LGBT politics are about more than civil rights alone

Questions about Councilman Carl DeMaio’s commitment to the LGBT community have reached fever pitch in recent weeks, leaving many of us to wonder: Did he really tell a major newspaper he was single? Why didn’t he refuse, and if not, why doesn’t he now disavow himself of Roger Hedgecock’s endorsement? Why isn’t the councilman more visible at LGBT events?

In 2008, when he was a candidate for City Council, DeMaio’s alleged sin was taking money from Douglas Manchester, who had donated $125,000 to gather signatures for what became Proposition 8. Despite the fact that Manchester’s donation came after helping with a fundraiser, DeMaio did little to explain why he even wanted Manchester’s support. His reticence to be viewed primarily as a “gay” candidate earned him a blank page from the Gay and Lesbian Times after he declined an interview request.

His reliability as a tepid member of the LGBT community has been consistent, and so have the desirable (to DeMaio) results of his actions, and positions.

Thus, the cognitive dissonance about DeMaio’s predictable positions isn’t necessarily threatening to the candidate.

However, one component of the discord should be worrisome to the DeMaio camp. It’s a steady thumping sound, barely audible amid the current din: It is the sound of young LGBT activists marching off to DeMaio’s battle for smaller government.

These are a cohort of young people I work with on LGBT causes, whom I respect and consider friends, that are reminiscent of young “Reagan Democrats.” It doesn’t bother me that they like DeMaio. I do too. While he may not have supported marriage equality as loudly or as early as some may have liked, we will be lucky if his District 5 successor ever supports a pro-LGBT position or issue.

Nevertheless, I would feel better if DeMaio’s young LGBT supporters were wearing rose-colored glasses and seeing him in so positive a light, simply because theirs is a gay candidate. The troubling truth is that while still supportive of LGBT rights and other progressive causes, they believe that DeMaio’s reduce-government reforms are the best path toward fiscal solvency for San Diego.

Before joining the chorus of those asking “What are these supporters thinking?” a more pertinent question may be, “Who can blame them?”

For one, it’s easy have the best plan when there is no competition. Rather than offer their own plans, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher have jumped on the bandwagon and have themselves endorsed DeMaio’s Comprehensive Reform Plan (CPR). Release of Congressman Bob Filner’s (the lone Democrat in the mayoral contest) plan is still pending. Intellectually, it is unfair, as DeMaio’s opponents have done, to combat a detailed plan with a list of grievances and a vague promise of something better, particularly when the status quo is unsustainable. By the way, that was President Obama’s as well as House and Senate Democrat’s argument during their fight for passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Even an innovative plan by Filner, however, may not fix a deeper problem progressives in general may face politically. During the lives of most 20- (and even 30-) somethings, the rhetorical cure for government problems has consistently been billed as less government, regardless of what the real medicine (a return to Clinton-era tax rates?) for curing those problems may or may not be.

President Reagan promised solutions through tax cuts and deregulations. President George W. Bush doubled down on that plan, passing tax cuts for the wealthy that turned the first government surpluses in many decades into historic deficits. Somehow, we tend to forget that the federal budget and deficit grew during both of those Republican administrations. We also minimize the budget impact of George W. Bush’s new entitlement, the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, which bought the former president untold numbers of senior votes in 2004.

While conservatives pushed their rhetoric despite a lack of results, liberals became too timid to call them out on it.

In the 1990s, after a failed attempt at health care reform and sweeping midterm losses, President Clinton declared “the era of big government” to be over. And, in fact, by delegating to Vice President Al Gore, his Reinventing Government program did reduce the size and cost of executive branch departments significantly. Furthermore, President Obama’s legislative successes haven’t exactly come with full-throated support of government. The stimulus started as a grand investment in infrastructure, but was enacted as a package of tax cuts with a few projects lauded not for their own sake, but for their alleged economic impact. And, the Affordable Care Act was finally passed through budget reconciliation as a way to reduce the deficit, not because it would dramatically increase coverage.

The lesson many young people have learned from recent political history is more government: bad; less government: good. Carl DeMaio bills himself as a less-government guy; that may turn out to be the right stance come election day.