Jay Katzen, new Peace Corps Regional Director for the Europe, Mediterranean, and Asia region, accused of gay-baiting in 2001 Virginia Lieutenant Governor's race
Virginia GOP Gay Baits in Campaign
by Bob Roehr
September 5, 2001
Caption: Jay Katzen (above, second from right) was twice a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia - first in 1997 and again in 2001. He was also a Republican candidate for Virginia's 9th Distrcit Congressinal seat losing to Rick Boucher in 2002. He previously served almost 25 years as a career Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. State Department.
Republican gay baiting kicked off the political high holy season in Virginia politics, which along with New Jersey are the only ones to elect statewide offices this November. Democrats have fled from the charges, calling them a distortion and twisting of facts.
In a series of direct-mail pieces and radio commercials in predominately rural parts of the state, GOP candidates accused their opponents of being "the most liberal ticket in Virginia history," favoring gay marriage and wanting to kick the Boy Scouts out of public schools. "One of them wants to legalize gay marriage in Virginia," said a radio ad placed by the Republican Party of Virginia.
If only the charges were true.
Democrat Tim Kaine, the unnamed target of the ad, who is running for Lt. Governor, denies he supports a gay agenda. Earlier in the year the mayor of Richmond said, "Gays and lesbians should not be discriminated against in housing or employment."
But he backed off a statement that some interpreted as supportive of civil unions after the top of the ticket, gubernatorial candidate Mark Warner stated his opposition to gay marriage. Kaine now says, "I think the institution of marriage is fine. I don't believe we need to create an alternative." Nor does he feel a need to repeal the sodomy law, because they are irrelevant and unenforced in private situations.
Jay Katzen, the Republican candidate for Lt. Governor, has been the attack dog in this endeavor. He is a favorite of conservative Christian activists. In a joint radio appearance with Kaine, he accused him of trying to kick the Boy Scouts out of Richmond schools and of allowing gay-straight alliances to meet in those schools. Kaine replied that he knew of no effort to bar Scouts from Virginia schools and would not support such an effort. Nor was he familiar with any gay-straight alliances. As for the Scouts right to discriminate against gays, "I really don't have an opinion on that," said the civil rights lawyer.
In July, Katzen told the Richmond publication Style Weekly, "AIDS is the product, sadly, in most cases of a choice that people have made. We recognize that homosexuality is a choice. It's a lifestyle with public health consequences." He feared that repealing the state's archaic sodomy law would be "laying the framework for gay marriage."
Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Early has touted his "Virginia values, not Vermont values," as code words. Among the Republicans, only candidate for Attorney General Jerry Kilgore has refrained from gay baiting. He has expressed interest in addressing a meeting of Log Cabin Republicans.
The National Stonewall Democrats released a statement attacking the GOP. "This bigotry demonstrates the Mark Early does not deserve to be Governor," said co-chair Rick Trombly. Unstated was any word of support for, or even mention of the names of the Democratic candidates in those races.
In contrast, just across the border to the north and east of Virginia, earlier this year Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening put the full weight of his office behind passage of a statewide gay civil-rights bill to finally move that measure through the legislature. And in the District of Columbia gays are such a long-standing part of the political establishment that they serve openly at every level of government.
Republicans such as Rep. Tom Davis and Sen. John Warner are supporting the party candidates, but have good relations with their gay constituents and have made it known that they think the candidates have adopted a losing strategy. There is an unspoken sense among many party moderates that they want the extremists to lose, and lose big, so that they can reclaim control of the party.
Early polls show Democrat Warner leading by as much as 14 points. Perhaps the gay baiting we are seeing in Virginia is the last dying gasp of that discredited form of divisiveness, more a cartoon or caricature than a viable political tactic. The community can hope that it becomes the largest political wound that the rabid right inflicts upon itself.
