Code Pink

What exactly is a "San Francisco Democrat"? Like drunken cowboys on horseback storming into California with branding irons in hand, conservative pundits, from The Washington Times' Cal Thomas to National Review Online's John J. Miller, began searing that term onto the forehead of Housemember Nancy Pelosi from the moment her name was floated as Democratic leader. It doesn't appear they'll be stopping this mad stampede anytime soon, either (interchanging the term with the similar "San Francisco liberal" as well), so intoxicated are they by the Republicans' nascent control of both houses of Congress.

Some liberal pundits, such as Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo and Joe Conason at Salon, suggested that "San Francisco Democrat" is not-so-subtle code-gay-bashing, pure and simple.

In response, some conservatives have gasped in horror and disbelief. How dare anyone accuse them of such a thing! (For you kiddies out there, this actually is, in a demented sort of way, a measure of slight progress: used to be they gay-bashed and then laughed it off when you called them on it. Now they gay-bash and whirl themselves into a faux-frenzy of indignation when you call them on it, lest anyone realize they might actually be as intolerant as the Republican Party's own platform proudly boasts of itself.)

Both sides, more or less, have noted that the term originated with former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, in a speech she gave at the 1984 Republican Convention in Dallas. In their own defense conservatives say that Kirkpatrick meant the term to connote people who are soft on foreign policy. (San Francisco Democrats are neither hawks nor doves, but "ostriches," Kirkpatrick said.) One conservative blogger thus noted that "San Francisco Democrat" was meant to describe "the blame America first crowd," and expressed outrage that anyone claimed it meant to connote anything about gays. A more well-known online conservative commentator implied that since he is gay himself and is using the term, then it can't possibly be gay-bashing. (I don't think I even need to comment on that one.)

Putting aside the idea that being a yellow-belly and a sissy is in many people's minds only one step removed from being a queer, the problem with this conservative narrative is that it ignores the fact that Republicans very clearly defined the term "San Francisco Democrat" as code for homosexual a few years after Kirkpatrick first uttered the term. And they know exactly what it conveys to a lot of people today, since many of those who are now using the term were around in those Reagan years, as were many Republican strategists who know a smear when they see one-and float one.

It was 3000 miles from San Francisco, in the Senate race in Maryland in 1986, when "San Francisco Democrat" was perfected as a political gay-baiting tool by none other than Linda Chavez-yes, the same Linda Chavez our current president saw fit to nominate as labor secretary and who, thankfully, went down in flames when she was caught flouting labor laws by paying an immigrant worker under the table.

At that time, Republican Party strategists had tried to pull a Norm Coleman-they installed a handpicked, softer-appearing Republican candidate. Chavez, then a young and attractive rising star among the neocons, had previously worked in the Reagan administration and appeared to move to Maryland just to run for the seat. They propped her up to run against popular Democratic Housemember Barbara Mikulski for the open Senate seat in a largely Democratic state, hoping that a pretty face spouting conservative values might sway those white, blue-collar swing voters Reagan himself courted.

Early in the campaign, Chavez explained that because she was married and a mother, unlike her unmarried opponent, she was more in touch with Maryland voters, and began railing against Mikulski as a "San Francisco-style Democrat" who should come "out of the closet."

In their final debate, by which time the polls looked bad for Chavez and sent her into desperation mode, she attacked Mikulski for briefly hiring an Australian feminist academic, Teresa Mary Brennan, as a congressional aide-five years earlier, in 1981. Chavez charged that critics called Brennan's work "fascist feminism" and "anti-male." Chavez asked the audience: "Is this radical vision which Ms. Mikulski espoused still her vision for Maryland and the country?" She railed that "no single episode" raised more concerns about Mikulski than her employment of Brennan, and went after Mikulski for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, charging that the ERA would "open up the whole question of homosexual marriage."

At the time of her employment it had been widely reported that Brennan lived for two months with Mikulski at her Fell's Point home. Chavez's campaign manager told reporters that for the final two weeks of the campaign, tv commercials would focus on Mikulski's "relationship" with Brennan and on Mikulski's support of gay rights. Throughout all of this, Chavez kept labeling Mikulski a "San Francisco-style Democrat," including on election night itself, when this loser from hell was trounced by Mikulski, who took the seat with a 22 point lead.

Despite Chavez's brutal defeat, the trial balloon for the code word "San Francisco Democrat" did nonetheless prove successful as an intimidation tactic. It scared the daylights out of Mikulski and put her on the defensive, in ways that were at times degrading. She spent the final two weeks of the campaign flirting with men and even asked one out on a date in front of reporters, according to Maureen Dowd, then a reporter covering the campaign for The New York Times. Some gay activists even believe that the gay-baiting caused Mikulski to become fearful of gay issues for many years-perhaps inspiring her to vote for the antigay Defense of Marriage Act, lest anyone use the issue of homosexual marriage against her again.

That is something Pelosi seems a lot less worried about. She supports same-sex marriage and says she's proud of that position. And she is married-a lot longer (39 years to the same man) than some of the divorced Republican hypocrites in Congress who claim to espouse religious-right family values. Those details, however, won't matter to the conservative smear artists, who know only too well how these code words play in middle America. Get ready to hear "San Francisco Democrat" a lot more over the next few years.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com/)