Contents:
- TIMELE: BILL CLTON'S EVOLUTN ON GAY RIGHTS
- GAY POLICS GO MASTREAM
- LBIAN AND GAY RIGHTS DURG PRINT CLTON'S SEND TERM: A WORKG PAPER PUBLISHED BY THE CIZENS' COMMISSN ON CIVIL RIGHTS
- PROCLAMATN 7203—GAY AND LBIAN PRI MONTH, 1999
TIMELE: BILL CLTON'S EVOLUTN ON GAY RIGHTS
“Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, " by Jam Kirchick, is a 654-page tome that took years of rearch and an exhstive vtigatn to printial archiv, historil terviews and once-classified ernment rerds. “I realized that all the stori I was readg, and the personali and phenomena, whether was McCarthyism or the Reagans, FDR or JFK, that there were the gay stori lurkg the background, ” Kirchick stori lurked the background out of necsy: The st of g out as gay — or, more likely, beg outed agast one’s will — was enormo profsnally and socially.
GAY POLICS GO MASTREAM
“It was the specter of homosexualy that provoked the first and only suici by a member of Congrs his Capol Hill office, ed Lyndon Johnson to et that his historil lead would evaporate, and seized the paranoid md of Richard Nixon send only to the plots of his ever-expandg enemi list, ” Kirchick wr. “To asss the full sle of the damage that the fear of homosexualy wrought on the Amerin polil landspe, one mt take to acunt not only the reers ed and the liv cut short, but somethg vaster and unquantifiable: the possibili thwarted, ” Kirchick wr. Although openly LGBTQ people have ma their way to the hight ranks of ernment today, was not long ago that spected homosexuals workg for the feral ernment were hunted down, publicly huiated and termated wh the full force of the ernment.
The prev year, Clton had formalized the Whe Hoe’s outreach to gays and lbians by namg Stt, a heterosexual Arkansas iend who had cultivated Wt Coast gay lears while nng Clton’s printial mpaign California, as the first-ever Whe Hoe official wh a full-time role tendg to LGBT ncerns. “Our support for the bill would be taken by many the gay muni as an exprsn by the Print of ep ced [sic] bias agast gay people, ” Stt and her puty, Richard Soris told printial adviser Harold Ick a May 10 memo, “and as vg to Republin spegoatg of gays.
” “I believe we have been extremely succsful rebuildg our relatnships to [sic] our iends the gay muni spe the fias of gays the ary, the disjoted handlg of the Colorado se and the Print’s stated personal opposn to gay marriage, ” Stt and Soris wrote. Wag did not succeed slowg the Defense of Marriage Act’s momentum, yet the Whe Hoe’s public ambivalence implied that Clton was actually wrtlg wh the possibily of a veto, unnecsarily raisg expectatns among gay supporters that would eventually provoke an even greater sense of betrayal.
LBIAN AND GAY RIGHTS DURG PRINT CLTON'S SEND TERM: A WORKG PAPER PUBLISHED BY THE CIZENS' COMMISSN ON CIVIL RIGHTS
“As I unrstand , what the bill do is state marriage is an stutn between a man and a woman that, among other thgs, is ed to brg children to the world, but the legal effect of the bill — as I unrstand , the only legal effect of the bill is to make clear that stat n ny regnn of gay marriag that occurred other stat, ” Clton said. The Print said was his unrstandg that the only legal effect of the bill is to make clear that stat n ny regnn of gay marriag that occur other stat and if that’s all do, he’ll sign , ” Patricia Lewis, a spokwoman who handled the gay media, wrote to a lleague immediately after learng what Clton had said at his prs nference wh Helmut Kohl.
PROCLAMATN 7203—GAY AND LBIAN PRI MONTH, 1999
From the moment Clton had announced three and a half months earlier that he would sign the bill if prented to him by Congrs, his Whe Hoe’s gay-and-lbian liaison operatn had agonized about how that moment would play out. Gay lobbyists had dread the moment that the Defense of Marriage Act would e for a Senate vote, but by the time passed by an 85-14 marg midafternoon of September 10, that was not even the gay-rights news of the day.