
By: Robin Murray-o'hair
Re: Dornan/Lesbian Spear-Chuckers

CANDIDATE TARGET OF "EVERY LESBIAN SPEAR-CHUCKER"?

 by Conrad Goeringer

     You probably won't recognize him name -- at least yet.

     He claims that he is a target of "every lesbian spear-chucker," and
that they worked against him during a 1992 campaign.

     He has been called a "hate mongering political opportunist," a
"liar," "anti-gay rights, anti-abortion" and a "demagogue."

     He once grabbed a fellow United States Congressman by his necktie
and called him a "draft dodging wimp," and he was censured recently for
charging that President Bill Clinton "avoided the draft three times and
put teenagers in his place."

     He's California congressman Robert Dornan, and he is running for th
GOP nomination to be President of the United States.

     Although his campaign lags far behind that of Senators Bob Dole and
Phil Gramm -- and even that of California Governor Pete Wilson -- Dornan
is popular in right-wing Christian evangelical circles and his home
district.  Despite his militarist rhetoric and complaints about the
"moral meltdown" of America -- and his attacks on Clinton -- Dornan sat
out the Vietnam War with a stint in the Air Force Reserve and never saw
combat in Asia.  He also has nasty things to say about homosexuals,
immigrants and feminists.

     The immediate effect of the Dornan campaign is twofold.  It gives
additional power to right-wing religious elements in the Republican
Party, who actually have a "choice" of competing candidates they can
choose to support -- and play off against each other to see who is the
more "religiously correct."  Gramm and Dole are already spending million
of dollars in the bids for the nomination, and trying to outdo each othe
in staking out ideological positions on abortion rights, prayer in
schools, gay rights and other issues.  The Dornan candidacy could well
serve to move their respective positions toward a more extreme posture i
the hunt for delegate votes.

     And Dornan's bizarre rhetoric makes Dole and Gramm look respectable
by comparison.  A recent USA TODAY column by writer DeWayne Wickham
compared him to a member of the "Know-Nothing" Party, the mid-19th
century, semi-secret nativist movement. Wickham accused Dornan of using
campaign rhetoric which included "the kind of code words bigots use to
pit whites against blacks, heterosexuals against homosexuals, older
immigrants against new arrivals."

     Dornan probably will not win the GOP nomination or occupy
the Oval Office.  His role, however, may prove to be equally threatening
to civil liberties.  "Know Nothing" Robert Dornan may end up making
hatred and bigotry a respectable campaign issue in 1996.

                                       --end --

