Beyond fear. (my perspective).

When I first heard about the death threats against student Edward Drago at the College of New Jersey, my heart went out to him. It reminded me of my 1995 trip to Washington and Lee University in Virginia: A gay student had had an M-80 thrown into his dorm room the week before, and someone had gone around campus carving the eyes out of my photo on each poster announcing my appearance.

Then I was stunned to read, after campuswide rallies of support for Drago had been conducted, that he was the one sending the hate mail to himself. At first it sounded simply twisted, but the more I thought about Drago, the more I realized his behavior, though extreme, reminded me of much of what is now called gay politics: Knowing that enmity and fear unite us, we may tend to paint the world in black-and-white, with clear enemies making us into clear victims--even if we have to bend reality.

This ridiculously rigid gay paradigm about enemies and friends is what got me into gay activism. In the 1990 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, blinded by an overpowering belief that the Republican must be the enemy, most gay leaders in the state wouldn't give pro-gay candidate William Weld a chance over antigay Democrat John Silber. I joined a small group of activists in Boston in breaking with conventional wisdom by reaching out to Weld. We were attacked for that support, but Weld went on to win the election and become one of the most gay-supportive elected officials of either party in the nation.

Gay activists who try new tactics to help change the world, reaching out to conservative Americans, trusting hope rather than fear, routinely get called "enemies" by gays wholly invested in the status quo. You get real hate mail, real threats, real face-to-face scorn and insults. So pervasive is this fear of progress in our community that we don't even know how amazingly far we have come. We are winning the battle for equality and acceptance because the vast middle of America is moving in our direction, and some old enemies are actually becoming friends--if only we reach out to them.

When Republicans took control of the House in 1994, one of the first new members I met with was Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who chaired the House Pro-Family Caucus. He sat on a committee that would largely determine AIDS funding priorities and readily listened when I explained the importance of AIDS programs from our view--and listened to his specific concerns. Over time we became friends, and Coburn became a champion of AIDS funding. When he spoke at a national Log Cabin Republicans meeting, he said his greatest hope was that conservatives and gays could "reconcile" for the sake of our common goal in AIDS policy. We'd only scratched the surface with Coburn when he retired at the end of last year.

Gabriel Rotello recently attacked the national media for putting people like myself, Andrew Sullivan, and Norah Vincent on television, arguing that we are, I presume, less authentic gay advocates than are he and those who share his views. Yet my most recent television appearances were one-on-one debates with antigay leader Robert Knight, who accuses gays of trying to bring ruin to America, in which I argued that gays are mainstream and Knight is the fringe player in politics today. Rotello, like so many, cannot tell his friends and enemies apart.

Most gay leaders seem to have been waiting, almost hoping, that Bush would be a complete monster in the realm of gay rights--a desperate hope shared by the antigay movement. Instead, Bush has appointed the first gay AIDS czar and a gay ambassador, retained a federal nondiscrimination policy, and launched a major global AIDS program. And the first public criticism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson after their outrageous comments blaming gays and others for the September 11 terrorist attacks came from the Bush White House. Bush is breaking with the old paradigms of demons and saviors--something he'll probably never get credit for in The Advocate or any gay publication.

It is time to be bold, to reach out to new friends as they move in our direction. Hope must win out over fear, or we will have done ourselves terrible harm. Just like Edward Drago.

Tafel is executive director of Log Cabin Republicans.