Log Cabin fever

With their crisp suits and clean-cut boy- and girl-next-door demeanor, the leaders of America’s best-known gay Republican organization give little warning they’re gearing up for a high-noon showdown at the OK Corral.

Encamped at the Republican National Convention, the Log Cabin Republicans are awash in patriotic decor. There is red, white and blue bunting. Red, white and blue flowers. Red, white and blue balloons kissing the ceiling, as Log Cabin delegates pose for photographs with an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.

Articulate, educated and well mannered, these very circumspect gay Republicans suggest that they are the ones who are safe as milk and American as apple pie.

The people off kilter, they suggest, are the social conservatives who back a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which the Log Cabin Republicans say is “anti-family” and “targets part of the American family for discrimination.”

Bring on the cameras: This posse is ready for C-SPAN.

“We have a war going on that is dividing this country,” Patrick Guerriero, the group’s executive director and the former mayor of Melrose, Mass., said as he prepared for a panel on the eve of the convention that was, in fact, covered by C-SPAN.

“We’re asking President Bush and the Republican leaders to address where they stand,” said Guerriero, 36, whose crisp navy-blue suit and tie seem borrowed from the playbook of the Heritage Foundation. “Are they with the exclusionist voices of [the Rev.] Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer? Or are they with the inclusive voices of the prime-time speakers?

“You really can’t have it both ways.”

Some say the Republican Party is trying to do just that. Many prime-time speakers at the Republican convention -- including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. George Pataki, who were the official honorees at the Log Cabin’s Sunday kickoff bash -- do not support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

“The politics of inclusion are just as important now as they were in Lincoln’s time,” Bloomberg told the cheering Log Cabin delegates assembled Sunday at a trendy Manhattan bistro, later adding: “I don’t think we should ever use the Constitution to drive wedges between us.”

Guerriero was delighted with support from mainstream Republicans. But he believes that spotlighting moderates at the convention is a cynical ploy to “put lipstick on the pig” -- in other words, put a moderate face on [the] party.”

Falwell is one of those who Guerriero calls “the other face of the party.” Falwell is the Christian conservative who, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, famously singled out the “pagans and abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle.... I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ ”

Convention planners are not spotlighting Falwell and other social conservatives gathering this week. But some, like longtime delegate Phyllis Schlafly, are muscular backroom contenders, especially in the mud-wrestling over the party platform draft, whose rejection of gay marriage deeply offended the Log Cabin delegates.

Schlafly, who was satisfied with her role in strengthening conservative values in the platform draft, said the party shouldn’t care what gay Republicans think. (The platform must still be ratified at the convention.)

“All the polls show the American public is overwhelmingly against same-sex marriage,” Schlafly, who will soon celebrate her 80th birthday, said in her hotel room. “I think the more Bush talks about it, the more it’s going to help him.”

The mere mention of Schlafly’s crusade against same-sex marriage makes gay Republicans groan: This is compassionate conservatism?

“I still shake my head in disbelief that she hasn’t come to grips with the fact that her son is gay,” said Frank Ricchiazzi of Laguna Niguel, a member of the California Republican delegation. Ricchiazzi, a proud, grizzled Sicilian American, wore a guayabera festooned with his Log Cabin pin: a red, white and blue elephant and the logo “Inclusion Wins.” He cofounded the Log Cabin Republicans in California in 1977.

He expects his own 18-year relationship to acquire greater legal protection under new California domestic partnership laws taking effect Jan. 1. He is angered that the platform draft’s language also seemed to rule out same-sex domestic partnerships and civil unions. “Log Cabin is in the Republican Party to remind it that it is a political party, not a religion,” Ricchiazzi said.

With the escalation of the same-sex marriage issue, the gay Republicans, who were always something of a curiosity, now find themselves newsworthy.

This week finds them analyzing, pontificating, scheduling press events -- the national media are eagerly anticipating a news conference today -- and answering questions: Will they refuse to endorse Bush? How do gay people even become Republicans? Is it genetic?

“It’s taxes,” answered David Rappel, president of Custom Travel of Valley Village, at a Saturday night Log Cabin delegates’ bash, on the wraparound terrace of a penthouse in the ornate, turn-of-the-century building housing the Melrose Hotel. “And it’s a belief in what the Republican Party stands for.”

One thing the party stands for is freedom from government interference, said Connecticut Republican Rep. Christopher Shays. Shays called his party’s draft platform “the most worthless document devised by mankind. The platform is simply an absurdity. It means nothing -- other than giving us bad press.”

“Thank you for not giving up on the Republican Party,” Shays -- who is straight and married -- told the cheering delegates at the party. “For some reason some people have decided it’s good politics to meddle in the bedroom.”

Gay Republican D.C. council member David Catania said he believes the assault on gay marriage is a cynical smokescreen, prompted by polling showing that the issue resonates with less-educated voters and seniors in crucial swing states like Missouri and Ohio, and “diverts their attention from failed job programs and inefficient prescription drug coverage.”

Guerriero said he has appealed personally to White House senior political advisor Karl Rove on the gay marriage ban. He says Rove believes the issue will play well to such conservative constituencies as Latino voters in the crucial state of Florida. Guerriero thinks the plan will backfire, turning socially tolerant voters away from the Republicans in a razor-thin election.

But Guerriero is still a Republican. After all, he said, even Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry expressed support for the gay marriage ban passed overwhelmingly by Missouri voters in early August.

This week, he and other gay Republicans say they will be out of the closet at the convention -- and they refuse to let the social conservatives drown them out.

“We’re certainly going to let the party know that we’re here. We’re not going away, and we’re going to try and interject our feelings,” Jack Majeske, 68, a funeral home employee from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said at the party Sunday.

Guerriero put it another way. “Don’t let the Republican Party be hijacked by the radical right,” he told the crowd.

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Staff researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this story.