Every two years: If it’s an election year, it must be time again for the Republican Party leadership to whip up its base of mouth-breathing knuckledraggers by inciting their terror of gays and lesbians.

Yes, friends, according to Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Congress will leave aside petty problems such as the rampant corruption among Congressional Gops, their president’s illegal domestic wiretaps, his staff’s treasonous revelation of the identity of a CIA secret agent, the administration’s lies about the reasons for the war in Iraq — not to mention the health care crisis, disaster recovery in the Gulf states, the collapsing educational system and more — in order to focus on what is really important: preventing gay people from marrying.

The purpose of the Marriage Protection Amendment is not to “protect marriage,” but rather to put Democrats up for reelection in Red and Purple states on the record supporting gay rights (or not) in order to use the record against them among the majority of voters who are sexually confused and intimidated.

This is nasty, cynical political gamesmanship at its sleazy extreme. It is also an indictment of the pathetic low to which the Republican Party has fallen. It is no longer acceptable for them to (openly) express their hatred of African-Americans, Jews, latinos and other minorities. The only group left that is socially acceptable for these these bullies to bash is gays and lesbians.

Of course, as an exercise in lawmaking, the GOP’s last run at
instilling hatred and vitriol into the U.S. Constitution did not work out for them in 2004:

After Senate Republicans’ cloture motion to force a direct vote was defeated in July 2004 and House Republicans failed to secure the 290 votes required for adoption of the amendment in September of that year, the legislation was reintroduced in early 2005. In November, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution voted the Marriage Protection Amendment into the full committee by a vote of 5-4, positioning the legislation for a reemergence in time for this year’s midterms.

On the other hand, 11 states, including Ohio, put anti-gay initiatives on their ballots that are credited in drawing millions of unsmart Americans to the polls in the presidential elections — and their vote in Ohio may have tipped the balance toward President Bush, thus re-installing him in office.

Of course, as a gay man entering his 27th year of unmarried bliss with my partner, I take this personally. My “gay marriage” has not caused any straight couples to divorce. It is ridiculous on its face.

It is not gay marriage but the Republican Party that is the danger to our society. They are using the same hateful, fear-engendering tactics today that they have been using since the 1950s when, under Sen. Joseph McCarthy, they concocted a campaign of fear of imaginary communists to enflame their base and gain power.

Sen. Frist, his henchmen in the Senate and counterparts in the House follow Joe McCarthy’s tactics, play by play.

What is instructive from that era is how it ended. First, the public began to see through them and their reign of terror, and then someone with credibility finally nailed McCarthy:

After Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, refused to intercede to halt an overseas assignment for McCarthy’s chief consultant, G. David Schine, who had been drafted, McCarthy’s committee began a two-month investigation of the Army. Viewers saw the following dramatic encounters televised live as they occurred between McCarthy, Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch, Counselor for the Army John G. Adams, and the subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn.

After a heated exchange, Welch finally spoke for most Americans when he famously said to McCarthy:

Welch: You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

McCarthy never recovered from this public rebuke. He was condemned by the Senate a few months later.

The final irony in this is the fact that it was an open secret among journalists at the time that McCarthy was gay — as was his assistant Roy Cohn, who was rumored to be in a relationshp with David Schine, the young “consultant” on the committe staff. (Cohn’s death from HIV disease in the 1980s was fictionalized in the play “Angels in America.” Schine married and went into the movie business, and was killed in a plane crash in 1996.)

After this commie-baiting episode — and because of it — the American people sent the Republican Party into the political wilderness until 1994.

Our only hope as a democracy is that history will produce someone today with the stature of Joseph Welch who can once again call the Republicans on their tactics and expose the way they use fear and hatred to accumulate power.

You have to wonder: Is anyone out there?