Back in the 50's Carol Burnett made her name as a nightclub
          performer with a song called "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John
          Foster Dulles." If the Al Gore campaign had a theme song for the
          past week it might well be "I Made a Fool of Myself Over Elián González."
          But even Mr. Gore's craven act of political child abuse may not match the
          marathon foolishness of George W. Bush's self-immolating grudge match
          with the gay Log Cabin Republicans.

          "It's really comical, if not farcical, it's so ridiculous," says Robert Stears, the
          chairman of Log Cabin's board. It's not clear, though, that it'll end happily.
          While the cold war being re-fought by proxy in Miami is increasingly
          ancient history as far as most Americans are concerned, Mr. Bush has
          stumbled into a lingering culture war that, while waning in much of the
          country, could well rage in the Republican Party through the convention
          and Election Day.

          This particular battle in that war began in November when Tim Russert,
          mindful of Bob Dole's mean-spirited rejection of a Log Cabin donation
          during the '96 campaign, asked Mr. Bush on "Meet the Press" if he'd meet
          with the gay group, and the governor replied "probably not," saying it might
          be a "huge political, you know, nightmare for people." A few weeks later,
          when the question failed to go away, the Bush campaign rebuffed Log
          Cabin again, explaining that its candidate "didn't see the point" of meeting
          with groups "he disagrees with." But then Mr. Bush appeared at Bob Jones
          University -- and justified that meeting by saying "it is important" to bring
          his message "to people . . . I don't agree with."

          So if it's right to meet with racists and anti-Catholic bigots with whom he
          disagrees, why is it wrong to meet with gay Republicans? To answer that
          question, Mr. Bush and his emissaries have floated a series of other
          strategies, variously saying that the governor's initial statement on "Meet
          the Press" was "misinterpreted" and that his real beef against Log Cabin
          was that it had made a "commitment" to John McCain. In truth Log Cabin
          had made no such commitment at the time of the Russert interview -- it
          only raised money for the McCain campaign after being spurned by Mr.
          Bush -- but even if it had, does that mean Mr. Bush won't meet with
          heterosexual McCain supporters either? Somehow I doubt it.

          At one point, on the eve of Super Tuesday in March, Mr. Bush even told
          The San Francisco Chronicle "yes, I would consider meeting with them" --
          a statement widely publicized in other news media as a change of heart,
          though once the primaries had safely passed it was never acted upon. Next
          up is a some-of-my-best-sycophants-are-gay gambit: A covey of Bush
          supporters, among them some dissident Log Cabin members, is being
          rounded up for a meeting in Austin next week.

          But this strategy, reminiscent of Mr. Bush's recruitment of fringe veteran
          activists to attack Mr. McCain during the South Carolina primary, is
          backfiring already, by opening up another rowdy front in the internal
          G.O.P. war over homosexuality: a noisy civil war among gay Republicans
          themselves. Mr. Stears draws the line clearly by saying that any Log Cabin
          meeting minus its leadership is "a sham" and speculates that the gay
          Republicans who turn up in Austin would be seeking jobs in a Bush
          administration and "a pat on the head." On Wednesday David Hanson, the
          head of Log Cabin California, wrote a letter to Mr. Bush spurning the
          meeting as "an effort to end the media story concerning Log Cabin
          Republicans" rather than a serious attempt to "deal forthrightly" with gay
          civil rights issues.

          Who are these nightmarish Log Cabin leaders who instill such fear in the
          heart of George W. Bush? You'd think from all the noise they must be a
          G.O.P. auxiliary of Queer Nation. As it happens, Mr. Stears is the
          45-year-old owner of a lobbying business in New Jersey, and Mr. Hanson
          is a 62-year-old retired pharmacist who's voted Republican "since the
          second term of Dwight Eisenhower." Richard Tafel, the executive director
          of Log Cabin, is an American Baptist minister who spent six years under
          the tutelage of the Harvard Divinity School eminence Peter Gomes, who
          preached the National Cathedral sermon for George Bush Sr. at his
          inaugural. We're not talking Rupert Everett here.

          In his six years as Texas governor, George W. Bush has never met with
          the leaders of Texas Log Cabin either. Whatever fear is driving this
          aversion, it wasn't shared by his father, who invited a Log Cabin leader to
          a 1990 White House signing of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. And as the
          Dole campaign's contortions over Log Cabin became a metaphor for its
          mishaps in '96, George W. Bush's nonstop battle with his own party's major
          gay organization makes a self-styled "compassionate conservative" and
          "uniter not a divider" increasingly look like a hypocrite.

          What the growing tiff with Log Cabin also reveals is just how out of touch
          Mr. Bush is with mainstream America in the new century. The governor is
          fond of citing Ronald Reagan's visit to Bob Jones as a precedent for his
          own, and in 1980, it's true, no one looked askance at the Reagan visit -- just
          as there would have been widespread shock if Mr. Reagan had met with
          Log Cabin (which dates back to 1978). But we're not in 1980 anymore. In
          2000, the Bob Jones visit was the shocker for most Americans; a gracious
          Log Cabin meeting would have been a routine one-paragraph news item
          (as Mr. McCain's meeting with the group was).

          Mr. Bush seems clueless about how fast American attitudes about
          homosexuality are evolving. Fresh Newsweek polling last month shows
          that more than three-quarters of the country thinks gay Americans deserve
          job and housing protection against discrimination. The magazine also
          reported that a majority believes that gay spouses deserve some legal
          benefits of marriage (such as health insurance) and that, for the first time,
          fewer than half of Americans label homosexuality a sin. While homophobia
          is hardly extinct, voters tend to punish politicians who stoke it. Anyone who
          thinks the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming wasn't a contributing
          factor to the surprise downfall of religious-right Republicans in the '98
          election is kidding himself.

          Gay-baiters want to believe that the culture has brainwashed Americans
          into accepting gay people -- whether in the form of TV's "Will & Grace" or
          Hollywood's latest Best Picture, "American Beauty," in which the only
          "normal" couple is all-male. But this is another delusion. Exit polls in '96
          show that 5 percent of voters identify themselves as gay, a figure roughly
          equal to the total number of Hispanics and approaching double the number
          of Jews. As more gay people are out, more Americans realize they have a
          sibling, child or parent who is gay, and that it's far from a "nightmare."
          This is a huge constituency, more crucial in a national election than any
          homophobes the Texas governor has pandered to in and beyond Carolina.

          Mr. Bush doesn't seem to have heard the news. And even were he to
          declare a truce with Log Cabin tomorrow and invite its entire membership
          to the governor's mansion for a rodeo, such a meeting would still amount to
          empty symbolism and fail to quiet debate about the real substance of the
          issue -- his actual record.

          His positions on gay civil rights range from nonexistent to fudged to hostile.
          He opposes gay adoptions. He has said that as "a symbolic gesture of
          traditional values" he would veto any attempt by the Texas legislature to
          repeal medieval statutes that criminalize gay people for practicing sex in
          their own bedrooms. As for job protection for gays, Cal Thomas reported
          in his column for The Los Angeles Times syndicate last fall that Mr. Bush
          told a group of Christian conservatives "he would not 'knowingly' appoint a
          practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head, but neither
          would he dismiss anyone who was discovered to be a homosexual after
          being named to a position." Gee, how compassionate can you get?

          So far in his campaign Mr. Bush has been dogged by queries about
          his drug history and his knowledge of foreign leaders. These
          questions seem to have faded away. But the questions that began
          five months ago with Log Cabin aren't about to let up; they're going to
          gather force and specificity, and become impossible to dodge. Far from
          concerning the candidate's nose or even his brain, they get to the crux of
          the very organ he has made the selling point of his campaign -- his heart.