The Advocate asked several gay leaders to give their take on the Iowa elections results. Here are two:
Straight rights now!
Dan Savage, creator of the It Gets Better project:
Rick Santorum's emergence as the evangelical standard-bearer is good news for LGBT Americans. His anti-straight agenda, once it's exposed, will wake up heterosexual Americans. Santorum doesn't just think that abortion — and gay marriage — should be illegal. He thinks birth control, which 99% of Americans use, should be illegal. While many Americans — too many — don't think LGBT civil rights are important enough an issue to let it impact their vote, straight Americans are going to rally to the defense of straight rights.
"Anyone But Mitt" an enduring motif
Jerame Davis, executive director, National Stonewall Democrats:
The Iowa caucuses paint a sad and desperate picture of today's Republican Party. Mitt Romney has been running for president for 5 years and yet 75% of Iowa Republicans would like anyone but Romney to be their standard bearer. Last night, Iowa scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with Rick Santorum — a dyed-in-the-wool culture warrior hell-bent on imposing his warped moral values on the rest of the nation — as their anti-Romney. Of all the clowns in the car, they picked the most virulently homophobic and least qualified of the lot.
