Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 09:04:41 -0700
From: jeff@aa.net (Jeff Harris)
Subject: Bob Dole's New Gay-Bashing Ad

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    Bob Dole's New Gay-Bashing Ad

    by Jeff Harris



     Still struggling even to maintain majorities in a few states and voter 
turn out from his base of support among religious political extremists, Bob 
Dole's campaign released a gay-bashing radio ad that attacks Clinton for 
supporting "ninth-month abortions . . . gays in the military and condoms for 
school kids. That tells you a lot about Bill Clinton, it does." The ad 
equated ending discrimination with immorality, defaming gay Americans by 
implying that their mere presence in the military was somehow immoral.

    Political oxymorons, the Log Cabin Club,  gay Republicans who endorsed 
Bob Dole in spite of the candidate's returned of their thousand dollar 
contribution to his campaign, have not yet commented on the new ad. In a 
recent press release the LCR's director, Rich Tafel, attempted to convince 
its increasingly doubt-filled membership that, in spite of all evidence to 
the contrary, from his conversations with Dole,  Bob Dole secretly supported 
equal rights for gay Americans and did not want to  support discrimination.

    The 60-second spot, which the campaign said will air on self-styled 
Christian radio stations in the Midwest, says that America is suffering from 
a "moral crisis" that originates not in "your house" but "in the White 
House. Bill Clinton's White House." Dole, the narrator says, "has a strong 
moral center. He's lived the values I want my children to have."

    Bob Dole divorced his first wife and remarried.

    I suspect  Dole's strategists hoped the radio ad would reach its 
intended target on self-styled Christian radio, without arousing any wider 
scrutiny. The ad says a lot more about Bob Dole's desperation, and his 
dwindling support even among religious political extremists. 

    Tuesday October 8, on his 700 Club, Christian Coalition founder, and GOP 
boss Rev. Pat Robertson conceded that Dole would lose by a landslide of 
Johnson-Goldwater proportions. Less than a month ago, Robertson used his 
show to urge Bob  Dole's  campaign to adopt the Christian Coalition's  
anti-gay demagoguery and anti-abortion zeal in the remaining days of the 
campaign, saying Dole would need a miracle to win.

Sources: 700 Club, AP, Washington Post, Log Cabin Republicans