Right faces; whether they're in public office or behind the scenes, gay conservatives are taking action. (Cover Story).

As one of only four openly gay men appointed to a federal office by President Bush, Donald Capoccia might have concerns about being seen as a token appointee. But that's not the case, according to the 46-year-old Capoccia, who was appointed to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts last summer. "The president judges people on their merits, not on their sexual orientation," he says. "I view this as an opportunity to serve in an administration I highly respect while doing something extremely challenging."

His position on the commission, which approves the sites and designs for all memorials in Washington, D.C., is only one of Capoccia's responsibilities. He is also president of BFC, a Manhattan-based construction company that specializes in low- to moderate-income-level homes in New York City, and serves as a volunteer on the boards of the New York State Council on the Arts and the United Nations Development Co.

Capoccia also has become an unofficial liaison between New York's gay men and lesbians and the state's governor, Republican George Pataki. It's a role he hopes to carry to a federal level as vice chair of the Republican Unity Coalition, a group whose mission is to make sexual orientation a "nonissue" within the Republican Party.

"I get asked all the time by people in the New York gay community how I can support a Republican president," says Capoccia, who cofounded the coalition in 2001 with longtime Bush friend Charles Francis. "But I've had very positive exchanges with the president on numerous occasions in the past, and I find it very easy to speak highly about him and his policies." --Matthew McTighe

It is often assumed that the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city will be a Democrat from San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York City, where liberal gay men and lesbians form a large and powerful voting bloc. However, the politician with the best shot at this distinction may be a Republican from Washington, D.C.--city council member David Catania.

White, gay, and Republican in a predominantly African-American city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 10 to 1, the 33-year-old Catania is used to bridging ideological divides. "I'm the only politician to receive a check from the Republican National Committee and receive the endorsement of [openly gay Democratic congressman] Barney Frank," he boasts.

Elected in 1997, Catania also has established a consistent presence on Capitol Hill--since D.C.'s annual budget must be approved by both Congress and the president. He often uses his access on the Hill to provide a Republican presence on gay issues; he was part of a successful campaign last year to get Congress to lift a ban on domestic-partner benefits for D.C. city employees and allow the district to establish a partner registry.

"I refuse to forfeit my party's rich history of progressivism to dark forces in the religious right," says Catania, who admits that Republicans are often insensitive to gay concerns. "I'm not here to apologize for the Republican Party's bad positions; I'm attempting to be an agent of change to bring them into the 21st century." --M.M.

Don't be surprised if Rebecca Maestri is the first out lesbian appointed to a position by President Bush. A fixture in Washington's Republican scene since 1981, when she went to work for Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, Maestri was the sole female member of the Austin 12, a group of gay men and lesbians who met with Bush during his presidential campaign.

"The Republican party has some work to do vis-a-vis the gay and community," says the 44-year-old Maestri, who currently works as a regional director in the Asia division of the U.S. Agency for International Development Yet she maintains inclusiveness is a necessary part of the GOP's "evolutionary continuum." She points to how Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were "rebuffed by this White House" for their antigay comments after September 11 as evidence of progress.

Maestri, who came out in 1987, says she has never been shunned by her ostensibly conservative colleagues. "There was always the fear that these people would be to the right of Attila the Hun," she says. "But bar none, each and every one said, `Beck, we know and love and respect you for who you are.'"

Which, Maestri says, is the same thing that Bush said when she met with him during the campaign. "At the press conference afterward he said, `I'm a better man for this meeting,'" she says. "And I think he spoke from his heart; I think he meant that. Not to be disparaging against the president, but I don't think he's capable of doing anything other than what he believes in." --Sarah Wildman

Most gay men might find it hard to control their emotions if they were sitting in the back of a limousine with former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed. But when Greg Morey found himself in that situation two years ago on his way to a George W. Bush campaign fund-raiser, he played it cool, simply handing the well-known antigay zealot his business card from PlanetOut, where Morey was a senior adviser at the time.

"After he saw my card, he didn't say another word," Morey says. "Needless to say, I haven't heard from him since!"

The reserved, low-key way he handled the bizarre situation is typical of Morey, 49, who says he takes a behind-the-scenes approach to gay Republican activism. A self-employed venture capitalist, Morey helped raise money and solicit gay support for newly elected New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and has hosted numerous fund-raisers for Republican politicians and organizations at his home in New York's East Village.

A friend of the Bush family since attending Tulane University with the president's younger brother Neil, Morey believes the subtle approach is also the best way to advance the interests of gays and lesbians with the current administration. "The president is not a militant person, and he won't have things pushed down in his face," he says.

And it's through this approach and through his work with the Republican Unity Coalition, a political gay-straight alliance, that he hopes to help persuade the president to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and a federal hate-crimes bill that covers attacks that are based on sexual orientation.

"The gay community cannot just sit back for four years and hope that a Democrat gets elected back into the White House," he says. "We need to work with whichever party is in power if we want to advance our issues." --M.M.

Trevor Potter is a campaign and election lawyer, a lifelong Republican; an active, practicing Episcopalian; and an out gay man with a partner of 17 years. But he does not, despite having worked for the first President Bush, consider himself a conservative. In fact, he developed something of a reputation as a maverick during his tenure as chairman of the Federal Election Commission when, as a Bush appointee, he often voted his conscience over the party line. It's a reputation that was cemented during a spin as general counsel to John McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. (He remains counsel to McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee in addition to being a partner at the Caplin and Drysdale law firm in Washington, D.C.)

It's the straight-talking maverick Potter who rejects the idea of a GOP hostile to gay men and lesbians. "There are elements of the Republican Party who are wrong on gay issues," he says. "Part of being a Republican is working to change the party's image and official views."

For this lawyer, that means not hiding himself, working with moderate elements in the party, and contributing to activist nonprofits like the Log Cabin Republicans and Human Rights Campaign. He was recently elected to HRC's board.

Potter's moderate, McCain-style Republicanism landed him in the thick of the recent campaign finance reform struggle. He played a crucial role in drafting the reform laws that recently passed the House of Representatives and, most believe, will soon sail through the Senate. --S.W.

When Texas Republican governor Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law last year, Steve Labinski, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas, had reason to celebrate. It was the fruition of several years of behind-the-scenes lobbying, by Labinski, 32, who is one of the many people who have helped loosen the religious right's antigay stranglehold on the GOP in the conservative state.

By scheduling meetings between legislators and their gay constituents, Labinski says he helped "persuade lawmakers to support the bill by putting a face on the issues the bill represented."

Labinski is less concerned with President Bush's promise to veto the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, which would add crimes based on sexual orientation to those covered under the federal hate-crimes law. "A state bill on hate crimes is significantly more effective in protecting gays than a federal law [because] state courts operate more swiftly," he explains.

A self-employed Web site designer based in Austin, Labinski came out of the closet when he was an 18-year-old student at the University of Texas. Since then, his openness has not always been welcomed by his fellow Texans. In fact, the Log Cabin Republicans were barred from attending the state GOP conventions in both 1998 and 2000.

But Labinski says the group plans to make another attempt to attend the convention this year. "The Republican Party has factions and groups, and you have pro-gays and antigays," he admits. "If anything, it's not boring." --M.M.