OutRight

Goodbye to Clinton...and Good Riddance
More promise than progress, Clinton’s gay legacy is mighty microscopic
by Dale Carpenter

He came in with great promise, promising greatly. He leaves with the worst legislative record on gay issues of any president in the history of the country. By his personal irresponsibility, and by his total lack of genuine commitment to the cause of gay equality, Clinton squandered the opportunity to speak with real moral authority about the place of gays in American life.

Clinton’s legislative record on gay issues will unfortunately be with us for decades. No major pro-gay federal measure passed during Clinton’s time, not even during the two years in which his party controlled both houses of Congress. On the antigay side of the ledger, the most shameful aspects of Clinton’s legal legacy are by now familiar, but it is worth recalling how profoundly they damaged the lives of real gay Americans.

Clinton campaigned for gay votes and gay dollars in 1992 on a promise to lift the ban on gays in the military–and we believed him. Yet rather than immediately ending the ban by executive order, which he could have done and which enjoyed majority support in polls at the time, Clinton stalled. This delay allowed supporters of the ban, led by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, to initiate highly publicized hearings on the effect of ending the policy. The resulting investigation, which focused luridly on group showers and close sleeping quarters, played devastatingly on the worst stereotypes about sexually predatory homosexuals.

Worse still, neither Clinton nor his administration responded to Nunn’s nonsense. At the height of the furor, Clinton, in a live television appearance from the Rose Garden, even said the government should be careful not to "condone" the homosexual "lifestyle."

By the summer of 1993, Clinton had permitted Nunn’s crowd to dominate the debate so thoroughly that it was necessary to "compromise" by enacting "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT). Within a year, observers warned that DADT was being used to continue and even to accelerate antigay witch-hunts and discharges. Clinton ignored the problem.

The result is the most easily quantifiable harm done to actual gay people during the Clinton years. According to figures from the Defense Department, discharges for homosexuality declined every year between the first full year of the Reagan administration (1982) and the first full year of the Clinton administration (1994), for a net decline during the period of more than 70 percent. But in 1994 the number of antigay discharges began to rise and has risen every year since. On an annual basis, such discharges have more than doubled since 1994. In 1998, they climbed above 1,000 for the first time in 10 years.

Such dismissals represent hopes smashed, families shattered, a life’s work cut short. While Clinton’s administration was hiring scores of openly gay campaign contributors (as we were tirelessly reminded), the same administration was firing thousands more through military discharges. From its inception through its implementation, DADT has been a betrayal of trust that should never be forgotten.

Also not to be forgotten is Clinton’s support for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. Recall that DOMA created the first-ever congressional definition of marriage, denying to future gay newlyweds all of the benefits of marriage accorded to opposite-sex couples under federal law. It also fueled a series of state DOMA laws, the opposition to which has consumed millions of gay dollars and countless hours of volunteer time.

Clinton’s defenders say he had to back the bill in the politically charged atmosphere of a presidential election year. Yet Clinton agreed to sign DOMA before it was even drafted, suggesting an enthusiasm for this political necessity that goes above and beyond the call of duty. And then Clinton turned this supposed necessity into a virtue, publicizing his support for DOMA in commercials that aired on Christian radio stations during the fall campaign.

Some will respond that, whatever the legislative disappointments, the social standing of gays has risen greatly in the eight years Bill Clinton has inhabited the White House. So it has. But how much of that rise is attributable to Clinton? Very little more than none.

Recall that Clinton signed his marriage-defense law while he himself conducted an extramarital affair. It was the perfect Clintonian moment: Defend the principle in the abstract (the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, gay equality) while you corrode it in the application (Monica Lewinsky; DADT, and DOMA).

The Lewinsky affair confirmed Clinton’s lack of personal integrity, his refusal to control his appetites, and his penchant for betraying those closest to him. It exposed a grownup reluctant to grow up, disinclined to take responsibility for himself and his actions, and unwilling to see in life a duty higher than the preservation of self-interest.

Who could take seriously any instruction from this man? Who could credit his lectures about what ails American culture, including its antigay aspects? Clinton lost any authority to speak authoritatively on important cultural matters, like basic fairness for gay Americans.

But even if he’d had the authority, he lacked the will. For Clinton, gays were an expendable constituency. He threw us just enough sops (an administration appointment here, using the word "gay" in a speech there) to keep us quiet when he betrayed us. We accepted this deal because, like a battered spouse, we thought we’d never had it so good.

Having tied ourselves so closely to this man, we sit beside the stench of his moral putrefaction, in need of a bath.

Writing from the conservative end of the spectrum, former Houston resident and law professor Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994 and has won three Vice Versa awards for excellence in gay writing. Now living in Minneapolis, he can be reached at OutRight@aol.com.