Party crashers: nearly invisible at the Democratic National Convention, the fight for gay equality will be front and center at the Republican rally--beginning with the opening speaker, Jerry Falwell.

If gays learned anything from the Democratic National Convention held in Boston in July, it was a striking irony: The party that has been most supportive of equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans downplayed those issues, while the Republican Party, home to American politics' most vehement opponents to equality, will likely trumpet gay issues at their own convention, which opens August 30 in New York City.

The Republican leadership has spent much of the past year gay-baiting Americans, particularly with the "threat" of marriage equality, and that's likely to continue at Madison Square Garden despite the embarrassing failure of the antigay Federal Marriage Amendment in the U.S. Senate in July. The tone for the New York rally may well be set by its opening speaker: vehemently antigay TV evangelist Jerry Falwell, who notoriously blamed gay men, lesbians, and abortion rights supporters for the 9/11 attack. FMA cheerleader and Senate majority leader Bill Frist will also speak, as will Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who has compared gay relationships to man-on-dog sex.

Pollsters estimate that about 1 million gay men and lesbians voted for George W. Bush in 2000. They believed the candidate when he said he was a compassionate conservative; they believed his running mate, who said marriage should remain a states' rights issue. Bush even had an informal meeting with a group of conservative gay men and lesbians known as the Austin 12, and he said he was a "better man" for the interaction. Openly gay congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona spoke at the Republican National Convention that year (without mentioning his sexual orientation), and vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, showed up with her partner.

Four years later, Mary Cheney has essentially gone underground. The president and vice president have repeatedly supported antigay discrimination in the form of the FMA and other opposition to states from enacting marriage equality laws. Local chapters of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans have been locked out of Republican meetings in Texas and North Carolina. And while the party still pays lip service to "compassionate conservativism," it often acts more like a wing of the Christian Coalition, favoring far-right judicial nominees, opposing vital medical research on religious grounds, and declaring that same-sex couples want to "destroy" marriage.

Come the Republican National Convention, what's a Log Cabin Republican to do? "Although Log Cabin is opposed to President Bush's staunch advocacy on behalf of the FMA," says Log Cabin's political director, Christopher Barron, not only is the gay Republican group planning to have "a presence at the GOP convention in New York, but a number of LCR members will be delegates. Mayor Bloomberg will be hosting a party for LCR in Manhattan's Bryant Park, honoring moderate Republicans such as former Massachusetts governor William Weld, New York governor George Pataki, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani."

Schwarzenegger and Pataki will be among the gay-friendly Republicans speaking at the convention along with a few other moderates, although none is expected to explicitly endorse gay equality. With their hands tied and their speeches sandwiched between Falwell, Santorum, and the FMA-touting commander in chief, the moderate voices may have a hard time holding on to those 1 million gay and lesbian Republican votes from 2000.

Another irony, then, is that the Democratic convention's hush-hush approach to gay equality--particularly marriage equality--nevertheless pumped up the party's GLBT delegates. "Two weeks from now you'll find me at the American Book Center in Amsterdam registering the 30,000 American voters who live in Holland," promised Robert Checkoway, a Boston native and gay Democrats Abroad delegate from the Netherlands, as he was leaving the convention.

Gay delegates repeatedly stated their enthusiasm for the ticket even though the party platform approved at the convention does not support full marriage equality, although it does endorse many similar rights and responsibilities for same-sex couples.

Overall, the voices from the podium [see sidebar] in Boston were similarly subdued on the subject of gay rights. U.S. representative Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, convention vice chair and the only out lesbian serving in Congress, spoke on July 26, the convention's opening day, without mentioning her sexual orientation. On July 28, Human Rights Campaign executive director Cheryl Jacques addressed a thin afternoon crowd at the Fleet Center and was the first to address same-sex marriage rights. The second--and final--speaker to urge marriage equality (albeit without using the word "marriage") was out U.S. representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who appeared briefly on the afternoon of July 29, the event's last day.

Jacques said that despite the party's reluctance to embrace full marriage equality, her organization is solidly behind the ticket. "You can draw your own conclusions," she said about being asked to speak at the convention. "I think that speaks volumes about the party and about John Kerry and John Edwards."

The GLBT Caucus in Boston numbered 255, the largest ever at a major party's convention, and its meetings attracted high-profile speakers such as actor Ben Affleck, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and Teresa Heinz Kerry.

"We've come a long way," noted Orlando Gotay Jr., a gay delegate from Puerto Rico. "My responsibility as a gay delegate is to educate other delegates about issues important to my community. But I also have to bring that message back to Puerto Rico. I must lead by example. We may have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go."

Khur is the editor of the Boston-based gay newspaper In Newsweekly.

What they said about us ...

... at the Democratic National Convention:

TERESA HEINZ KERRY, addressing the gay and lesbian caucus "At least, if nothing else, you will have a mom in the White House.... You can call me Mama T. ... You are pushing the envelope in the sense that it's a new time and a new day, and we have as a country to respond with policies and with cultural acceptance."

Actor BEN AFFLECK, addressing the gay and lesbian caucus "As somebody, to be perfectly frank, who has enough trouble figuring out who to get married [to], I don't need the state or federal government telling me who I can or can't marry."

Former presidential candidate AL SHARPTON, addressing the convention "The promise of America is that government does not seek to regulate your behavior in the bedroom but to guarantee your right to provide food in the kitchen. The issue of government is not to determine who may sleep together in the bedroom; it's to help those that might not be eating in the kitchen."

BARACK OBAMA, U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, in his keynote address to the convention "The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them too.... We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."