Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 11:55:06 -0500 From: mohr richard d Are We Stuck with the Democrats? by Richard D. Mohr (September 1994) About once a month, the mail brings me a solicitation from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. I had given them money in '92, the first year that I had made sacrifices to contribute to national political campaigns. Bill got a tidy sum too. But by now I figure Bill and his Democrats need a new gay message. So I get out my ink pad and "Gay Money" stamp, whomp the return form, and embellish it to read "No GAY MONEY for the Party of Sam Nunn." I slip the form into its pre-paid envelop and post it back to Democratic National Headquarters. You might consider doing the same. The Democrats -- who, remember, control not only the White House but also both branches of Congress -- deserve to be punished for their treatment of gays since the '92 elections. By signing the 1993 military appropriation bill, Clinton became the first President in U.S. history to write discrimination against gay individuals into federal law. And what discrimination it is: Don't Ask, Don't Tell treats gays like flatulence in a crowded elevator. No one asks, no one tells, and thereby the thing is reconsecrated as repulsive, abject, and loathsome. The actions of Bill Clinton and Sam Nunn say "Gays are scum." Even so, it might be argued that, well, we are stuck with the Democrats because the Republicans are even worse, and in any case, politics is inherently a messy business and we have to get on with things. Let's examine these two claims. First, in the country's long engagement with civil rights from President Lincoln -- a Republican -- to the present, the Democrats have not done measurably better than the Republicans. Consider the following eerie moments in American history. For fear of alienating Southern Democratic senators and derailing his economic programs, F.D.R. -- a Democrat -- did not so much as speak out, let alone twist arms, in support of federal anti-lynching legislation as it withered and died each time it came up in the Senate. Most famously, F.D.R. in 1939, fearing populist backlash, refused port to the _St. Louis_, which carried 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. In consequence, two-thirds eventually died in concentration camps. Republican President Eisenhower -- good trooper that he was -- obeyed the federal courts' anti-discrimination rulings and sent in the U.S. army to racially integrate Arkansas schools, even though this mobilization ran strongly against both his personal and his political inclinations. By contrast, the Democratic Kennedy brothers -- John and Robert -- acceding to populist pressures, suspended the 14th Amendment in Alabama during the Freedom Rides, even though they said they opposed segregation. In Congress, a larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Both the tightened enforcement mechanisms that make the Act effective and federal affirmative action programs that mandate set-aside programs were products of the Nixon Presidency. The Supreme Court's 5-4 _Bowers v. Hardwick_ decision in 1986 holding that gays have no privacy rights was penned by a Democratic appointee to the Court, Justice White, named by J.F.K., while the two dissenting opinions were penned by Republican appointees, Justices Blackmun and Stevens, named by Nixon and Ford. It took a Republican President to get rid of the immigration ban on gays that had been passed over Harry Truman's veto in 1952. George Bush signed the ban out of existence in 1990. On the state level, gay civil rights bills for both the first and the most recent states to pass them were signed by Republican governors: Lee Dreyfus of Wisconsin in 1982 and Arne Carlson of Minnesota in 1993. And who is the only governor ever to have lobbied for and signed legislation specifically protecting gay youth? -- William Weld, Republican of Massachusetts, in December 1993. On August 1st of this year, twenty-three Democratic Senators voted to cut off federal funds to school districts that allow "the promotion of homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative." So, no, we aren't stuck with the Democrats and the Democrats certainly aren't stuck on us -- even as they seem to take us for granted. Second, yes, politics is messy. But you have choices with your money that you don't have in the voting booth. There you may well have to pick the lesser of two evils. But with your money, you have real options. Instead of giving money to political parties, you can give your money to projects that build the gay community and that begin to transform the broader culture, which in any case determines the overall course of politics and which still has a long way to go before substantial progress can be made in gay politics. Instead of funding political parties, consider giving money, say, to the Lesbian Mothers' National Defense Fund (Box 21567, Seattle 98111) or to the Service Members' Legal Defense Network (Box 53013, DC 20009). Don't be duped by Democratic politicos who soon will be scenting the trail with hopes for imminent passage of a federal gay rights bill. You'd do better buying lottery tickets than funding that idea. What about funding individual candidates? Consider the sorry case of U.S. Senator Harris Wofford, Democrat of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to the Senate in April 1991, but to retain his seat, had to run in a November by-election. He had impeccable, indeed amazing, liberal credentials: he was the first white to graduate from Howard University Law School; he helped found the Peace Corp; he served as liaison between J.F.K. and Martin Luther King, Jr., and he was the first male president of Bryn Mawr College. The Human Rights Campaign Fund gave him the maximum PAC donation allowed by law -- ten-thousand of your dollars. He seemed a sure gay-positive vote. But once elected, he played the gay community Judas, voting with Nunn to remove the military ban from executive branch discretion and write it into federal law. For gays to fund even liberal Democrats is a messy business indeed. -30-