"Values Voters"
Anarchy Good News for Gays

The fractured coalition of Christian conservatives is meeting in Washington, D.C., on Friday and Saturday for a "Values Voters Summit," to be capped Saturday evening by a straw poll of the 2,500 participants.

At a meeting of conservative leaders last month in Salt Lake City, the 50 or so big names in Christian activism agreed to keep their personal endorsements to themselves until after Saturday's straw poll.

The leaders are scheduled to go into closed session Sunday, presumably to debate how best to consolidate and wield their political power.

But if media reports are to be believed, consolidating the far-right vote may be wishful thinking this primary season. Christian right voters are split among five candidates, and their leaders have so far been unable to agree even on the top criteria to evaluate the contestants.

Such divisions work to the benefit of LGBT people, diminishing if not yet conquering the voices of the country's most virulently antigay spokespeople.

If ideological purity rules, then Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson are questionable. If electability is the number 1 concern, then say goodbye to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. As for Mitt Romney, he's fine on traditional values, he looks good, and he brings a photogenic family to the party. But he's a Mormon.

Kansas senator Sam Brownback, perhaps the most obvious Christian conservative candidate, planned to drop out of the race Friday, citing a lack of financial and public support. Brownback, a staunch Catholic, was tagged with the "unelectable" label from the start for his extreme right-wing positions.

At stake is the viability of the far right as a political broker. Unified behind a single candidate, the faction could extract an array of pledges on social issues in exchange for invaluable primary support. Split three ways or more, their clout dissipates accordingly and their status as kingmakers in the Republican Party is upended. For top leaders in the movement like James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, reaching a consensus is critical.

All the GOP candidates were planning to speak to the summit attendees over the weekend, burnishing their conservative credentials with special attention to their antiabortion and antigay positions.

Giuliani is pro-choice, a deal-breaker for evangelical leaders, and has also been described as "pro-gay," in part based on his support for civil unions, his gay friends, and that time he dressed in drag for a fund-raiser. But the former New York City mayor has gone out of his way in the last year to distance himself from gay causes. He backtracked on civil unions, condemning New Hampshire for going too far in enacting same-sex couples' rights earlier this year.

And he has famously pledged to appoint "strict constructionalist" judges to the U.S. Supreme Court. His veer to the right, however, has not persuaded Christian conservative leaders to rally to his side, although the front-runner remains the first choice of most evangelical voters.

Fred Thompson, the summer crush of the conservative base, is burdened by a lackluster campaign style, a reputation for laziness that he has done nothing to counter, and an arcane position on same-sex marriage that has been ridiculed even by antigay activists. Dobson rejected his candidacy in a scathing e-mail made public last month (arguing that the former senator can't campaign his way "out of a paper bag"), though others are apparently keeping an open mind.

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has just won the endorsement of Bob Jones, the head of the university of the same name who once called Mormonism a "cult." Other Christian leaders also seem willing to give the former Massachusetts governor the benefit of the doubt.

Although Romney is accused of changing his views over the last several years to position himself for a conservative presidential run, he is also one of the few candidates with a picture-perfect family life and a shot at winning the general election. Speaking to The New York Times, Gary Bauer called Romney "articulate" and "telegenic." If he were nominated, Bauer continued, "it wouldn't be hard for me to vote for him."

A former candidate himself, Bauer last week urged his conservative colleagues to "keep an open mind about Senator Thompson's candidacy, even as we work with him to strengthen his stand on some key issues."

While Thompson and Romney appear to be the top possibilities for social conservatives, the group has a deep affection for long-shot candidate Mike Huckabee, who has impressed pundits and others with his winning charm on the stump and his easygoing self-deprecatory style.

Columnist David Brooks, a centrist conservative who defies political categorization, recently noted that Huckabee was rising in the polls.

"His popularity with the press corps suggests that he could catch a free media wave that would put him in the top tier. He deserves to be there." It's no accident that Brooks's favorable essay appeared as the Values Voters Summit got under way.

Finally, John McCain, who has spent the last four years romancing the same far-right leaders he once called "agents of intolerance," continues to get the cold shoulder, due in part to the moderate stance he took on the 2000 campaign trail. Particularly galling to Christian conservatives was his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, though he supported the drive to ban same-sex marriage in his home state of Arizona. (Ann Rostow, Gay.com)