Gay issues take centre stage for presidential hopefuls

Aug 9, 2007, 23:43 GMT

Los Angeles - Gay rights took centre stage in the Democratic Party's presidential campaign as the leading candidates gathered Thursday night in Los Angeles for a live, televised forum sponsored by a gay-oriented website and TV channel.

The unprecedented event features leading candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both US senators, and former senator John Edwards, who are all anxious to win political support in the gay community, a constituency that disproportionately supports the centre-left party.

In fact, all the Democratic presidential hopefuls except Senator Joe Biden are scheduled to appear in the forum, which will be broadcast on Logo, a gay-oriented cable channel affiliated with MTV.

In the first-ever presidential event to focus on gay, lesbian and transgender issues, some of the topics sure to come up are the repeal of the military's so-called Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and the recent signing of a civil-unions bill in New Hampshire. Other forum issues will include same-sex marriage, HIV/AIDS, hate crimes and job discrimination.

The very fact of an event attended by so many Democratic hopefuls is a sign of how far the gay community has progressed in recent years, according to activist David Mixner.

'In 1992, we were begging Bill (Clinton) to say the word 'gay' at the (Democratic nominating) convention, and that was considered a major victory,' he said. 'Here we have every candidate for the Democratic nomination showing up to the debate, all supporting civil unions, two of them supporting marriage and all of them trying to figure out how they can support marriage and get away with it.'

Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former senator Mike Gravel, both considered fringe candidates, have outright endorsed gay marriage, something a majority of Americans oppose.

Forum panellists will be Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, singer Melissa Etheridge and Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart.

The candidates will appear sequentially at 15-minute intervals during the two-hour forum, never sharing the stage with one another in an event that falls short of a debate.

All of the candidates support a federal ban on anti-gay job discrimination, favour the repeal of the Pentagon's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy barring gays from serving openly in the military, and support civil unions that would at least extend marriage-like legal rights to same-sex couples.

Logo general manager Lisa Sherman said that the network offered a separate forum for candidates from the centre-right Republican Party, but none showed any interest.

That's not surprising, according to polling expert Peter Brown, who points out that in three swing states - Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania - most voters regard the endorsement of a gay-rights group as a reason to vote against, rather than for, a candidate.

That is especially the case among independent voters - often the key to winning these critical states - and much more so among men than women and conservative Republicans than Democrats, he said.