Countywide : Gay Republicans Invite Dornan to Debate Issues

Saying they wanted to combat “bigotry,” two gay Republicans from Los Angeles challenged Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) Friday to a debate on whether gays should be included in their party.

Dornan, at a Republican “prayer breakfast” last Sunday, outraged gay Republicans in Los Angeles and Orange counties when he compared homosexuals to alcoholics and thieves and said they did not belong in the Republican Party.

Dornan was out of town on a Congressional trip to Nicaraugua Friday, but Brian O’Leary Bennett, his chief aide, said in a telephone interview from Washington that Dornan would certainly consider a debate.

“Maybe it is time for the Republican Party to decide what they want to do” about admitting gays and gay Republican clubs, Bennett said.

But no matter what the gays say, Dornan will always be philosophically opposed to allowing homosexuals in the party, Bennett said. Besides if homosexuals cannot accept a Republican stance that homosexuality is wrong, “they have a home in the Democratic Party,” he added.

In his sermonlike speech at the California Republican Party’s spring convention, Dornan told an applauding crowd that homosexuality was “an offense to God and the natural order.” If gays wanted to form a Republican club, “there’s no need to recognize them as a party chapter,” he said.

Dornan said after his speech that he was referring to the party’s Log Cabin clubs, Republican clubs for gays in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties. The Los Angeles club has an official charter from the county party; the San Diego and Orange county chapters are not yet officially chartered by either county or state Republican Party organizations.

On Friday, gay Republicans Frank Ricchiazzi and Thomas Hunter Russell, both officers in a Los Angeles-based political action committee formed by gay Republicans, held a press conference in Los Angeles to say they wanted to debate Dornan.

In an interview before the press conference, Ricchiazzi said that a debate with Dornan should get the issues “cleared up: Is our party going to be run by self-interested fundamentalists or is it going to be open to everyone?” At the 1984 Republican convention President Ronald Reagan made it clear that he “supports all good Republicans,” Ricchiazzi said.

Gay Republicans in the Los Angeles area have registered about 2,000 Republican voters in recent elections, and their political action committee (CIRCLPAC) contributed more than $70,000 to Republican candidates in 1984, Ricchiazzi said.