Gay congressional candidates - a record in 2004

Some call 1992 "The Year of the Woman."  I call 1998 The Year of the Queer.  Six openly gay candidates ran for Congress that year.  So far, 2004 beats even 1998.

Forget Clinton & Monica.  Fifteen years earlier, in 1983, Congressman Gerry Studds (D-MA) was forced out of the closet after it was discovered that he had had sex with a male page - 10 years earlier.  He was censured by Congress - as his colleagues read the censure, he stood in the House of Representatives and turned his back.  Later, he held a press conference with the page; they both pointed out that they were consenting adults acting in private, and it was nobody else's business.  Studds became a gay hero and served until 1997 (retiring just shy of The Year of the Queer).

In 1987, Barney Frank (D-MA) became the first congressman to come out on his own.  Both from Massachusetts, Studds and Frank served together as the only openly gay congressmen for almost a decade.

In 1996, Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) publicly acknowledge he is gay when he learned that the gay publication The Advocate was going to out him over his vote for the Defense of Marriage Act.  (The Advocate also outed Mark Foley (R-FL), who still has neither confirmed nor denied his homosexuality.  Both Kolbe and Foley still serve in Congress.)

Some will remember Michael Huffington, who served one term from 1993-1995.  But Huffington did not come out until after leaving Congress.

In 1998, we saw a record number of gay and lesbian candidates running for Congress.  In addition to Frank and Kolbe were the following:  Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Christine Kehoe (D-CA), Paul Barbry (D-OK) [Barbry had also run in 1996] and Grethe Cammermeyer (D-WA), the former Army colonel who successfully challenged discharge for being lesbian.  Tammy Baldwin became the first openly queer candidate to be out before being first elected to Congress (ok, poorly worded sentence, but you get the picture).  The others lost.

The year 2000 was another banner year, falling one short of the 6 candidates two years before.  In addition to the 3 incumbents, we had challengers Gerry Schipske (D-CA), Ed Flanagan (D-VT Senate).  Schipske lost by about 1700 votes; Flanagan garnered only 25% against Jeffords.

The year 2002 continued the trend.  We again had the three incumbents (Baldwin, Frank, Kolbe), plus Schipske's uphill battle against Dana Rohrbacher, Henry Perritt's (D-IL) ill-fated run against Mark Kirk.  (Only the incumbents won.)

This year promises to be another year of the Queer, with a record-breaking 7 candidates running, with 2 non-incumbents with good chances of winning seats.  We again have the 3 incumbents running.  Plus Jim Stork (D-FL), Tim Carpenter (D-WI), Cathy Woolard, who is running for Denise Majette's seat in Georgia, and Mike Evans (D-MO), running for Gephardt's district.

Three of these candidates (Woolard, Evans, and Carpenter) are running in solidly Democratic districts without an incumbent, meaning that if they win their primaries they're almost assured seats in Congress.  (Evans faces an uphill battle in the primary, though.)  Jim Stork is challenging an incumbent in a swing district, but he's a tough and proven campaigner.

Let's make this the Year of the Queer to remember.