The Democratic Party Closet

I woke up this morning with a question in my head: Why is my party hedging around the idea of impeachment out of fear of offending Republicans, while Mary Cheney and her partner are about to have a baby, flying in the face of the views of that very same party -- her father's party. This thought didn't just idle into my brain. Last night, I was reading interviews with the NY Post columnist -- the openly conservative Republican-- Michael Riedel, who was calling for more productions of, of all things, plays like those of Shaw and Chekhov. While he admitted he didn't want to see plays critical of Bush and suggested in his typically venomous way, that perhaps there should be a play celebrating the life of Jesse Helms, his point was that theater should be topical and political. He praised very liberal British playwright David Hare. Meanwhile, I know that hundreds of liberal artistic directors who are members of the Democratic party choose not to make statements with their seasons for fear of losing audience. The refusal of several companies to do the play My Name is Rachel Corrie about a young Jewish woman who dies trying to assist those in occupied Palestine comes immediately to mind.

Michael Riedel especially jarred my mind for another reason as well. Here is a man earning his living off of theatrical gossip, who openly declares that he does not travel in the same "circles of fag hags" as Bernadette Peters -- an unmarried man whom I knew in college to be very effeminate, mannered and very comfortable with and accepting of openly queerfolk like me-- and he also openly declares that he is a "conservative Republican." It's as if being a Republican gives him the freedom to live the life of what might otherwise seem the most abrasive queen one had ever met. Now, he may not be a "queen" in the full sense of the word. He may be a straight, conservative Republican who acts like a queen. Kelsey Grammar seems to be. But, Kelsey Grammar can be one, while David Hyde Pierce chooses not to talk about his sexuality. How many gay men and lesbians in all walks of life do everything NOT to behave in the flaming manner of Riedel and Grammar and vote Democratic?

(For the record, and this has nothing to do with his theatrical aesthetics which I don't know a lot about because I don't read his column and I haven't spoken to him in years, Riedel was one of the easiest people for me to be around in college, no matter how depressed I was while many of my more liberal theater friends were not. Again, there was very little fear of public opinion perhaps because of the same conservative veneer. I only knew him casually, but he was pleasant. I've always imagined that "W" is also pleasant and he came off that way in Nancy Pelosi's daughter's documentary. I'm sure that there were many pleasant Nazis, but my point is that seemingly flamboyant Republican men can be more comfortable with diversity than careful, but manly liberal ones. And isn't that Bush's point always -- he's not a racist or, apparently, anti-gay in his personal life. Just virulently so in his public one.)

So, recent scandals aside, is the reason that there are Log Cabin Republicans because joining the Republican club gives a person more license to be openly queer than being a Democrat?

Think about it. Many of us voted for Bill Clinton because we thought he was electable. What did we get out of this? No healthcare and a "Don't ask. Don't tell" policy in the military. Maybe we should have voted conservative Republican and then pranced around freely while in cover marriages. Isn't that what half of us are doing now anyway?

Of course, I am not advocating that people live in closets of any kind. I am asking my fellow liberals why we choose to KEEP ourselves in closets perhaps more so than our Republican peers. We are so afraid of offending "middle America" that we are more straightlaced and conservative than the actual Republicans we are pretending to be like. And think about it: our problem seems to be that we find candidates who are TOO STRAIGHT. Take Al Gore. People are upset about his attempts to show his manlines in a kiss with his wife and his INABILITY to be likeable -- to seem like he could throw a good party, for example. Meanwhile, WE SUPPOSEDLY ELECTED AN EX-CHEERLEADER!!! Do you think we would have nominated Bill Clinton if he had been a CHEERLEADER!

So, maybe the problem with the Democratic party is that we are not liberal enough in the way we live. For whatever reason, we are afraid to be ourselves. So, we are hypocritical in how much we suppress ourselves and the Republicans are in how much they do not. And they win. Both times.