is “awful,” but he said it’s also irrelevant.

“The day after it passes, they put it in a drawer,” said Sammon. “People vote for the candidate, not the platform. I’d rather have a candidate who votes against the Federal Marriage Amendment [as McCain did, twice] than a platform that’s for it.”