LeftOut

The Other Side of Hope
Once the walls of gay bars shook with cheers for Clinton–eight years later, we argue his good versus his bad, but the walls are definitely still
by Mubarak Dahir

As the Clinton years come to a close, the entire country will pause to ponder the legacy of the man with whom so many of us had a tumultuous relationship.

Of course, there are the hard-core Clinton bashers who despise the president and his wife on all counts and refuse to grant them the faintest praise, even where it is deserved.

Likewise, there are the Clinton apologists, still blinded by their belief in the man. These are the people who continue to find ways to blame any of his shortcomings on elaborate plots by right-wing conspirators to undermine their hero.

But for most of the rest of us, Clinton remains a man we have at times both loved and hated, admired and abhorred, respected and detested. We’ve voted for him, cheered for him, rallied around him, staked our hopes on him. In return we have been alternately buoyed and disappointed by him, rewarded and cheated by him, angered and consoled by him, inspired and disillusioned by him, proud of him and embarrassed by him. Through it all, we have remained awed by him in ways both good and bad.

It’s fair to say a large number of Americans have mixed, almost schizophrenic, feelings about the president who seemed to have more political lives than a black cat. But as gay and lesbian people, our relationship to Mr. Clinton was different than probably any other constituency. For the first time, we had a president who addressed us directly, who included us in his speeches, who invited us to his parties, who even welcomed us into his White House. For so long, we had felt politically disenfranchised at the national level. Then Mr. Clinton came along, and the man from Hope seemed to be the walking embodiment of that emotion for gays and lesbians throughout the country.

A friend once recounted how, while working as a local volunteer for the Clinton campaign in 1992, he pushed his way to the front of a large crowd during a Clinton rally, determined to shake Mr. Clinton’s hand. As Mr. Clinton made his way down the crowd, as he so famously does, my friend stuck out his hand. Mr. Clinton grabbed it and shook it firmly.

"Mr. Clinton, gay people love you!" my friend exclaimed as the candidate walked past, continuing to shake dozens of hands in the mobbed crowd.

But as the words eventually caught up to the candidate, Mr. Clinton a few seconds later paused. He took several steps back to where he had shaken my friend’s hand, and sought him out in the throng of supporters. When he found him, he looked him straight in the eyes.

"I want you to know I will be there for you," Mr. Clinton responded.

As you can imagine, Mr. Clinton’s reply sent my friend soaring. And in many ways, though we didn’t all get to personally shake his hand, Mr. Clinton seemed to look every gay and lesbian person in the country in the eye and make the same pledge. And so he sent us all soaring.

Maybe that is why when Mr. Clinton stood with us, he was able to send us to such heights. It is also why, when Mr. Clinton let us down, we seemed to plunge to such deep lows.

I still remember election night 1992. I was sitting in a small gay bar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capitol, where I was a reporter covering state government news. The normally vacant bar, a thin, narrow space no more than 15 feet wide and maybe 75 feet long, was jam-packed. In the far corner, a television set tuned to a local news station blared out election results as they became known. Clinton, of course, state by state, swept the country. As the announcer called out each new set of numbers bringing our man ever closer to clinching the presidency, the men and women in the bar let loose a torrent of whoops and screams and bangs and hollers. Later in the night, when enough votes had been counted and it was announced Mr. Clinton had won the Electoral College, the bar went mad. You could literally feel the walls shaking under the excitement and fervor.

That evening, I, too, applauded Mr. Clinton’s victory, having cast my own vote for the man.

But even then, as the walls trembled under the fervor of Mr. Clinton’s gay supporters in that small bar that night, I couldn’t help but wonder about the man we had all so happily staked our future on. The excitement in the bar, like in the rest of the country, was magnetic, to be sure. But it was also frightening, for both us as a community and for our newly hailed leader. I wondered how any mere mortal could live up to the expectations Mr. Clinton and his pep squad had created.

As it turns out, we now know, that fervored pitch of glee in that gay bar in Harrisburg–and in so many other towns and cities across the country that night–was a fleeting one. Almost before the swearing-in Bible had cooled off from Mr. Clinton’s touch, the new president was put to the test on gay issues, with the disastrous result of the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy.

For gays and lesbians, the end of Mr. Clinton’s first term was punctuated with as much confused disappointment as the beginning, when Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It was enough for me to personally refrain from giving Mr. Clinton my vote the second time around. Still, most gays and lesbians cast their ballots that year for Mr. Clinton just the same. I can’t recall where I was the second time I heard Mr. Clinton won the presidency. But I know there were no walls shaking with excitement at the news.

Meanwhile, the disappointment of Mr. Clinton’s second term wasn’t so much in concrete antigay measures, such as had been allowed to happen in his first term. Instead, the disappointment was that such a brilliant politician had squandered so much potential, so much of our hopes, because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.

And yet, I can still see the TV cameras panning on the crowd gathered at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles last year as Mr. Clinton stepped on stage. People there–including a record number of more than 200 gay and lesbian delegates–simply went wild for the man.

Gay and lesbian people will continue to debate whether Mr. Clinton was too ambitious or too weak-kneed during his presidency, and whether our own expectations were too high while we as a group were too naïve.

As I look back on Clinton’s legacy, there is only one thing that I am certain of: It will be a long time before the walls of that little bar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, reverberate as passionately on election night as they did in 1992.

Living in Manhattan, Mubarak Dahir writes for a variety of queer publications, including The Advocate. He receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com.