Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 15:22:45 -0500 From: mohr richard d Recovering from Clinton: Gay Politics Now by Richard D. Mohr (October 1993) This month, by signing the military appropriation bill with its ban on gays, Bill Clinton became the first president in U.S. history to write discrimination against gay people into federal law. The course and resolution of the battle over the ban thoroughly discredit gay politics of pragmatism and compromise. Pragmatists, like Barney Frank and Tom Stoddard, argued that some version of the Nunn-Clinton "don't ask, don't tell" compromise was morally acceptable because it would block Congress from writing the ban into law, where it likely would remain for decades, no longer subject to presidential discretion. The strategy failed spectacularly. The law eliminated even the virtues which pragmatists thought they could discern in Clinton's compromise. The Associated Press put it thus: the new law "scuttles three major tenets of the Clinton plan -- orientation not [being] a bar to service, an end to witch hunts to ferret out gays, and even-handed enforcement of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for homosexuals and heterosexuals." And what of Clinton's plan itself? The only thing it compromised was gay dignity. The rituals of "don't ask, don't tell" reaffirm and seal the closet, drench it with shame, and cast gays as degraded, abject beings. Basically, Clinton took a crap on gay soul. And yet, gay pragmatists, in their moral blindness, claimed that this was fine, that this was a step in the right direction, indeed the foundation for future gay progress. If so, I'd hate to see the rest of the journey. The Nunn, Clinton, Frank and Stoddard compromises each greased the skids, one for the next, leading inexorably to the congressional ban. Once compromises begin, politics cannot stop them -- only courageous, principled action can. What is to be done? Taking gay dignity as our guiding principle, we can sort priorities. We should avoid those pragmatists who view gay dignity as a commodity for sale. We should certainly give a low priority to politicians who have shown themselves incapable of even recognizing the importance of gay dignity. Barney Frank is the chief offender here. We should also give a low priority to gay Uncle Toms, like the Campaign for Military Service and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. We should give an even lower priority to gay Booker T. Washingtons, like Tim McFeeley and his Human Rights Campaign Fund, who believe that we will get rights if we just keep our noses clean, "act responsibly," and try to buy off heterosexuals by giving them PAC money. Instead we should support groups that have gay dignity as their goal and guide their actions by it. Gay litigative groups that take on the tough cases are star instances of this commitment and practice. There are many gay cases that are so important that they are worth losing; cases that lay claim to our dignity and rights are of this sort. For in the very process of asserting one's claim to rights, one dignifies oneself, even if the right is, as a matter of law, denied. And we need to give more importance to gay cultural projects. We should support those gay individuals and institutions that are transforming American culture by being openly gay, by directly challenging oppression, and by improving society by injecting gay values into it. Groups like the gay anti-defamation league GLAAD do this in an exemplary way -- by challenging homophobia in the mass media, by hounding it to increase coverage of gay issues, and most importantly, by pressing the media to incorporate gay perspectives. Thanks to these sorts of actions, the taboo against talking of gay issues has all but collapsed in mainstream society. For the first time, reasoned public discourse is possible on gay issues. But now that the channels are open, more than ever we need gay ideas with which to fill them. And so we need to support gay artists, writers, thinkers, and prophets, not as entertainers or gurus, but as the first among our community builders and as catalysts, like Tony Kushner, Larry Kramer, and Michelangelo Signorile, who have begun transfiguring society without pandering to its values. The landscape is littered with phony friends. Beware of politicians and leaders, gay or not, who promise happiness tomorrow if only we are just good enough today by the standards of those who have traditionally oppressed us. Change is in the air. But we cannot be sure that great reversals are not in store -- or even that the long arc of the universe does in the end bend toward justice. Nevertheless, we must stay the course. For we can be sure that if we take dignity as our polestar and if we guide our lives by principle and certify them with the sacrifices which principled living entails, then to a significant degree, gay justice can be ours through our own actions, our worth shining forth unsullied, clear, and free. -30-