Word: simpson
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Francis wanted the group to have a non-Washington feel, and he wanted a prominent straight Republican as chairman. Cody's Alan Simpson was an obvious choice. Simpson, who turned 72 a month ago and who left the U.S. Senate in 1997 after an 18-year career, had been shocked by the Shepard murder. One of his cousins--"sweetest guy on earth," he says--had come out decades earlier, and Simpson and his wife Ann had socialized in Washington with gay people for years, even though Simpson, a Judiciary Committee bulldog, fought for some of the most conservative court nominees...
...Simpson describes the Laramie attack as a "crucifixion," and he spoke at a vigil at the U.S. Capitol not long after Shepard died. Barney Frank, the openly gay Massachusetts Congressman and a friend, warned Simpson that because he was a Republican, he would be booed at the vigil. He was, but lesbians and gays from around his state also introduced themselves to him that day. "I said to myself, 'This is fascinating; these people are from all over,'" Simpson recalls, with self-conscious bemusement. When Francis approached him to join the R.U.C., he readily agreed. The group signed its credo...
...that not only would prohibit gay marriage (federal law already does that) but also could invalidate state domestic partnerships that give gay couples the same rights--inheritance and power over medical decisions, for instance--as straight married couples. Last month the Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Simpson opposing the amendment. Francis is careful to note that Bush hasn't come out in favor of it, though the President has said, vaguely, "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other...
Francis and Simpson mostly wish the marriage question hadn't come up yet. "Too fast, too soon," says Francis. Simpson is more revealing: "To be talking all day long about gay marriage is a tragedy. We have made so much advancement in this party, in this state, in this country, and they bring up the one issue that's contentious. I say, 'Jesus Christ, aren't you satisfied with progress? With acceptance? Beats hell out of me why you want to drag that dead cat around' ... Because see what happens? My whole party is now trying to do a constitutional...
DIED. ROBERT KARDASHIAN, 59, lawyer who helped win the acquittal of O.J. Simpson on murder charges; of cancer of the esophagus; in Encino, Calif. A close friend of Simpson's since the 1970s, he initially stood by the former football star--even housing him in the days after the 1994 murder of Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman--but later publicly expressed doubts about his innocence. "The blood evidence," he told ABC, "is the biggest thorn in my side...