Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (23 page)

Our momentum was slowed a few days later when Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified. I had taken Cheney by surprise with my question, but Powell was prepared. With security clearances off the table, I asked him if we were unfit for military service in some other way. No, he said, it had nothing to do with our ability or character. Of course gay people had been members of the military throughout our history, Powell acknowledged, and they had served—and were serving—with the same dedication and competence as their comrades. He then went on to make the argument that would prop up bigotry for the next twenty years: Allowing us to join the military openly would seriously undermine morale. Our presence in living quarters or on training grounds or even on battlefields would be so disruptively abhorrent to the heterosexual majority that their prejudices had to take precedence over any claim we could make for fairness, or, for that matter, any need our country might have for us—even when enlistments dropped to the point that entry standards had to be lowered.

At first, I was actually encouraged by Powell’s words. There was nothing intrinsic to gay people that rendered us unfit for service. It seemed to me that the two highest Defense Department officials had just rebutted the only even arguably rational point against us.

Of course, ending the gay ban proved a far more difficult enterprise than I expected.

*

In 1991, I met Bill Clinton, who was seeking support for the presidency. Tom Downey, one of my closest friends in the House, had gotten to know Clinton while working on welfare policy, and in the early fall of 1991, he asked a small group of House liberals to meet with the candidate. During the conversation in Downey’s office, I’d urged Clinton to join us on the military ban issue, telling him, in one of my greatest political miscalculations, that I thought the country was ready for a presidential order lifting the policy. Lulled perhaps by my confidence, and eager to win my support and that of other LGBT voters, Clinton said he agreed with me on both the merits of the issue and the politics.

Clinton’s support for lifting the ban was only one reason that I endorsed him for the nomination and campaigned actively on his behalf. At the time, many on the left believed that he was “too moderate.” I had decided by then that I needed to be more pragmatic in my approach to intraparty contests. I’d supported Edmund Muskie in 1972 and Morris Udall in 1976 because I’d thought they were the most electable liberals. But after that, my dismay at the country’s rightward shift caused my judgment to go awry. I’d made the egregious error of opposing Dukakis in 1978, and I’d urged Ted Kennedy to run against Jimmy Carter in the mistaken belief that my unhappiness with Carter’s moderate stance was widely shared among Democrats and the wider electorate. In 1984, I supported Walter Mondale over his “neoliberal” opponent Gary Hart because I was enthusiastic about Mondale’s record and found Hart’s critiques of traditional liberalism unfair and sometimes sanctimonious. Four years later, when George Bush forcefully assaulted Dukakis as a “liberal” and won a decisive come-from-behind victory, I recognized that the increased conservatism of the electorate demanded greater deference. (Gary Hart likely would have lost to Reagan, but the result would have been closer.)

It was at that point that I consciously adopted the strategic approach I would follow for the rest of my career and aggressively proselytize to my fellow liberals, often to their irritation. I resolved to always support the most electable liberal candidates, with an edge in close cases going to electability. And in those elections where that candidate was successful, I would do what I could to push, cajole, pressure, or otherwise persuade him to move further toward my preferred policy positions, without jeopardizing his political viability.

There was a corollary to this approach. My major self-appointed task was to argue as convincingly as I could against political conservatism, which had become the major obstacle to the advancement of my values. But in the firm belief that I understood the power of that constraint more than many of my ideological allies, I took on a second job. I would not only try to dissuade my ideological allies from nominating unelectable candidates but would also argue against undermining our candidates by insisting that they ignore inconvenient political realities, or by denouncing them as betrayers when they took those realities into account.

This aspect of my work was much less fun. As I noted, taking on your enemies is generally enjoyable and often rewarding. Nothing boosted my campaign account more than being able to reproduce vicious rightwing attacks in my fund-raising appeals, and nothing did more to elevate my standing on the left than the frequency with which I was cited by conservatives as a leading example of liberalism’s defects. Especially after I survived coming out with no political damage and I became a frustrating symbol to the bigots of the waning of their dominance, I echoed—mostly to myself—the sentiment of Franklin Roosevelt when he said of his harshest critics, “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Even when my debates were with reasonable conservatives, who eschewed prejudice, I enjoyed being able to engage in all-out rhetorical battles in which I could try not just to demolish their specific policy arguments but also cast general doubt on the validity of their overall ideologies—especially since I believed I was very good at it. (My attacks on my opponents’ personal morality were very sparse, limited to instances where some hypocrite—like Newt Gingrich—ignored his own flaws while impugning the character of others.) Candidly, I think it is both legitimate and politically helpful to make my ideological opponents look not just wrong but also foolish, especially if I can use humor to do it. A rebuttal to a mistaken policy argument always has more initial impact and more lasting effect if it is funny as well as logically compelling. And in another aspect of legislating that resembles trying to enhance your social standing in high school, I realized that my talent for ridiculing the opposition made me more popular with my friends and more feared by my opponents.

Arguing with those whose policy values I share is much harder, intellectually and emotionally. In these instances, I try hard—not always successfully—to distinguish between my disagreement on a particular point—usually strategic or tactical—and my agreement on our broad goals and the value I put on our continuing joint efforts to achieve them. It was important to rebut allies far more gently, restraining my instinct to add the insult of mockery to the unavoidable injury of disagreement. This restraint gets harder when I am especially emotionally invested in the strategic or tactical dispute in question. (I confess that I am hazy on how to draw the line between these two, so I usually lump them together.)

I chose a political career—even when I assumed it meant forgoing a satisfactory personal life—because nothing was more important to me than doing all I could to reduce the suffering inflicted on vulnerable people by unfair societal arrangements. (I say “was” because now that I’ve fallen deeply in love with Jim, the personal comes first, although not to the exclusion of the political.)

Given this, when I am accused by people who share my goals of betraying them for some personal advantage, even though our differences are really over how best to advance those goals, I get angry—all the more when I am convinced that my critics, while well-intentioned, are doing our effort more harm than good.

It will come as no surprise that all of these feelings are greatly exacerbated when the accusations involve the cause to which I have devoted much of my life: the defense of LGBT people against the ravages of prejudice. There had been hints of these tensions in the differences I had had with some LGBT leaders in the fight against AIDS, but they did not fully erupt until the bitter debates over our unsuccessful effort to end the military ban.

*

My assignment in the Clinton campaign was to persuade other liberals to support him. In the course of this, I spent a good deal of time making the case to the LGBT community. Consequently, after he won, I was doubly motivated to press the president to take action. I wanted to show my community that I hadn’t misled them and I wanted our cause to advance. The two items highest on our list were appointing openly gay and lesbian officials and allowing us to serve in the armed forces. Many of us worked on the first item, submitting names to the transition team. Clinton delivered, hiring gay staff members, and the first openly gay or lesbian presidential appointee, Roberta Achtenberg, who became assistant secretary of HUD. (An openly gay man, Frank Lilly, had been appointed during the Reagan administration to a part-time, non-Senate-confirmable, purely advisory commission.) She was confirmed over the unsurprisingly vile opposition of Jesse Helms, whose reason for voting no was that “she’s a damned lesbian.”

It soon became clear that repealing the military ban would encounter serious opposition. The first major setback came again from Colin Powell. No one was in a better position to thwart us. He was not only the highly respected chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was also the most influential and prestigious African American ever to serve in the executive branch. We frequently drew analogies between Harry Truman’s executive order ending official—albeit not actual—racial segregation in the military in 1948 and what we wanted Clinton to do for LGBT people in 1993. Politically, that line of argument collapsed when Powell specifically repudiated it. In a statement to the press, he said, “The military leaders in the armed forces of the United States—the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior commanders—continue to believe strongly that the presence of homosexuals within the armed forces would be prejudicial to good order and discipline. And we continue to hold that view.”

The cases were not the same, Powell said separately, because race (unlike homosexuality) was “a benign condition.” He explained that he meant “benign” as opposed to active. These words were disappointing even if correctly understood, because they implicitly aligned him with those who believed LGBT people choose to be “that way.” “Benign” is also the opposite of “malignant,” and so the overtones of his word choice were wholly negative. It was clear we’d be in for a very tough fight.

There are two opposing views of what happened next, both critical of Clinton, and both wholly unfair to him. The first is that Clinton erred badly by plunging into this fight in his first few days, instead of giving priority to other, more popular matters, and winning more leverage for a difficult struggle. The second is that he moved too slowly. According to this view, he flinched, and instead of issuing a repeal order and directing Powell to follow his commander in chief, he yielded to political pressure and let Congress decide this issue—unfavorably to us.

The facts refute both accusations.

The option of delay disappeared on November 6, 1992, when federal judge Terry Hatter ruled that the existing policy was unconstitutional. This thrust the issue onto the front pages two months before Clinton’s inauguration. It also meant that the new president would have to make a decision about the policy almost immediately after taking office, ready or not. Within sixty days of Hatter’s ruling, the administration would be required either to appeal the decision, that is, defend the ban, or abolish it by executive order, rendering the case moot. There was no realistic third choice: Refusing to appeal would have meant letting a single district court judge invalidate a long-standing national policy.

There is one criticism of Clinton’s timing that has some validity, but it should be leveled at me, not him. Though Clinton had to respond quickly to Judge Hatter’s decision, it’s true he might have waited one or two weeks. He could have used that time to highlight other items on his agenda. He also could have used it to consult with the Joint Chiefs so he would not be accused of ignoring their input. It was my fault that he wasn’t able to do either of these.

The day after the inauguration, David Broder of
The Washington Post
wrote a prominent story in which I announced Clinton’s intention to repeal the ban by executive order shortly after the inauguration. My announcement was an egregious mistake. Privately informing LGBT leaders that the repeal was a done deal, based on Clinton’s assurances during the transition, should have assuaged the needs of my ego and my insecurity. And I should have known better than to brag about Clinton’s pledge to one of the country’s best political journalists at an inaugural party and then be surprised when it made national news. My partial defense is that after serving for twelve years in the House under Republican presidents, I had never before had such access to presidential decision making. I had made no news of this magnitude because I hadn’t previously known any.

In any case, Broder’s article forced Clinton’s hand, and that was not helpful to our cause. Still, even without my indiscretion, he wouldn’t have had much time to prepare the debate.

The opposite charge is that Clinton should have acted unilaterally—as Truman did. This view overlooks an important point: Clinton did not invite Congress into the fight—it inserted itself and in a manner that he could neither avoid nor neutralize. The organized women’s groups that strongly backed Clinton were eager to see the Family and Medical Leave Act enacted into law. It was their highest priority. Since George Bush had vetoed the bill, Clinton’s pledge to sign it into law was a very tangible sign of his victory’s significance.

The Democratic leadership accordingly scheduled the bill for early passage. As the first act introduced in the new Congress, it automatically received the highly symbolic designation H.R. 1. But there was a problem. Unlike all other legislative bodies I know of, the Senate does not require that amendments be germane to the subject matter of the bill in question.

This time it was Republican Senate leader Bob Dole who, like Tammany Hall’s George Washington Plunkitt, seen his opportunity and took it. He met with his conference, and they overwhelmingly agreed to back a nongermane amendment to the FMLA. This amendment would transform the military’s LGBT prohibition from an executive branch policy that a president could abolish on his own into a binding statutory provision that he could not.