Where has the outrage gone?

The Washington establishment's appallingly passive reaction immediately after George W. Bush announced his new cabinet is the freshest evidence of two rarely articulated truths: The policy debate in the nation's capital ranges from the center right to the far right, and--despite all of our efforts--gay rights remains a

marginal issue in American politics.

Imagine what would have happened if Bush had nominated an attorney general who had supported a ban on black teachers in public schools and always voted against civil rights laws designed to protect the basic rights of African-Americans because they contain the "seeds of real instability and inappropriate activity." Even the tired white talking heads of the Sunday chat shows might have managed a modicum of moral outrage under those circumstances. But because these are John Ashcroft's positions on lesbians and gays rather than blacks, almost nobody even mentions them. Instead we have luminaries like David Broder of The Washington Post favorably comparing Bush's bold efforts to build bridges back to the 1950s with Clinton's messy transition process in 1993: "There has never been the case yet with a Bush appointee where [anyone] said, `Well, what in the world qualifies this person to do the job?'" Broder said on Meet the Press. "That's ... perhaps the biggest distinction between what we saw eight years ago and now."

Of course, Ashcroft's attitude toward other minorities is just as revolting. As a senator, Ashcroft was equally opposed to highly qualified political appointees regardless of whether they were black, Asian, or gay.

The press's response to his nomination was appalling, with the very honorable exceptions of Frank Rich of The New York Times and Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The day after Ashcroft lied about why he had opposed James Hormel's nomination as ambassador, testified that he couldn't remember why he hadn't signed the Human Rights Campaign's pledge not to discriminate, and refused to commit himself to the FBI's current policy of not considering sexual orientation in the granting of security clearances, there wasn't a single mention of his stands on gay issues in the news columns of either The New York Times or The Washington Post.

The Post finally woke up a week later, when it discovered someone who contradicted Ashcroft's testimony that he had never been interested in a job applicant's sexual orientation. Paul Offner, who applied for a job with the Missouri governor in 1985, said the first question out of Ashcroft's mouth was, "Do you have the same sexual preference as most men?" A startled Offner said yes, but he didn't get the job anyway.

For gay Americans, Ashcroft is only one limb of a regressive alligator. Interior secretary--designate Gale Norton fought valiantly as Colorado's attorney general to uphold the right of that state's voters to ban all local laws protecting basic civil fights for gay people. She failed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against her 6-3. And we just barely missed getting Linda Chavez into the cabinet, where she could have continued to pontificate about the dangers of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Forgive me if I don't join in the general hosannas for Washington's favorite power player, Colin Powell, who was aptly dubbed "America's most overrated man" by journalist Christopher Hitchens. Most gay people know that Powell forced Clinton to abandon his pledge to allow gays to serve openly in the military, substituting the disastrous "don't ask, don't tell" policy in its stead. But because of inadequacies of Washington reporters, almost no one knows that Powell's first bureaucratic triumph occurred when he was a major in the Saigon headquarters of the Americal Division. Powell signed the first report dismissing the allegations of a massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968, and the scandal was covered up for another year.

Despite the records of so many of Bush's nominees, the Log Cabin Republicans (and fellow traveler Andrew Sullivan) strongly argued for his right to appoint the cabinet of his choice. Incredibly, Log Cabin specifically lobbied for Ashcroft's confirmation. All of which suggests that only a new Republican president could make gay Republicans even more self-hating than they were before.