The education of Sen. Smith: the staunch Oregon Republican becomes one of the biggest Senate supporters of the federal hate-crimes bill.

When Gordon Smith twice ran for the U.S. Senate from Oregon in 1996--first in a special election and then in the general election--Terry Bean did everything he could to defeat him. Bean, a gay activist and dyed-in-the wool Democrat, feared that Smith, a "family values" Republican, would take the anti-gay politics of his state--ground zero for ballot measures aimed at restricting gay fights--to the nation's capital.

Yet just five years later, Smith and Bean are the best of friends. And Smith, while boasting only a 10% rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, has become a key sponsor of a hate-crimes bill, reading reports of anti-gay violence into the Congressional Record nearly every week this year to build support for legislation that is likely to be debated this fall.

The transformation is a story of not only personal rapprochement but also political insight born of reflection on the nature of prejudice. The alliance between the 49-year-old Smith and the 53 year-old Bean began to take shape soon after Smith's election, when the two started meeting regularly on a Portland golf course to play a round while trading barbs about party labels and their handicaps. Asked to reveal the winner of their competitions, Bean says, "You'll have to ask the senator." But research into the matter revealed another of the busy senator's passages from the Congressional Record: After praising Bean for advice "dispensed on a golf course," Smith scolds him for lacking the "savvy to lose to a United States senator." Informed of Bean's modesty, Smith chortles, "He beats me every time. It's not even close."

On a deeper level, the two bonded by sharing their stories of growing up as members of minority groups that face prejudice and discrimination--Bean as a gay man and Smith as a Mormon. "Over time I related to him what it was like growing up gay and the isolation and the fear that's involved," recalls Bean, a founding member of the Human Rights Campaign and a current member of its board of directors. "And I learned a lot from him about what it was like as a religious minority. We truly connected as friends."

Smith agrees: "When you grow up as part of a group that has suffered discrimination, it is easier to listen with feeling to the stories of others, like Terry, who have felt the jackboot on the hack of their neck. For me, empathy is a call to action. I don't believe I compromise my religious standards by helping people who are different from myself."

The unlikely friendship has been a factor in Smith's U-turn from darling of the antigay Oregon Citizens Alliance, which endorsed hun in the special election (which he narrowly lost) early in 1996, to the leading gay rights champion among Senate Republicans. Throughout the 107th Congress, he has lobbied for the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, hate-crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation in its list of protected characteristics. He calls his narration of gay-bashing incidents for the Congressional Record a reminder to his colleagues "that government's first duty is to defend its citizens ... against the harms that come out of hate."

Settling into a plaid chair in his Senate office, the tall, charismatic Smith might be mistaken for the smooth-talking right-wing televangelist he could easily have become. Yet what Smith tells The Advocate in an exclusive interview is far from standard fare for The 700 Club. Smith eagerly announces that this year, for the first time, he has agreed to cosponsor the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which was reintroduced July 31). Then he launches into an enthusiastic commentary on the intersection of religion, gay rights, and politics, pausing only occasionally to permit questions. After the allotted time is over, he ignores the nervous pacing of his press secretary and a lobby full of visitors to answer still more queries.

"I'm something of an enigma to the gay and lesbian community," says Smith, who has three children with his wife, Sharon. "I'm someone who has evolved on this issue. I have always been and remain a religious person myself, someone who believes in and practices family values in a traditional sense. But my faith also teaches me the principle to love one another. After I was elected on the second try, I wanted to reach out to a community that may never vote for me in great numbers. I just wanted to say that I care and that there are many ways in which I can help. I've come to believe there are real family values and there are values that parade in those clothes but are counterfeit."

By "traditional," Smith means that he was born into a tight-knit Mormon family in the eastern Oregon town of Pendleton. When he was 2, his father accepted a post in the Eisenhower administration, and file family moved to Bethesda, Md., a middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C. After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1976 and earning a law degree from Southwestern University, Smith ran the family's Pendleton-based food processing business, Smith Frozen Foods.

Smith was elected to the Oregon legislature in 1992, smack in the middle of fierce nationwide debate over Ballot Measure 9, sponsored by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, an antigay group led by Lon Mabon. The measure, which labeled homosexuality "abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse," would have abolished any legal protections for the state's gays and lesbians had it passed. In a January 1996 election to replace resigning U.S. senator Bob Packwood, Smith welcomed the OCA's endorsement but narrowly lost the seat. The state's other Senate seat came open later that same year when pro-gay Republican Mark Hatfield retired; after handily defeating Mabon in the GOP primary, Smith captured the seat by four percentage points.

From the Right, Mabon views Smith's turnabout as purely political. "Prior to 1996, I know that we pretty much agreed about homosexuality," Mabon says. "He told me that he recognized that homosexuality was a sin and that to raise it to the level of a civil rights classification was wrong. Apparently he has now changed his mind. I believe he sold out to political power to win office. He has had to justify this change, and he may have now come to the point where he actually believes it."

Smith's outreach to gays has also drawn skeptics from the Left, who note that it comes as he faces a difficult battle for reelection in 2002. Democrats in the state are wing to challenge him. In such a political scenario, the state's large gay vote, concentrated in Portland and Eugene, could provide the margin of victory or defeat.

But HRC's political director, Winnie Stachelberg, who has forged a close working relationship with Smith through their work on ENDA and hate-crimes legislation, dismisses talk of an election eve conversion. "With Senator Smith, there is a depth of feeling and willingness to hear you out that one doesn't usually experience in Washington," she says. "We are not going to agree on every issue, and he will tell you up front where he stands on things. He's not a supporter in name only. He brings it up even when it's not to his political advantage."

In pushing the two major pieces of gay rights legislation in Congress, Smith is clearly betting that gay voters will forgive and forget his OCA connection. He calls accepting the endorsement a mistake, pointing out that he has opposed every OCA-backed ballot measure. "When I ran the second time, I literally planted a question among the reporters so that I could publicly decline their endorsement," he says. "I've never voted for even one of their initiatives, and I determined that I would no longer be defined by their view of the world. It was the best thing I ever did politically, frankly, as evidenced, I think, by the people of Oregon and an overwhelming number of Republicans in my defeat of Lon Mabon. And his folks were highly motivated."

When asked about Mabon, Smith is measured, perhaps fearing inflaming the OCA's small but hard-core band of supporters. "I believe in family values," he says. "I believe Lon Mabon does as well. We choose to manifest them differently."

When asked about Smith, Mabon is less cautious. "I don't have any reason not to believe that Gordon is a family man who loves his wife and kids," he says. "But there are homosexuals with good family values. It's in the traditional understanding of right and wrong that we start to differ. I believe he's out of synch with his faith."

Despite the looming 2002 election, Smith's interest in gay rights seems to go beyond politics as usual. He has made it a personal mission to serve as a conciliator between the gay and lesbian population and the Christian right, often couching his support for gay rights in the messianic terms of his religion. For instance, during a recent meeting with Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smith brought up gay rights. The 11 million-member church has spent millions sponsoring initiatives in California and Alaska aimed at denying marriage to same-sex couples.

"I said, 'President Hinckley, as I read my scripture and understand what I've been taught since I was a little boy, I understand the church's position on same-sex marriage. But I see nothing in our background that would suggest that we should discriminate against gays and lesbians as to basic human needs for housing, education, employment, and protection from violence. Unless you have something you want to tell me otherwise, that is my belief.'

"Hinckley smacked his hand on his knee, and said. 'Senator, you're exactly right.'" (Hinckley declined to comment on his conversation with Smith.)

Same-sex marriage is not the only issue on which Smith parts company with supporters of gay causes. In return for the religious right's support for anti-discrimination legislation, Smith suggests that the Human Rights Campaign drop its objection to the religious exemption in President Bush's faith-based initiative, which would 'allow the charities to ignore state and local antidiscrimination laws. "I think HRC understands that tolerance is a two-way street," he says. "They seem tolerant of my views."

But Stachelberg flatly rejects the suggestion. "We have no position on [the faith-based initiative]," she says. "But we are very clear that any such legislation must include an explicit provision that religious groups cannot be exempt from state and local law."

Not everyone on Smith's staff walks in lockstep with their boss on the issue, either. After the interview, a legislative aide tried to explain that Smith was not suggesting gay organizations capitulate to the demands of conservative religious groups.

And while Smith's reliance on scripture to frame gay politics may win converts among religious conservatives, it can also land him in hot water, especially in front of gay audiences, when he suggests homosexuality is a sin.

"Jesus said that all men should know that 'he shall not be my disciple if he have not love for one another," Smith says. "When a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to Jesus to be stoned to death, he saved her life. He stopped the violence. He did it without endorsing her lifestyle. He did it quietly and with dignity. He lectured with decency yet with an admonition. That is the ex ample of the one I regard as God. Whether beating a gay man to death on a lonely fence in Wyoming or shooting a Mormon in jail, which was done to [Mormon church founder] Joseph Smith [in 1844], these are not the actions of true religion. They are the antithesis of it."

As if to soften his rhetoric for more secular thinkers, Smith quickly adds, "The other thing I would say to those who are in a majority: Try being in the minority once. You will find your heart gets a little bigger for people who are different. I actually grew up in a time when to be Mormon was very much to be in a minority. It is much more of a mainstream faith now. But I had ancestors who were literally raped, robbed, murdered, and driven into the wilderness because they didn't conform to the mores of mainstream society."

Bean has not been Smith's sole catalyst for change. Smith says he's supported hate-crimes legislation since having an epiphany while watching CNN in an Oregon hotel room. "The murder of Matthew Shepard was a moment in which I felt ashamed," he recalls. "There was no Republican senator present at the rally [for hate-crimes legislation, held at the Capitol shortly after Shepard's death]. I determined at that point to become a sponsor of this legislation."

Likewise, Smith says he was disappointed with his party during the bitter battle over the nomination of James Hormel, who is openly gay, to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. Believing that the opposition to confirmation was based primarily on the San Francisco philanthropist's sexual orientation, Smith became Hormel's chief GOP champion. Though Smith was unable to prevail upon three of his right-wing colleagues to drop the hold they had placed on the nomination, Hormel has said he is deeply grateful for the support.

In defending Hormel, Smith challenges his fellow Senate Republicans in a way that's likely to sling--on biblical grounds. "I met with Jim Hormel and found him to be a very gentle man," Smith says. "As I investigated the charges leveled at him, I found lots of half-truths. I believe there was an awful lot of bearing of false witness against him."

Whether the issue is Hormel or hate crimes, Smith's positions may fail to satisfy either side. But that won't stop him from trying. "I'm prepared to keep leading my party in an outreach to the gay community," he says. "I have a lot of arrows in my back for doing it, but I believe in it. I have no doubt it's file right thing."

Find more information on Smith and on the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act at www.advocate.com