While America moves forward, Iowa Republicans step backward

By Rekha Basu

Monday, April 14, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

As stealthily as it reared its ugly head, the power to harness prejudice against gay people to win national elections is shriveling up and dying a well-deserved death.

Republicans see that, even if they won’t all say it out loud, and even if presidential hopefuls keep trying to get traction equating being gay with moral failure or disobedience to God.

“A lot of people I talk to understand if we don’t change our position, we won’t win elections,” said GOP political strategist David Kochel, Mitt Romney’s chief Iowa adviser in 2012. He said it at a sold-out Des Moines celebration recently marking five years of same-sex marriage in Iowa, an event that underscored how mainstream the issue has become. The U.S. vice president sent a letter of congratulations. A major insurance corporation in an industry known for being risk averse placed an ad with a rainbow flag logo in the program book.

In the same state where, it was noted a week ago, an emcee once wouldn’t introduce the Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus by name, it’s now common for a man to introduce another as his husband. With nearly 40 percent of Americans living in states (17) that recognize marriage equality, and young people overwhelmingly considering it a nonissue, it’s hard to imagine anyone who beats the drum against gay marriage winning the presidency. The parties won’t nominate such a candidate unless they’re self-sabotaging or in denial about the massive shift in attitudes throughout the country.

Yet such candidates keep trying. “I don’t really know any that are in the right place on this issue,” Kochel said of possible Republican candidates for president. “In 2020, that’ll change.”

Two potential contenders, Mike Huckabee and Paul Ryan, were in Iowa last week trying to impress Iowa Republicans. Three more — Rick Santorum, Rand Paul and Bobby Jindal — will be in June for the Republican state convention. All have opposed same-sex marriage and gay rights. Huckabee has compared homosexuality to polygamy and prostitution. He won the Iowa caucuses in 2008.

And that’s the great Iowa disconnect. Five years of same-sex marriage notwithstanding, such views still find a receptive audience in the state’s Republican Party, where even legislation to prevent bullying in schools becomes a source of political controversy. The party’s recently elected chairman, Danny Carroll, has lobbied for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage and campaigned against retention of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled to overturn Iowa’s same-sex marriage ban in 2010. He accused them of exercising judicial discretion “in a matter that does not honor God (and) is not consistent with natural law.”

Kochel claims his party moves two steps forward and one step back on gay issues. Of Carroll’s election, he said, “That’s one step back.” But the party is moving, he said. “Under the still waters, there’s a lot going on.”

Now some prominent national Republicans are speaking out against Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, and the fact that they’re usually won by extreme social conservatives popular with Iowa Republican activists. Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, speaking in Iowa recently, said those choices hurt the party’s chances as a whole. “When we think of Iowa ... we think of people with a single issue, abortion and gay marriage, and they put their imprimatur on a candidate who couldn’t get elected dog catcher in America,” Simpson said on television. “And the Republican Party has to spend months reconstructing itself to say: ‘Wait a minute. That was just the Iowa caucuses.’ ”

Marriage shouldn’t be a partisan issue, declared Michael Streit, one of three former Iowa Supreme Court justices who lost their retention elections over their same-sex marriage votes. Yet the three are often invited to speak at partisan Democratic events — never Republican ones — Streit observed in his keynote remarks April 5. He paid tribute to the plaintiffs who, he said, had to struggle “with the ignorance, the exploitation, the opportunism, the shrill and the moneyed interests.”

“The world we know has changed so much these last five years,” Streit said. “Equality in America is on the right path.”

Hatemonger Fred Phelps is dead and Julius Carter — the Des Moines gay teen whose high school graduation he picketed — is on Broadway. Increasingly, Americans are seeing just how normal it is for gay people to marry, have kids and live openly.

We’re not going backward, so the GOP ought to stop wasting its time on an issue that will only make it obsolete.

Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register.