Gay Republican in the American Culture War: Wisconsin Congressman Steve Gunderson, 1989–1996

Any memory of Republican representative Steve Gunderson in the national political consciousness has faded. His is a chapter of gay American history obscured by the combative politics and duplicitous personalities of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. The GOP’s antigay hom- ilies of the early 1990s amplified western Wisconsin’s trepidation over Gunderson’s glass closet homosexuality (read: not fooling anybody). Masked as legitimate civic discourse, the exclusionary alarm in the nation’s Driftless Area effectively marginalized the history Gunderson made as the first out gay Republican elected to Congress. Just as we have seen with Katharine Bernent Davis (Chapter 8), Gunderson was forced out of office and into the footnotes shortly thereafter.