Gay Alternate Criticizes GOP Platform : Politics: But O.C. resident says his presence gives hope party is taking in all types of people.

HOUSTON — Frank Ricchiazzi has been a Republican a lot longer than he’s been out of the closet. But the Orange County resident, one of only two openly gay men among more than 4,400 delegates and alternates at the Republican National Convention, was none too pleased Monday with his party.

As the convention kicked off for its run this week in Houston, the GOP approved a platform containing a “family values” section that critics like Ricchiazzi, an alternate delegate, suggest is tainted with homophobia.

“I believe the Republican Party has given the religious right 100% carte blanche on this platform,” said Ricchiazzi, a resident of Laguna Beach who spends his weekdays in Sacramento as assistant director of Department of Motor Vehicles. “I believe there’s got to be room for everyone--from gays to evangelicals--in this party. This is America.”

For Ricchiazzi, 47, the convention has already been a mixture of triumph and testiness. He has gone head to head in several animated, hotel-corridor discussions with the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, leader of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition. He has put up with recent anti-gay remarks from George Bush-- his President, the leader of his party.

But the mere presence of Ricchiazzi at the convention, his first, provides hope that the Republican Party’s much ballyhooed “big tent” embracing people of all types is more than mere hyperbole, he said.

“There’s a lot of people here who--when they see me, talk to me, hear what I’m all about--may have to question their stereotypes,” said Ricchiazzi, an energetic man who sports wire rims and a neatly trimmed mustache. “And the only way to make change is from the inside.”

Ricchiazzi has been willing to work from within the system since his days in Buffalo, N.Y., where he grew up in a large, extended Italian family in a neighborhood where “if your name wasn’t Ricchiazzi, Iacobocci, Mazzatelli, you were the foreigner.”

He became a Republican “about the time that (George) McGovern opened his mouth” as the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee. A Vietnam veteran, Ricchiazzi said he was already becoming jaded about the Democratic Party when he and other troops were sent to war “by liberal Democrats” and told “to put one hand behind our backs while we fought.”

His youth was spent confused about sexual orientation. Ricchiazzi was out of the service and on his own at 25 before he finally accepted that he was gay. But that epiphany remained a secret for another decade, locked away by fears of alienating friends and family. When he finally opened up, relatives surprised Ricchiazzi and accepted his sexual orientation.

Ricchiazzi said he found that same acceptance in Republican circles. Moving to California, he began earning a steady income investing in apartments and office buildings; about the same time he dove into GOP party activities in Los Angeles County.

He ran for Assembly in 1982, chaired a local Republican group, got appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to a state oversight board and held prominent positions in the Log Cabin Federation, a 4,500-member gay Republican club in a dozen states. He got the Department of Motor Vehicles appointment in February.

At first, he said, everyone in the Republican Party “knew I was gay and didn’t give a damn.” But now it’s different. Being gay “became an issue when this extreme religious right wing got into the party . . . and made it an issue” in the mid-1980s, he said.

Today, the religious right is more powerful than ever, he said.

Last month, a gay man employed by the Bush/Quayle campaign in Washington filed a complaint alleging that pressure from the religious right prompted his dismissal, although campaign officials said he was let go because of burnout.

Then, there is the freshly hewed GOP platform, which rejects the notion of special legislation to protect gays against discrimination, and also opposes laws allowing same-sex marriages and adoptions by homosexual couples.

And there is the presence of only two openly gay men at the convention: Ricchiazzi and another alternate delegate, Marty Keller of Sacramento.

“It’s a disgrace,” said Ricchiazzi, who moved to Laguna Beach in 1988. “How do we reach out to the gay population for this country, of which an estimated 40% are Republican, and try to get support for this ticket?”

But at a convention where harmony is being stressed in the interest of electoral victory, Ricchiazzi has been willing to play the waiting game.

That sort of circumspect patience has earned many gay Republicans the ire of more liberal gays, who consider them traitors to the cause. Gay Republicans, said Queer Nation’s Greg Scott in a recent New Republic article, “should not be welcome in our bars, our meeting places, or our beds. I would prefer it if they simply remained celibate.”

Ricchiazzi’s careful approach has even earned respect from an unlikely source--Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. “If all the homosexuals were like Frank, we’d have a lot better chance to discuss the issue,” said Sheldon, who is attending the convention as a guest of the Republican Party. “We might not necessarily agree, but it could be more amenable.”

Flattery will get the religious right nowhere with Ricchiazzi. He wants to see the Republicans and the President accept gays and lesbians for what they are.

“I’m very angry,” he said. “To me it’s unconscionable that the President of the United Stated has listened to that bigotry and is intimidated and afraid to sit down with loyal Republicans who happen to be gay.”