During the past half decade, the nation’s political environment has become steadily more positive toward gay people and their concerns. President Clinton made history in 1997 as the first president of the United States to appear at a major gay function when he addressed the first annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest gay rights group.
Since then, such appearances have become de rigueur, at least in the Demo- cratic party, for national leaders. Other important speakers at HRC dinners have included Vice President Al Gore; Senator Joe Lieberman (D Conn.), after he became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee; and, in 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D S.Dak.).
The Clinton Administration’s commitment to improving the lives of gay and lesbian Americans went beyond symbolism. Early in the Clinton Admin- istration, cabinet members had added sexual orientation to their departmen- tal antidiscrimination policies, but they did not interpret or enforce them in a uniform manner. So in 1998, President Clinton issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination against gay civilian employees of the federal government (3).
In 1999, Clinton endorsed the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), which bans job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which are both high priorities of the gay movement, in his state of the union message—the first time a chief executive had done so (4).
In January 2000, the Bush Administration took office with limited cred- itability in the gay community. On the positive side, the fact that Richard Cheney, Bush’s pick for the vice-presidential nomination, has an openly les- bian daughter had served to create a more tolerant image for the Republicans.
The election of Montana Governor Marc Racicot to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in late 2001 also was a sign of the GOP’s moderate trend on gay concerns. Although from a relatively con- servative western state, Racicot brought with him a relatively progressive record on gay issues. As governor, he adopted a non-discrimination policy for state employees that included sexual orientation. He supported an ultimately unsuccessful effort to repeal the state’s statute criminalizing sodomy. He also opposed a 1995 proposal to add gay people to the state’s sexual offenders registry, and he made sure the Montana Republican party apologized for the proposal (5).
In office, President Bush has a mixed record on gay concerns. He has taken no steps to advance the causes backed by most of the nation’s leading gay groups, such as hate crimes legislation and ENDA. However, the president did not, as many gay activists feared, rescind the order of President Clinton that provided antidiscrimination protection for federal civilian em- ployees.
Moreover, Bush appointed a number of openly gay people to federal posts, including Scott Evertz as the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy (unofficially,‘‘the AIDS Czar’’); Evertz later moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. In late 2002, when the White House announced its new guidelines for the president’s faith-based initiative, which seeks to make it easier for religious groups to apply for federal grants for certain types of programs, the plan included the provision that religious grant applicants must comply with state and local civil rights laws (6). Since many of these laws protect gay people, many activists had worried that federal monies would go to religious groups that discriminate based on sexual orientation.
On the political front, in May of 2002, the Bush White House hosted a briefing for some 50 Log Cabin Republicans from across the country. Among those speaking to the gay GOPers were Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, vice- presidential aide Mary Matalin, and AIDS official Evertz.
The changing attitudes of the American public on gay issues were illustrated in the 2002 elections when a series of referenda were held on gay- related issues across the country. Although Nevada passed a state constitu-
tional amendment banning same-sex marriages, in five local referenda, the pro-gay side prevailed.
In Miami–Dade County, an effort by the Christian conservatives to repeal the recently enacted civil rights law that included gays failed by 53% to 47%; in 1970, in referenda made famous by the antigay role of entertainer Anita Bryant, a similar gay rights measure was defeated by 69% to 31% (7).
In Sarasota, Florida, voters approved an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by 73% to 27% (8). In Yspilanti, Michigan, voters defeated an amendment that would have removed sexual orientation from the city’s civil rights laws by 64% to 36% (9). In Westwood, Me., voters refused to repeal the city’s civil rights policy that included gay people, al- though by a narrow 51% to 49% (10). And voters in Tacoma, Wash., also declined to remove sexual orientation from the city’s civil rights law (11).
Like most social progress, the gay liberation line on the graph is filled with downward spikes, but ultimately heads upward. One of the downturns came in the spring of 1998 when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R Miss.) compared homosexuality to alcoholism and kleptomania. Lott’s remarks about gays, coming from such a high government official, raised a storm of protest in and out of the gay community. The public reaction to Lott’s statement, however, indicated that Lott, not the gay community, was outside of the nation’s mainstream. A survey conduced in June 1998 by Lake Snell Perry for HRC found that only 24% of respondents agreed with Lott that homosexuality is a sin and a disease. However, 55%, or more than twice as many Americans, agreed with the view that being gay is inherent and that all Americans should be treated fairly.
The more accepting description of homosexuality was the more popular view in both political parties. Some 62% of Democrats agreed with the
‘‘inherent–fairly’’view. On the GOP side 41% agreed with the more liberal opinion, compared to only 35% who thought Senator Lott was right (12).
Lott, of course, got in considerably more trouble at the end of 2002, when at Senator Strom Thurmond’s (R–South Carolina) 100th birthday party, he said the nation would have been better off if the centenarian had won his 1948 presidential bid. Thurmond ran as a States Rights Democrat, or
‘‘Dixiecrat,’’to protest the national Democratic party’s liberal civil rights platform. The outcry from the media and from officeholders, including some Republicans, forced Lott to resign.
It is noteworthy that Lott’s successor as senate majority leader, U.S.
Senator Bill Frist (R–Tennessee), appears to be somewhat more open to gay concerns than Lott. Although Frist had a zero score with HRC’s latest legislative ratings on gay issues, it is due mainly to his failure to cosponsor legislation, not because of explicitly antigay votes. Significantly, Frist has spoken to the gay Log Cabin Republicans’ national convention and appeared
at an event sponsored by the Republican Unity Coalition, a group of gay and gay-friendly Republicans. As a cardiovascular surgeon, Frist has a medical background that has helped to play a major role in obtaining funding for the Ryan White Act, which provides AIDS assistance. While Frist may not reverse the Republican Senate majority’s hostility to pro-gay legislation, he is likely to avoid the kind of insults, intended or otherwise, perpetrated by his predecessor (13,14). More recently, however, Frist endorsed a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage to heterosexuals.