Word: christian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That might be a premature verdict, however. As a Chilean Senator, Pinochet was traveling with a diplomatic passport. Though the government of Chile's President, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, is hardly a Pinochet ally, it had little choice but to protest formally "what it considers a violation of the diplomatic immunity that Senator Pinochet enjoys," and demanded "an early end of this situation." But the British Foreign Office argued that such immunity would apply only if Pinochet had been on a diplomatic mission. Last weekend Pinochet's allies in Congress were scrambling to determine if his visit...
...while Shepard's death has forced even the most belligerently anti-gay conservatives to situate themselves carefully--condemning the murder while insisting they contributed nothing to the atmosphere that might legitimize it--the Republican Party, beholden to its Christian-activist base, doesn't dare compromise much on gay rights. One speaker at the vigil was Wyoming's former Senator Alan Simpson, a Republican. But Wyoming's current G.O.P. Senators, Michael Enzi and Craig Thomas, didn't show...
...anti-gay campaigner of the 1970s, said that what homosexuals really want is "the right to propose to our children." It says something about the difficulties of demonizing homosexuals these days when Senate majority leader Trent Lott merely compares them to kleptomaniacs, as he did this summer, or when Christian groups run ad campaigns insisting gays can be cured. While that language may try to throw the debate back more than 20 years, before psychologists concluded that homosexuality is not a mental illness, it represents a recognition that pure contempt is tricky when you are talking about people's children...
...support on gay-rights issues has been unsteady. His "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise on gays in the military satisfied no one. He signed the "Defense of Marriage" Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex unions, then advertised the fact in '96 campaign spots on Christian radio stations. But he was canny about the symbolic gestures. He ended the federal policy of treating gays as security risks and invited gay activists to the White House for the first time. The message he sent was that gays were part of the American family and also part...
...same time that gay activists have become more sophisticated and accommodating, their opponents on the Christian right have become more militant and more powerful within the Republican Party. Gary Bauer, head of the Family Research Council, and his mentor James Dobson, the Christian broadcaster who heads Focus on the Family, with its 2.3 million-name mailing list, have made opposition to gay rights a defining issue. Republicans trying to bridge the gap complain that while the rhetoric of the Christian right makes compromise difficult, so does some of the language of gay activism. "They got to get off the stuff...