The Republicans were the Dark Side. I learned that quickly after I came out in 1971 in my hometown of Philadelphia. The Republicans just weren't going to take the fledgling post-Stonewall gay liberation movement seriously. They also weren't going to vote for a gay rights measure proposed by the Gay Activists Alliance, the city's largest queer organization.

The exception was Ethel Allen, a Republican City Council member who later became the state's highest ranking black woman. She served as Secretary of the Commonwealth under Governor Dick Thornburgh. She was tough and didn't tout the party line. I always thought she might be a dyke.

When Anita Bryant launched her campaign against a newly enacted gay rights law in Dade County, Florida in 1976, the Republicans fell into line behind her. California State Senator John Briggs even pushed statewide Proposition 6, which would have outlawed gay teachers, as a response to Anita̓s bigoted efforts. Surprisingly, Prop 6 went down in flames--but Bryant successfully overturned gay rights in her hometown.

The Christian Right took a foothold in the Republican Party after the newly formed Moral Majority in 1979 helped Republican Ronald Reagan win the presidency over Democrat Jimmy Carter, who had invited LGBT leaders into the White House to talk about their issues.

Reagan was so beholden to the Christian Right that he failed to do anything about AIDS when it first emerged in the gay community in the early 80s. He never even mentioned the word until seven years into the epidemic. By that point hundreds of thousands of gay men had died and many more had been infected. Had he spoken up sooner and called for compassion and treatment, lives might have been saved.

George Bush Sr. didn't do much better with AIDS or any other issue that affected the LGBT community.

Of course, Republicans far and wide opposed gays in the military in the 90s when Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Clinton in 1992 proposed doing for queers what former President Harry S. Truman had done for blacks.

In 2004, Republicans used gay marriage to scare up votes for a second term for President George Bush. That and possibly a little fiddling at the polls. It's uncertain whether it was more of the latter than the former. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Now, as the Republicans hold their national convention in St. Paul, it's hard to tell the Christian Right from the rest of the Republican Party. So entrenched are the followers of the rich and influential televangelists that the GOP may as well stand for God Obsessed People. Their offering this November is Senator John McCain, who can't remember how many homes he owns, and an Alaskan woman mayor with no political experience.

But, hey, who needs real candidates when you have God on your side?

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian atheist queer with a website: www.avicollimecca.com