mike heath – Warren Throckmorton

Anti-gay politics and Ron Paul: A match made in Iowa

While Ron Paul’s personal beliefs about gays are hard to discern, his strategy in Iowa has been to make the most of anti-gay sentiment there. All last week, I pointed out the work of Mike Heath, Paul’s Iowa state director, to bring in Christian conservatives to the Paul fold. On Friday, I interviewed Brian Nolder, a pastor serving in Pella, IA who has endorsed Paul. Nolder noted that the Paul support among Christians has grown this election season but remains sharply divided between Christians looking for a candidate who will implement conservative positions on social issues from Washington and those who seek a weaker Federal government which will leave those decisions with the states.

With fine reporting, Talking Points Memo picked up on my posts last week about the Kayser endorsement and Mike Heath’s work there. This morning, TPM’s Benjy Sarlin explores Ron Paul’s support among Christian conservatives in Iowa. As I did last week, Sarlin found Christians there divided between those who want a perfect ideological candidate and those who want the Federal government to leave matters to the states.

Sarlin also highlights the work of Mike Heath who is selling Ron Paul as a conservative on gay marriage and abortion. The pro-life argument seems easier, but when it comes to gays, Heath has had a harder sell. In Iowa, Heath has worked to make Paul appealing to both ideological purists and state’s rights conservatives. In his TPM article, Sarlin points to Paul’s Defense of Marriage poster at events (see here) and various pastoral endorsements mentioning Paul’s opposition to gay marriage.

If anti-gay politics and Ron Paul have married in Iowa, then the matchmaker is clearly Heath. TPM reports that Heath had a “stint” as chair of the three-man board of the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality but that barely scratches the surface. While in Maine, Heath said it would be “prudent to reinstate Maine’s anti-sodomy law…” and called homosexuality “a sickness.” Heath opposed basic protections for gays including equal access in housing and employment.

Despite these appeals in Iowa to state’s rights, the prospects are slim that a Paul Presidency would rollback Federal civil rights protections very much. However, if Ron Paul is somehow successful and secures the nomination and then Presidency, he will have to fill an administration with people who think like him. One way to evaluate who a candidate would bring into his administration is to examine his campaign.

Do I need to say more?

What do Dan Savage and AFTAH’s Mike Heath have in common?

They both support Ron Paul.

In a Slate article out yesterday, gay activist Dan Savage (the inspiration behind the It Gets Better campaign), defended Ron Paul in comparison with social conservatives like Rick Santorum, saying:

“…Ron [Paul] may not like gay people, and may not want to hang out with us or use our toilets, but he’s content to leave us the fuck alone and recognizes that gay citizens are entitled to the same rights as all other citizens. Santorum, on the other hand, believes that his bigotry must be given the force of law. That’s an important difference.”

And then there is the chair of the board of the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Mike Heath. He is currently the Iowa State Director for Ron Paul’s campaign. Obviously, he too is a Ron Paul supporter but in his former positions, he has a record more in alignment with Rick Santorum than Ron Paul. Heath was lauded in an AFTAH article as being the only person in history to successfully turn back two state gay rights laws (in Maine in 1998 and 2001).

Maybe Heath has changed his views. Heath has not yet replied to my email asking what he thought of Savage’s characterization of Ron Paul’s views.

Having examined a sampling of Paul’s writings and looking at who is endorsing him in Iowa, I think Savage is only partly correct about Paul. I agree that Paul wants the federal government to leave gays alone. State government, however, is another matter. Paul criticized the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision because he believes the state has the right to make laws concerning sexuality.

In Ron Paul’s version of the world, gays would be free from interference from Washington, DC, but if Iowa, or Texas, or South Carolina wanted to recriminalize homosexual behavior, then Paul would support their right to do so.

As it turns out, the strange bedfellows are not limited to those on the opposite ends of the culture war. If there is a candidate favored by Christian reconstructionists in the GOP field, it would have to be Ron Paul. Recently, Paul was endorsed by a prominent Christian Reconstructionist pastor in Iowa, an endorsement touted by Paul on his website.

More on why Paul is attractive to Christian reconstructionists will come in a post later today.

What Does Ron Paul Really Believe About Gays?

What does Ron Paul really believe about gays?

Currently, with one week remaining until Iowa’s Presidential Caucus, Ron Paul is in the hot seat. The Texas GOP hopeful denies writing racist columns for a newsletter bearing his name during the 1990s. Examining Paul’s denials, the Washington Post’s Josh Hicks gave Paul three Pinocchios which according to the Post means that Paul’s statements are misleading and use “legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.”

Paul’s views on gays are also open to question. One newsletter citation, frequently noted in the press, relates to his views on gays and HIV. Reportedly Paul said that gays “enjoy the attention” of that illness. In another 1989 newsletter, he criticizes the Massachusetts legislature for passing a gay rights laws, and implies that gays wanted to promote pedophilia:

Given the fact that Paul recently reversed himself and voted to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, one might wonder if his views on gays have changed. However, the Paul campaign’s current State Director is Mike Heath. Heath is also the chairman of the board of the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality and once worked to oppose state initiatives such as the one condemned by Paul in the 1989 newsletter. A 2010 article on the AFTAH website describes Heath as

…the former executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine and the new executive director of American Family Association of New England. (Heath will also retain the title of AFA of Maine.) He is also the only pro-family leader in American history to direct (as part of a pro-family coalition in Maine) the defeat of two statewide homosexual “special rights” laws, 1998 and 2001. In this interview, Heath, the Board Chairman of AFTAH, touches on the new evangelical politics surrounding anti-”gay marriage” initiatives — in which principled advocates against homosexuality like Heath are ostracized in the name of building coalitions more palatable to “moderate” voters.

AFTAH describes itself as “a group dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda.” Last year, the organization was listed as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to frequent misrepresentations and vilification of gays in public statements and literature. Just recently, AFTAH used the Penn State child abuse scandal as a platform to link sex crimes of pedophiles with homosexuality.

Apparently, Heath’s work is having some effect in Iowa with at least one endorsement touted on Paul’s website. According to the news release announcing the endorsement, Heath has been to “295 houses of worship” in Iowa. On the matter of gays and gay rights, I wonder what position is being articulated in those houses of worship.

Given his prior newsletters and his current staff, it is fair to ask what Ron Paul really believes. Despite Paul’s denials, his views in 2012 may be about what they were in 1989.

UPDATE: Here is more on Ron Paul’s views from a former staffer. According to Eric Dondero, Paul is uncomfortable around gays but believes they should be free to do whatever they please in their private lives. The Paul campaign is taking this seriously, responding to CBS News over the matter.

If Paul had any chances to catch on with the mainstream, they are pretty much gone now. He claims he didn’t write the racist and bigoted newsletters but he has yet to name who did. He says he does not know but he has not, as far as I can read, given even a theory about who did or how he could recommend the newsletter without knowing what was in it.