AFTER MATTHEW SHEPARD WAS murdered for being gay, many conservatives were quick to call for the death penalty for his assailants--so quick that they sounded a trifle defensive. And what might they have to be defensive about? Plenty. Conservatives are in a pickle. They like to say that ideas have consequences. Well, the consequences of condemnation can turn out to be death. While this wasn't exactly a fatwa, it's hard to argue that there's absolutely no connection between gay-bashing in Washington and gays actually getting their heads bashed in. Of course liberals shouldn't get complacent about their own views of morality and the public square. When they grow too intolerant of intolerance, they lose the free-speech high ground. Those whose faith rejects homosexuality have rights, too. The challenge is to keep the moral appeals moral. In other words, uplifting and above the fray--not mean and political. Easier said than done.
At first glance, it seems unfair to link the anti-gay remarks of political leaders to a heinous crime they don't condone. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who recently compared homosexuality to kleptomania, obviously bears no direct responsibility for a couple of killers in Wyoming. Nor do the GOP candidates bragging about how they held the line on gay rights. But just as white racists created a climate for lynching blacks, just as hate radio created a climate for militias, so the constant degrading of homosexuals is exacting a toll in blood. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 21 people were killed in 1996 because they were gay or lesbian. That compares to 20 blacks reported lynched in 1935, and fewer than 10 a year in the 1950s and 1960s. Whatever the real numbers--and they are believed to be underreported--violence against gays is a fact of life and a national disgrace.
Anyone who still thinks it's wrong to blame leaders just because their ideas fall into violent hands should recall where this line of analysis originated. A constant theme in conservative literature is that the values of the 1960s are to blame for the problems of the 1990s. This idea sometimes takes the form of self-parody--Newt Gingrich blamed liberalism for Susan Smith's killing her kids, until she turned out to be from a family of South Carolina Republicans. But it's a major intellectual support beam in the thinking of Robert Bork and many other conservatives, and it's not without some merit. Wealthy '60s liberals could handle drugs and free love; the poor could not. That's the conservative cultural trickle-down argument. Now change the subject to homosexuality. Discerning clergymen and moralists can hate the sin and love the sinner; but by the time the homophobic message reaches the angry guys sitting in the bar, that distinction has been lost.
The whole subject has been complicated by the rise of so-called theo-conservatives--GOP activists who want a more moral dimension to public life. The Starr Report, argues Andrew Sullivan in an important article in The New York Times Magazine, ""was the creation of a conservatism become puritanism, a conservatism that has lost sight of the principles of privacy and restraint, modesty and constitutionalism, which used to be its hallmarks.'' Sullivan, himself a gay conservative, has identified a huge schism on the right that won't close any time soon. Bridging the gap between the libertarian and Christian Coalition wings of the party will just get tougher, especially with Democrats now less dogmatic and thus less juicy as a target.
The Democrats started holding their own in the values debate when they saw that do-your-own-thing relativism no longer worked with the public. ""We violate no one's rights by putting public authority in the service of what's right,'' William Galston, soon to be an influential aide to President Clinton, wrote in 1991. What followed were a series of moral appeals on issues like violence on TV and teen pregnancy. The White House fudged on gays in the military and did nothing to stop the Defense of Marriage Act, which stigmatizes gay marriage.
Obviously, Clinton's behavior in the Lewinsky scandal has crippled his ability to raise moral issues (though he has the requisite chutzpah to do so anyway). It has not, however, changed the long-term political equation. In recent weeks, Democrats have been careful to avoid moral relativism; everyone in the party, including Clinton, has said repeatedly that the affair was ""wrong.'' They just don't think it rises to the level of impeachment. The public gets this distinction, and few if any Democrats will lose in November on an immoral-by-association rap.
So once again the Republicans are in danger of overplaying their hand--this time on the gay issue. In the Senate, they're blocking James Hormel, a San Francisco businessman, from becoming an ambassador. The only reason Hormel has not been confirmed is that he happens to be gay. (The charge that he funded gay pornography is untrue.) This is old-fashioned bigotry. Even for those senators whose religions abhor homosexuality, rejecting Hormel is about hating the ""sinner'' as well as the ""sin.''
The Party of Lincoln should follow Honest Abe's lead, by projecting moral conduct without moral fervor. Lincoln was uncomfortable with impassioned abolitionism, and urged ""malice toward none'' when it came to dealing with immoral Southerners. The danger of theo-conservatives is not that they are trying to bring a moral compass into politics. It's that they are doing so without the generosity of spirit that has always been essential for any navigation of public life.