It seems more like four months than four years since we’ve done it, but it is once again time for CAMPtalk to take a look at what the major political parties are saying about gay people in their presidential campaign platforms. Because their convention came earlier, the Democrats are first up at bat. And from the language in the Platform Committee’s report, the debate of the past year over marriage rights has had a significant impact on the Party’s position.

While Democratic platforms have long pledged to oppose discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the 2004 version goes considerably farther. In a section titled "A Strong American Community," the Party says, "We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. We repudiate President Bush’s divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a ‘Federal Marriage Amendment.’ Our goal is to bring Americans together, not drive them apart."

Although the language falls well short of endorsing gay marriages—a fact that will annoy some of you—the key words are in that first sentence. It is a major step forward for one of the nation’s two major political parties to endorse "FULL inclusion" of "gay FAMILIES" in American society—and to seek "EQUAL benefits" for us.

One of the chief arguments for gay marriages versus domestic partnerships has centered on the matter of equal government benefits. Many long-time gay couples contend that domestic-partnership statutes are inherently unfair because they fail to afford homosexual couples the Social Security survivor benefits granted to heterosexual married couples. The 2004 Democratic platform makes it clear that, whether by the name of civil union or any other idiom, gay couples should have complete parity with straight Americans in terms of the federal government’s protection and the benefits it provides.

Of course, if the Democratic ticket is elected, it will be up to gay people and our wise heterosexual supporters to demand that the Party keep it word. We all know that campaign platforms tend to be full of pie-in-the-sky promises, many of which are quickly forgotten when the going gets tough. (Don’t forget "don’t ask, don’t tell.") Nonetheless, a party’s platform is its mission statement and indicates the spirit of its vision.

Other statements of specific importance to gay people in the Democratic platform include a pledge to "enact the bipartisan legislation barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation" and a commitment to "equal treatment" of all members of the military service. The strong language on military rights includes the sentence, "[We] believe all patriotic Americans should be allowed to serve our country without discrimination, persecution or violence. We support the appointment of judges who will uphold our laws and constitutional rights, not their own narrow agendas."

The section on "A Strong American Community" also includes supportive planks for women ("stronger equal pay laws" and "a woman’s right to choose"), for Americans with disabilities and for people of racial and religious minorities. Another section vows to "work to ensure that people with HIV and AIDS have the care they need" and to "support the community-based prevention programs, built on experience with real life, that President Bush has cut."

As of Democratic convention week, members of the Republican Party’s platform committee had not yet begun to meet, so we will cover their intentions for gay people in a subsequent column. We can report that Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie has stated that we can expect little change from the platform of four years ago, when the GOP stalwarts failed even to mention sexual orientation as among the categories (race, sex, creed, etc.) it intended to protect. The only reference to gay people in the 2000 Republican platform came in the following statement: "We rely on the home, as did the founders of the American Republic, to instill the virtues that sustain democracy itself. That belief led Congress to enact the Defense of Marriage Act, which a Republican Department of Justice will energetically defend in the courts. For the same reason, we do not believe sexual preference [arghh!—they can’t even say ‘orientation’] should be given special legal protection or standing in law."

The GOP platform went on to say that not only is marriage exclusively the right of a male and a female, but also that "federal judges and bureaucrats should not force states to recognize other living arrangements as marriages."

Clearly, the Republicans plan to take a similar attitude this year, despite the recent failure of their anti-gay-marriage amendment in the Senate. GOP convention chair Gillespie called a press conference to criticize the Democratic platform, claiming that Democrats were trying to "hide the ball" with an emphasis on national security and strong intelligence, while downplaying such "far-left" issues as gay rights and abortion rights. "We’ll be highlighting this" throughout the campaign, Gillespie said. "The policy decisions they take today they would rather avoid talking about."

Well, the Democratic Party has spoken. Now it is up to the Republicans to talk to us about what they intend to do to further the inclusion of gay people in the legal fabric of American society. Film at 11, as they say, but don’t hold your breath.