WASHINGTON (ABP) — Prior to his 2000 election campaign, George W. Bush worried about both the need to appeal more to conservative evangelical Christians and the danger of appearing too close to them, private audiotapes reveal.
Doug Wead, who was an informal adviser to Bush during the campaign and who served Bush's father as a liaison to evangelical Christians, released some of the tapes to a New York Times reporter over recent weeks. The Times published a Feb. 20 story on the subject, followed by several other media outlets.
Wead, a former Asemblies of God minister, said the tapes were of telephone conversations between him and Bush, and dated from the period between 1998 and 2000. Wead said he secretly taped the conversations for their historical value because he believed Bush would become president. Wead also used the tapes for a book he wrote on the lives of presidential children.
In the recordings, news sources report, Bush repeatedly expresses his desire to shore up his support among evangelical Protestants. However, he also expresses reluctance about meeting publicly with evangelical leaders and “kicking gays.”
In discussing a meeting he had with Texas evangelist and one-time Southern Baptist leader James Robison, for example, Bush reportedly confided in Wead, “I think he wants me to attack homosexuals.” But, the future president said, he told Robison: “'Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?'”
Bush also expresses concern over an aide's report from a Christian Coalition meeting, according to the Times article. Reading from the report, he told Wead, “'This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however.'”
“This is an issue I have been trying to downplay,” Bush continued. “I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays.”
However, the tapes reportedly reveal, he also expressed opposition to same-sex marriage in 1998, long before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized it in that state and made it a national issue. “Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that,” he said, according to the Times.
Nonetheless, Bush also reportedly expressed disapproval at the prospect of a public meeting with prominent evangelical leaders, which he mistakenly thought his aides had arranged. “What the hell is this about?” Bush said he asked Karl Rove, his chief political advisor.
But, regarding another meeting with Christian leaders in 1998, Bush told Wead he knew that, although he would have to use “code words,” he still could be true to his beliefs. “I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement,” he said.
The White House has not challenged the tapes' authenticity, nor commented on their substance.