September 27, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9

SPEAK OUT

Enlist our allies to speak, in politics and daily life

by Marvin Liebman

When Bill Clinton uttered the word gay only once during his 63-minute acceptance speech at last month's Democrat National Convention, an audible whoop went up from the party delegates. While the moment was an encouraging one of unity with those mainstreamers who support gay rights, it passed quickly, mirroring the passage of opportunities in the past four years, starting with the gays in the military fiasco.

Clinton has reduced his support for gay rights to a weak applause line. Why? What happened to our savior: the man from Hope who sought our votes and our money in 1992: the man who was to bring a new recognition, a new acceptance, a new day for gay men and lesbians in the United States? What happened to our perceptions and vainglorious plans? What happened in those four years?

Departed key adviser Dick Morris and others have steered the president's reelection campaign away from key liberal con-

stituencies like gays to make him more palatable to the centrist swing voters. According to such counselors, gay issues do not motivate the middle ground and are likely to cause unnecessary problems.

listen. But only months later, when the gaysin-the-military showdown tested that power, the gay "movement” quickly turned into the paper tiger it was.

As some predicted four years ago, gays have not become a crucial wedge of the

Let those who know us speak out for us at every opportunity, with pride and love. It is not about our 'lifestyle' that they will speak. It is about our very lives.

The differences between 1992 and 1996 dictate that the strategies and tactics of the gay "movement” must change, and change quickly. Many of the selfanointed gay "leaders" need to wake up to reality. The president's reluctance to court gay voters in this campaign should make clear that it isn't 1992 any longer. Four years ago, "leaders" of the community, impressed with gays' fundraising eclat and heavy voter turnout in several states, bragged about the community's influence to anyone who would

COMMUNITY FORUM

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concerns known to you.

I understand that University Hospitals has offered to meet privately with representatives of ACT UP to discuss these issues and the city has strongly encouraged that organization to pursue this option. I would be very interested in learning what steps have been taken by University Hospitals over the past year to ensure that patients with AIDS receive quality medical care. If ACT UP's concerns are based on misinformation, it is important that the facts are brought forth.

The city looks forward to working with you, the members of ACT UP, and all others committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS..

Robert O. Staib, Director Department of Public Health City of Cleveland

Lower the flags

The following was sent to President Clinton the day after the Senate voted to approve the Defense of Marriage Act, which Clinton later signed.

Dear Mr. Clinton,

The senators also seemed determined to use the occasion to demean and dehumanize all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people and to diminish and degrade our relationships.

Today, September 11, the "Defense of Marriage Act" lands on your desk. You have promised to sign it. Please reconsider. We thank you for all the costly steps you've taken on behalf of justice for lesbian and gay Americans. Take one more. Veto DOMA. Help us hope and dream again.

Yesterday, the false and inflammatory antigay rhetoric of the religious extremists was enshrined in law by the U.S. Senate. Will you use your powerful presidential pen to endorse the extremist's campaign of intolerance and misinformation against innocent lesbian and gay Americans? Or will you veto DOMA and do justice?

For ten days, Gary and I, with our friends and allies have fasted and prayed for justice on the Capitol steps. Millions of gay and lesbian people of faith are praying with us. Today, on day 11 of our Fast for Justice, we move to Lafayette Park across from the White House.

Please, Mr. President, as you contemplate the fate of God's lesbian and gay children, look out your window. Every day from 12 noon until 1 pm you will see millions of us out there, in the Park and across the nation, praying for justice. And justice, sir, is in your hands.

Yesterday, injustice flowed like mighty waters from the floor of the U.S. Senate, sweeping away the hopes and dreams of millions of lesbian and gay Americans. We shall hope and dream again, but we will not forget this tragic Tuesday, September 10, 1996, the day the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act"-a mean-spirited, unnecessary, and ultimately unconstitutional attack on same-sex marriage was passed by the SenYou're no JFK

ate (85-14) in a landslide of intolerance and misunderstanding.

My partner, Gary Nixon, and I sat in the Senate gallery during the entire DOMA ‘debate,' blinking back tears of anger and grief

while senator after senator stood to caricature and condemn our loving, committed relationship. We could not believe how easily these distinguished Americans abandoned truth, ignored the historic, scientific, and biblical data, and rushed to echo the false and inflammatory rhetoric of Pat Robertson, James Dobson and the other religious extremists who have declared war on God's lesbian and gay children.

Please, Mr. President, declare a day of mourning. Lower the flags. Bow your head in shame and weep real tears, for God's gay and lesbian children have been betrayed by the highest legislative body in the land.

It wasn't enough that the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would deny us hundreds of federal rights granted automatically to support and sustain heterosexual relationships.

Rev. Mel White, Justice Minister Metropolitan Community Church Ennis, Texas

To the Editors:

President Kennedy and President Johnson after him had the political gonads and the personal integrity and the security of personality to face the civil rights challenges of their day.

President Clinton, on the other hand, backtracked every major civil rights issue of his day, gays in the military, welfare reform, and same sex marriages, Clinton retreated or shrank from all of these.

Mr. President, you may have met President Kennedy, and you may have shook his hand, and you may wish to emulate his celebrity, but you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy.

Jack Kennedy would not have signed a bill he deemed to be divisive or unnecessary. He would have permitted it to become law without his signature, or more likely he would have vetoed it on the merits.

Rand Knox San Rafael, California

electoral pie. Pursuing the vital center, the president is more interested in neutering the potential wedge of gay rights as an issue. As callous as the president's game plan may appear, it reflects the political isolation of the gay community. Only in the last few years

have appreciable numbers of non-gay voters begun to deem issues involving gays of importance to their overall political outlook.

But gay political "leaders" have failed to articulate a broader message. For too long, the gross failures of our nation and culture to lesbians and gay men were the first subjects we needed to address. But we have made progress. These diminishing faults can no longer remain the only features of our public face as a real movement reflecting other great fights of the past.

There is a broader debate about gay lives and gay rights which gay leaders and individual gay people, in our own communities, have begun to get involved in with our allies. And, such allies are potentially enormous, whether they be relatives, friends, associates, or for that matter people on the street who see our faces.

As the cheers in Chicago suggest, this debate has the potential to engage millions more sympathetic heterosexual allies than it already has. We can only prevail when we gain acceptance from mainstream America as did other minorities of our nation before us. Then, the word gay will not be a political issue that Bill Clinton, nor any other candidate now or in the future, can just toss in and immediately forget.

How do we do this? We must gather allies to support us by publicly acknowledging us

as people they respect and care for. Just about every American has a gay person in their life. They should be urged to come out, together with us: our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, colleagues and friends, hands joined in our struggle for equality.

It is so easy. Whenever the subject comes up or is hinted at, the reply is: "My daughter is a lesbian, and I love her;" "My brother is gay, and I admire him immensely;" "My best friends are a lesbian couple, and they're great;" "A guy I work with is gay, and he's great to have around;" etcetera; etcetera. Let those who know us speak out for us at every opportunity, with pride and love. It is not about our "lifestyle" that they will speak. It is about our very lives.

But this debate also calls for articulation, and articulation calls for leaders. Our largest organization, the Human Rights Campaign, certainly serves a function, but it has not yet provided real leaders. ACT UP and Queer Nation provided the energy for the activist cause, but not leadership, and they are history. There is a leadership vacuum at the top of our cause, a vacuum that no cause can long endure if it is to progress.

But the hard part is already being accomplished in the trenches. Leadership in any fight such as ours has always come from the lower echelons, and has never succeeded without the construction of a firm foundation in the culture and the lives of our fellow citizens. As conversations progress, in the home, in the college, in the coffeehouse and in the office, gays must sow the seeds of personal contact in the essential soil of our national culture.

While gay voters themselves remain a progressive constituency which some politicians may take for granted or ignore, concern over issues close to us will then penetrate every precinct of the moderate voters whom politicians must court to win elections. Politicians' use of the "g" word may then be far more frequent, and laden with significance far beyond the gay community. Only by ending our own period of abdication and neglect of our political legitimacy will we earn the right to criticize the politicians who we claim have abandoned us.

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