NATIONAL NEWS

Clinton says gays overly critical of DADT
Memoir omits DOMA fight, Mixner, many out gay appointees

By LOU CHIBBARO JR.
Friday, June 25, 2004

Gays refused to acknowledge the political fallout from fierce congressional opposition to President Clinton’s proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military and were overly critical of his decision to embrace the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Clinton argues in his newly released memoir, “My Life.”

“In the short term, I got the worst of both worlds,” Clinton wrote in his 957-page book, which is expected to easily reach the top of the best seller’s list following its release this week.

“I lost the fight, and the gay community was highly critical of me for the compromise, simply refusing to acknowledge the consequences of having so little support in Congress,” Clinton wrote.

While devoting four pages to the gays in the military issue, Clinton’s book makes no mention of a number of key actions and positions of his administration on gay civil rights issues that gay activists consider highly important.

For example, the book omits any reference to Clinton’s decision to sign the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which activists view as one of the low points of his administration on gay issues.

The book also omits any mention of Clinton’s decision to issue yearly White House proclamations recognizing June as Gay Pride Month or his first-of-a-kind White House meeting in 1993 with a group of gay civil rights leaders, actions that drew praise from gay activists.

He states in the book that the gays gave him “little credit for lifting another ban on gays, the ban against serving in critical national security positions, or for the substantial number of gays and lesbians who were working throughout the administration.”

Clinton was referring to an executive order he issued that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in the process of issuing government security clearances. He was also referring to his administration’s appointment of a large number of open gays to upper and middle level posts in federal agencies and departments. Gay organizations have praised him for taking these actions.

In another section of the book, he states that he issued “an executive order to prohibit discrimination against gays in federal civilian employment,” another action that drew praise from gay activists.

Few mentions of gay supporters
Yet in a development likely to surprise his gay supporters, Clinton omitted from his book the names of nearly all of his administration’s openly gay, high-level appointees and political advisers.

Among those not mentioned was David Mixner, the veteran gay Democratic Party consultant and political activist who became friends with Clinton in the late 1960s, when Mixner worked as an organizer of anti-Vietnam War protests.

Mixner, who became a gay rights organizer in the 1970s, has been credited with lining up gay support for Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries at a time when Clinton had little name recognition and credibility among gay voters.

Mixner criticized Clinton over the gays in the military flap and even was arrested as part of a demonstration on the issue in front of the White House. The disputes opened a rift between him and Clinton that alienated Mixner from the administration at various times during Clinton’s eight-year tenure in the White House, although Mixner has said previously that the two had since mended fences.

Also missing from the book is mention of Roberta Achtenberg, whom Clinton named as assistant secretary of housing in 1993, making her the first highly visible, openly gay presidential appointee to be confirmed by the United States Senate.

Achtenberg, an attorney and prominent gay rights advocate from San Francisco, made national headlines when then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) denounced her as a “radical lesbian” on the Senate floor during a debate in her confirmation hearings.

The book mentions that Clinton arranged for one of his gay campaign officials, Bob Hattoy, who has AIDS, to deliver a speech on the issue at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Clinton notes in his book that Hattoy spoke eloquently about his personal battle against AIDS and the need for the government to address the epidemic in a more forceful way. The book also mentions that Hattoy became an administration appointee.

But the book makes only a one-sentence reference to lesbian Democratic activist and attorney Karen Tramontano, who became deputy White House chief of staff, making her one of the highest-ranking open gays in the government. In his reference to Tramontano, Clinton does not identify her as being gay and describes her only as a White House “aide” who worked in the chief of staff’s office.

He mentions New York City gay activist Marty Rouse as a loyal campaign worker during the 1992 presidential campaign, when Rouse worked on the staff of New York City Council member Ruth Messenger. But Clinton doesn’t mention that Rouse went on to work for Achtenberg at the Department of Housing & Human Development.

Also omitted from the book is Clinton’s appointment of the nation’s first openly gay ambassador, San Francisco gay businessman and philanthropist James Hormel. Like Achtenberg, Hormel’s nomination was challenged by hostile senators, including at least one unidentified senator who put an anonymous hold on Hormel’s nomination, threatening to kill it. Clinton took the unusual step of going around the “hold” by appointing Hormel during a Senate recess.

Other prominent gay appointees not mentioned in the book include Richard Socarides and Julian Potter, who served at different times as White House special assistants and gay liaisons; Virginia Apuzzo, the veteran New York lesbian activist who served on the White House administrative staff; and Sean Malone and Keith Boykin, who served as White House aides.

Although Clinton makes no apologies for his support for gay civil rights, in several sections of the book he laments the fact that critics used his support for gays and other liberal causes or minor scandals to portray him as being out of touch with average Americans.

“I couldn’t believe the American people were seeing me primarily through the prism of the haircut, the Travel Office, and gays in the military,” he wrote.

Clinton was referring to the firing of the head of the White House travel office, which critics claimed was politically motivated, and a report that he held up the takeoff of airplanes at the Los Angeles airport by delaying the takeoff of Air Force One to allow him to get a $200 haircut from a Hollywood hairdresser. The book notes that both reports were proven false or misleading, but, combined with the gays in the military issue, made him look bad during his first year in office.

“Instead of a president fighting to change America for the better, I was being portrayed as a man who had abandoned down-home for uptown, a knee-jerk liberal whose mask of moderation had been removed,” he wrote.

Clinton writes in the book about a friend of his from Oxford University, Paul Parish, who came out to him in the late 1960s. Parish, Clinton writes, "was mortally afraid of being branded a social pariah. He suffered for a long time. Now he's in San Francisco, and, in his own words, 'safe and legal.'"

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ fight
Clinton’s account in his book on the gays in the military issue is at odds with the assessment of many gay activists, who believe Clinton caved in too easily over pressure from anti-gay lawmakers and military leaders, and never fully used his bully pulpit to advocate for removal of the ban on service by gays.

In July 1993, six months after taking office, Clinton abandoned his campaign promise to lift the military ban against gays and adopted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The policy, which remains in effect today, allows gays to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation a secret and don’t engage in same-gender sexual activity.

Clinton’s book marks the first time the former president has presented his own detailed account of what happened and why.

While gay critics have faulted Clinton for giving up the fight, a number of prominent gay leaders, including gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), have said Clinton did the best he could under the circumstances.

Frank has said Congress would have overturned a Clinton executive order ending the military ban, making matters worse than the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise. At the time, Frank supported a slightly modified version of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as an acceptable compromise on the issue, but has since recanted that position and favors its full repeal.

Clinton states in his book that the issue began to spin out of control on Jan. 25, five days after he took office, when he met with the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House after the chiefs made an “urgent” request for the meeting.

Clinton said the chiefs, while pledging to obey his directives as commander in chief, made it clear that they would testify before Congress against lifting the ban, saying it would destroy “good order and discipline” within the ranks of the military.

Gen. Colin Powell, then the chair of the joint chiefs, led the argument against lifting the ban, Clinton said. As a prominent figure in the military with great influence on the Congress and the public, Powell’s views carried great weight, Clinton said.

“But the most adamant opponent was the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Carl Mundy,” Clinton wrote. “He believed homosexuality was immoral, and that if gays were permitted to serve openly, the military would be condoning immoral behavior and could no longer attract the finest young Americans.”

Added Clinton, “I disagreed with Mundy, but I liked him. In fact, I liked and respected all of them. They had given me their honest opinions.”

Clinton acknowledged that he was also sympathetic to Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), one of the strongest opponents of lifting the ban on gays in the military. Gay activists have denounced Nunn for promoting the notion that straight enlisted members of the military would be fearful that gay service members would make sexual advances toward them in confined sleeping quarters on ships or in communal showers.

“Some of my staffers were upset with [Nunn] for his early and forceful opposition,” Clinton wrote, “but I wasn’t; after all, he honored the military culture and saw it as his duty to protect it.”

Clinton noted that a public opinion poll released during the middle of the gays in the military controversy showed the public against lifting the ban.

“With congressional defeat inevitable,” Clinton wrote, he directed his defense secretary, Les Aspin, to work with Powell and the joint chiefs on the compromise that evolved into the DADT policy.

According to Clinton’s account, then-Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) and other opponents in Congress “won big” on the gays in the military issue.

“By raising the issue early, and repeatedly,” Clinton states in his book, “[Dole] guaranteed it so much publicity that it appeared I was working on little else, which caused a lot of Americans who had elected me to fix the economy to wonder what on earth I was doing and whether they’d made a mistake.”

Mixner: Clinton didn’t do enough
In his own 1996 autobiography, “Stranger Among Friends,” Mixner said the White House spurned repeated attempts by gay leaders to help the administration develop a coordinated strategy for defending Clinton’s plan to lift the military ban on gays.

Mixner said this week that the outcome could have been different if Clinton exerted the “political courage” that President Harry Truman exerted when he ordered the military to end its longstanding policy of racial segregation among the ranks.

“All he had to say is, ‘I am commander in chief and if any of you have any problems with this policy, I’ll take your resignation,’” Mixner said. “Not one of those generals would have given up their big house, their private plane, their military servants or anything else on behalf of gay people.”

Throughout his book, Clinton describes many of his battles with the Republican-controlled Congress over a wide range of legislation.

One piece of legislation omitted from the book is the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which anti-gay Republicans pushed through the House and Senate with the help of a lot of Democrats. The bill defines marriage under federal law as a union between a man and a woman and gives states the right not to recognize gay marriages performed by other states.

To the dismay of gay activists, Clinton quickly announced he supported the bill, although he labeled it as politically divisive and unnecessary. The bill surfaced in the midst of the 1996 presidential election campaign, and political observers, as well as some gay activists, said a Clinton veto of the bill would cause too much political damage among certain voting groups.

Shortly after the bill arrived at the White House, he signed it in his office late at night, outside the glare of the press and public.

While deeply disappointed, many gay leaders said they understood the difficulty a Clinton veto would have caused.

However, the same gay leaders expressed shock and outrage a short time later when a Clinton campaign radio advertisement broadcast in southern states boasted of Clinton’s support for DOMA as a sign of his backing of traditional values.

Despite this episode, virtually all of the nation’s prominent gay leaders have hailed Clinton’s overall support for gay civil rights and AIDS issues as groundbreaking and historic.

about us

© 2008 |  HX Media, LLC  | Privacy Policy