Not antigay enough: far-right leaders wage political war over President Bush's "pro-gay" bent. (Election 2004).

Is President Bush too gay-friendly? That's what a number of U.S. religious-right leaders are charging. And if the president doesn't change his ways, some conservatives are threatening to withhold their support for his 2004 reelection bid.

In a scene right out of the movie The Star Chamber, a group of powerful religious-right leaders on May 6 grilled Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee, about a meeting he'd had with the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group, in March. They also expressed their displeasure with what they say is the GOP's general failure to strongly support U.S. senator Rick Santorum's recent remarks in favor of antigay sodomy laws.

Robert Knight, who as director of the far-right Culture and Family Institute was part of the May 6 gathering, published an account in the Institute's Culture & Family Report. According to Knight, when asked whether it is normal for two men to have sex, Racicot, who will head Bush's 2004 campaign, answered, "No, of course not." But the former Montana governor did point out the insidiousness in what his inquisitors were asking of lawmakers. "You need to be straight up with it," he said. "You want a law that says you can dismiss someone solely on the basis of homosexuality."

That wasn't good enough for Gary Bauer, the failed GOP presidential candidate and far-right leader who helped grill Racicot. "My sense after the meeting was that for reasons I don't fully understand, we still have a lot of work to do educating the Republican establishment about why this matters," Bauer told Knight.

"If President Bush is pro-gay, we didn't get that memo," David Smith, senior strategist for HRC, told The Advocate. "This administration has taken small steps forward, like appointing openly gay people, but in no way, shape, or form can it be characterized as pro-gay."

Smith described the religious right's reaction to Racicot's meeting with HRC as "ferocious and, in many ways, irrational. The full impact of their reaction has not been felt. It's going to be interesting to see how the RNC and this administration respond to these blatant threats."