By Catherine Brown
and Frank Noakes
SAN FRANCISCO — Gays in the US overwhelmingly supported Bill Clinton in last November's presidential election, largely because of his promise to end the official ban on homosexuals in the military.
As recently as January, Clinton "pledged to issue an executive order 'which would end the present policy ... of exclusion from military service solely on the basis of sexual orientation"', says Tom Stoddard, New York lawyer and gay activist who directed the Campaign for Military Service. By July, Clinton had made a so-called "honourable compromise", supporting a policy of "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue".
In September Clinton totally caved in to the political right and the military establishment. A Clinton aide described as "consistent" with the president's approach, a statement from the Senate declaring: "Persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline" of the military.
The bill, sponsored by Senator Sam Nunn, and apparently agreeable to Clinton, was even offensive to the newspaper USA Today. It complained that under Nunn's rules, "the military wouldn't have to prove a thing. Instead, a person who admitted being homosexual would have to show that 'he or she has not engaged in or attempted to engage in homosexual acts and does not have a propensity or intent to engage in such acts' ... Such a standard is both unjust and unnecessary."
The House of Representatives followed the Senate's lead in late September.
Why, then, did Clinton take up the issue in the first place? "He was asked a direct question at a question and answer session that was televised live. A young man asked him whether he would rescind the military policy, which at that time took the form of a Department of Defense directive prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving in the military, and he answered with one word: 'Yes'.
"He was asked subsequently to that occasion, and he maintained that position throughout the election campaign", Laurie Falik, a board member of Gays and Lesbians Against Defamation, told Green Left Weekly.
"There are a large number of people who feel betrayed by President Clinton's failure to insist on the moral high ground, to insist that Congress do the right thing, to sign an executive order that completely rescinded the ban on gays, lesbians and bisexual service members being open about their sexuality. Nobody contests that they serve. Many feel that he failed in his capacity as a leader of this country to set the example for how civil rights issues should be addressed.
"But there are also large numbers of people who disagree, who think he had no political choice, and that he has done far more to raise the issue of gay, lesbian and bisexual rights, certainly than any other preceding president, and that his willingness to do that, to put the issue in front of the American people, is more than we've been used to in the past, and something we should be grateful for, I suppose."
Stoddard is less forgiving. He says that after making a promise Clinton then did nothing, "and I underscore nothing, to fulfil that promise".
Others argue that Clinton wasn't hired to be their saviour but to be president, and that gay, lesbian and bisexual people will not be given their civil rights but will have to take them, says Falik.
One aspect of the issue that didn't get aired was the position of lesbians in the military. "It is widely acknowledged that lesbians are discharged at three times the rate of gay men in the service. The fact that lesbians have been invisible in the debate over the issue of open homosexuality and bisexuality in the service is just another manifestation of the invisibility of lesbians in other contexts in America."
Now Clinton and the establishment want the issue to just go away, and for the time being at least, it appears to have done just that.
"The situation now is one of silence. There is essentially nothing left of whatever victory may have been won in the course of the debate. The version that Congress has now come up with will be part of the standing authorisation for the Department of Defense in 1994. So, in fact, I think the issue has ended up worse for us, in terms of law, than the way it started."
Falik believes that what's happened in the US in the past year is a good news/bad news scenario: "There's one extremely good aspect and one horrifying aspect to it. The good aspect is that for the first time issues facing this community have been front and centre in America. What has begun to take hold is that this is a civil rights issue.
"The terrifying side of it is that the net result over the last year in terms of law is that our legislature has given a brand new stamp of approval that in 1993 the government sanctions discrimination — they're not simply putting an old policy forward. They have, in fact, reviewed it, analysed it, held hearings on it and concluded that this country should continue to discriminate."