Gay candidates gain acceptance

Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona state senator considering a bid for Congress next year, says she realizes that as a young, single woman, she'll have hurdles to overcome with some voters.

And the fact that she's openly bisexual?

"Arizona doesn't really care," the 35-year-old lawyer says, dismissing the issue as irrelevant. "They just want to have low property taxes and no gun control."

Sweeping changes in public attitudes toward sexual orientation have led to fundamental realignments this year in everything from the military, where gays now can serve openly, to marriage. Sunday, New York will become the sixth and largest state to permit same-sex marriages.

In politics, the number of gay men and lesbians running for public office and winning has begun to increase significantly, although gay candidates, especially in more conservative areas, continue to face skepticism and opposition from some voters.

The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund calculates that 107 openly gay candidates were elected to office nationwide in 2010, an increase of one-third from 2008 and nearly threefold the number of a decade earlier. The political action committee projects another significant jump in 2012.

In a seismic shift, Americans by more than 2-1 say they would vote for a gay candidate for president.

A potential breakthrough looms next year.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., who became the first openly gay candidate to win a first term in Congress in 1998, is poised to compete for the U.S. Senate if former senator Russ Feingold doesn't run. He promises a decision by Labor Day.

Baldwin, 49, would be favored to prevail in a Democratic primary and competitive in a general election. If she won the seat, she would be the first openly gay member in Senate history.

In addition, at least four openly gay and bisexual challengers, including Sinema, are viable potential 2012 contenders for the House of Representatives, which has four openly gay members.

"At some point, you reach the what's-the-big-deal stage of all this," says Paul Maslin, a Democratic strategist based in Madison, Wis., part of Baldwin's congressional district. That day isn't here, but he sees it approaching.

"These candidates, if they've been in office a long time and grown in terms of stature and credibility, are now being judged for lots of other reasons than sexual preference," Maslin says. "It becomes not meaningless, but a relatively unimportant consideration."

"Most of my constituents don't know my sexual orientation, and they don't care," says Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., a two-term congressman from Boulder who is openly gay.

He laughs and adds, "Most of my constituents, I hope they know my name."

Polis and Baldwin are from liberal Democratic enclaves, and Sinema is from a state with deep libertarian roots. Openly gay candidates in conservative locales such as South Carolina and Iowa describe navigating more difficult landscapes. The Victory Fund says four states (Alaska, Mississippi, South Dakota and West Virginia) have no openly gay elected officials at any level.

Some social conservative leaders decry the agenda they say many gay men and lesbians pursue in office, including efforts to legalize same-sex marriage and other steps they say damage traditional American families.

Even so, the Gallup Poll shows big changes in Americans' attitudes toward electing a gay man or lesbian to the highest office of all, the White House.

By more than 2-1 (67%-32%), those surveyed last month said they would vote for a well-qualified gay candidate for president if he or she were nominated by their party. In comparison, 94% would vote for a black person, 93% for a woman, 89% for a Hispanic person, 76% for a Mormon and 49% for an atheist.

In 1978, the first time Gallup asked the question, one in four said they would be willing to vote for a homosexual for president. Four years ago, in 2007, 55% said they would.

Since then, there has been significant movement within every major demographic group.

In 2007, 39% of Republicans said they would support a gay presidential candidate; now 54% would. Then, 40% of those who attend religious services every week said they would; that percentage has risen to 52%. Among conservatives, 38% had said they would support a gay candidate; that group now is split 49%-49%.

There is a gender gap: 72% of women say they would vote for a gay presidential candidate, compared with 61% of men.

The biggest divide is by age, a generational shift that is likely to accelerate the pace of change over time. Among adults under 30, eight of 10 say they would vote for a qualified gay candidate, by far the highest percentage of any age group.

Even among their grandparents, though, changes in attitudes are apparent. In 2007, 38% of those 65 and older said they would vote for a gay presidential candidate. Now a 52% majority of seniors say they would.

Does it matter?

Does having openly gay elected officials affect governmental policies?

Political scientist Donald Haider-Markel of the University of Kansas, author of Out and Running, concludes the answer is "clearly yes." His statistical analysis, published by Georgetown University Press last year, found that as more members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community were elected to a state's legislature, the number of pro-LGBT bills introduced and adopted rose.

Having openly gay legislators increased the likelihood that the state would adopt significant anti-discrimination policies.

"It helps push these issues forward," Haider-Markel says. "There's also the role-model aspect of having legislators see openly gay and lesbian legislators in their mix, and basically seeing that they're just like them. It makes it hard to frame or portray gays and lesbians as really bizarre human forms that don't look anything like us when legislators are introducing their partners of 20 years and talking about their relationships and their adopted children."

Arizona, which has four openly gay or bisexual members in the state Senate and one in the House, continues to pass bills Sinema sees as anti-gay, including a law that goes into effect this month giving married couples preference in adoption over single people.

"I haven't changed their minds about gay people and policies, but it's really changed the way they talk about it," she says. "And to be honest about it, that makes a difference."

She says that during her first year in the Legislature, in 2005, some colleagues would liken homosexuality to bestiality and portray gay men as promiscuous.

"The really nasty discussion and perpetuation of myths around gay people have stopped," she says.

In Iowa, Matt McCoy, the only openly gay member of the state Legislature, says the personal relationships he had built with fellow Democratic state senators were pivotal when a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage came up for a vote in 2004.

"It was defeated in the Senate as a result, I believe, of me being there," he says.

Not everyone sees this as a positive development, of course.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, says gay men and lesbians should feel free to be open about their sexual orientation when they run for office — but he says the political agenda they are likely to advocate means he and like-minded voters wouldn't support them.

"Everybody has a right to participate in the process, and they have a right to influence the process; they have a right to run for office," Perkins says. "But I don't think voters are going to be receptive to the idea that here's someone who, upfront, is part of an agenda that wants to redefine marriage and support special rights for people based on their sexual behavior."

Gay-rights advocates have tried to silence those who oppose them on policy, he complains: "They've tried to marginalize them or demean them by throwing labels … instead of debating the merits of whether it's good for society to have same-sex marriage. They simply call those against same-sex marriage 'bigots' or 'homophobes.'"

Coming out of the closet

As public attitudes change, some gay officeholders who have never publicly acknowledged their sexual orientation are weighing whether to do so.

McCoy had served two terms in the Iowa House and been elected to the state Senate when he decided in 2002 to reveal to his colleagues and constituents that he was gay. First, he sought advice from the Victory Fund, founded in 1991 with the mission of increasing the number of LGBT officeholders.

He also sat down with Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, who became the first member of Congress to voluntarily acknowledge he was gay in 1987.

"He told me coming out would be the most important thing I ever did in my life and the least important thing in my constituents' lives," McCoy recalls.

Since then, McCoy has won two more terms to the Iowa Senate, albeit over the opposition of some of the state's influential Christian conservatives.

Polis, one of the leaders of candidate recruitment for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says he advises gay and lesbian prospects that they need to be open about their sexual orientation if they run.

In the past, some public officials have seen their political careers derailed after being "outed" by others as gay.

"The only way it's an issue is if you try to hide it," Polis says. "If somebody is closeted, I say, make sure you're honest with people about it before you run."

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has studied the issue in such conservative states as Kentucky and Tennessee, agrees.

"It is just a lot better for candidates to come out than to be found out," she says.

Besides, she says, the nation's extended economic crisis has focused voters on other priorities.

"We're finding voters a lot more worried about their lives than their candidates' lives," Lake says.

In general, she says, the political world has been a "lagging indicator," trailing trends for gay men and lesbians in other aspects of American life.

Still, even candidates who are open about their sexual orientation want to avoid being defined by it or known first and foremost as "the gay candidate." Baldwin, for instance, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Chuck Wolfe, president of the Victory Fund, says the sexual orientation of gay men and lesbians continues to have an impact on their political prospects.

"It's too early to say we're at the tipping point," he says. "But is one coming? Yes."

Changes in other spheres have the potential to help gay and lesbian candidates, he says. Now that the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy has ended, for instance, more gay veterans will be able to tout military service on their résumés. And the legalization of same-sex marriages in six states enables homosexual candidates to present the sort of family tableau that has long boosted heterosexual ones.

In her first campaign, for Municipal Court judge in San Diego in 1994, Bonnie Dumanis tried to address concerns about the fact she was a lesbian by regularly bringing her partner and her parents with her as she campaigned.

"People got to know all of us and see that we were a regular family," she says.

She won that election, and in 2003, she became the first openly gay person in the country elected district attorney. A Republican, she's running for mayor of San Diego.

'I would again'

Growing up in North Carolina, Linda Ketner says, she had wanted to run for governor since she was 8 years old and circulated a petition protesting the exclusion of girls and African Americans from Little League.

She never sought public office, however, because of fears that as a lesbian she would be "unjustly judged."

In 2008, the community activist and philanthropist from Charleston, S.C., finally decided to run for Congress, challenging a four-term Republican incumbent in a Republican-leaning district.

When she found herself the target of abusive letters and commentary on blogs about her sexual orientation, she would envision herself donning a raincoat, "so the really sick and ugly things would roll right off of me."

She lost the election but carried a respectable 48% of the vote, the most of any Democrat in the district in more than two decades.

Would she run for public office again?

I think I would," Ketner, 61, replies. "I think I would again."

Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to For more information about reprints & permissions , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com