Subject: Sticking to Values
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 20:43:52 -0500

November 30, 1995

Dear Editors/Publishers

 Enclosed is an oppinion/commentary written by Dr. John D'Emilio, the
director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
 This is the first of what will be a monthly 700 word op-ed series from the
Policy Institute.  This month's commentary focuses on the need to stick to
core values especially in a trying political time.  Policy Institute
commentaries are designed to spark interest and debate ion the political,
cultural and societal challenges facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender movement.

 NGLTF's newly invigorated Policy Institute is a resource center for
activists and a forum for new ideas and research.  The Policy Institute
serves as a bridge between leading academics and activists providing both
hard facts and tools for activists and a forum for the long term planning and
vision required to create change into the next century.

 Dr. D'Emilio is a leading historian on sexuality and the gay and lesbian
movement in the United States.  He is the author of Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities (1983); Intimate Matters:  A History of Sexuality in America
(1988), and Making Trouble:  Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the
University (1992).  He has taken a leave of absence from his faculty position
at the University of North Carolina to make the Policy Institute a
fully-activated arm of NGLTF.

 D'Emilio's monthly column will be mailed the last week of each month.  I
hope you will consider running this monthly piece in your publication's op-ed
or commentary area.  Photos available upon request.

 Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Beth Barrett
Associate Director, Policy Institute
{The following oppinion/editorial is by Dr. John D'Emilio, director of the
Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).  Based
in Washington, DC, NGLTF is a progressive organization that has supported
grassroots organizing and pioneered in national advocacy since 1973.
 Permission is granted to reprint with attribution.  Photos available - call
(202) 332-6483, ext. 3215}

Of Parties, Politics, and Social Change

by  Dr. John D'Emilio
Director of the Policy Institute
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

 Ever since the 1994 elections, when Republicans captured control of Congress
for the first time in more than a generation, members of our community have
been anxiously asking what this dramatic shift means for us.  Do we need to
adapt to this new, more conservative political climate?  Do we need to become
"pragmatic"?  Do we need to modify our goals, revise our methods, and change
our message to succeed?  Do we need to narrow our expectations and our agenda
in order to court a Republican party increasingly dominated by the religious
right?

 At one level, the answer to these questions is very simple. Of course we
have to change to take into account the new political environment.  But this
is a matter of tactics and strategy, not of goals and fundamental values.  We
cannot give up on AIDS funding, health care reform, or support for Medicaid
and other welfare programs that benefit members of our community in order to
appease a Republican majority antagonistic to "big government" and intent on
balancing the budget.  Nor can we abandon efforts to eradicate discrimination
just because new civil rights initiatives have been labeled "special rights"
or because older initiatives like affirmative action are under attack.

 It is precisely in hostile political times that our commitment to core
values needs reaffirmation.  I am reminded of what Lillian Hellman, a radical
playwright of the 1930s, said when she was questioned by a Congressional
investigating committee during the McCarthy era:  "I cannot and will not cut
my conscience to fit this season's fashion."

 At another level, our anxious questions betray a deep confusion about
history, about movements for social change, and about how struggles for
justice succeed.  Our worries about the Republican-controlled Congress imply
that we see the 535 members of Congress as the key movers and shakers in
American politics, as figures with an almost independent power to move us
toward a just, humane, and equitable future.

 For better or worse, Congress has not typically been the motor force
propelling the nation toward justice and equality. Whether dominated by
Republicans or Democrats, conservatives, liberals, or moderates, Congress has
been a conservative institution, committed to the status quo and rarely
challenging inequality and injustice.  In fact, in the last seventy-five
years, there have been only two brief periods--in the mid-1930s and again in
the mid-1960s--when Congress has enacted a progressive legislative agenda.

 What did those periods have in common?  They were both characterized by
popular grassroots movements demanding change

 In the 1930s, in the middle of the worst economic crisis in the nation's
history, the unemployed in American cities, sharecroppers in the South,
factory workers in the Midwest, farm laborers and dockworkers in California,
engaged in an endless round of mass protest and political organizing.  Their
efforts resulted in Social Security, unemployment compensation, subsidies for
farmers, welfare for the impoverished, and the federally-protected right of
workers to bargain collectively.  That legislative program, propelled by the
insistent demands of millions of Americans, helped usher in the most
prosperous era in American history.

 In the mid-1960s, the Southern civil rights movement rocked the nation.  It
provided the muscle that led Congress to enact historic civil rights and
voting rights legislation.  It created a political and moral climate that
encouraged initiatives toward economic and social justice:  a war on poverty;
medical care for the aged; a Medicaid program for the poor; food stamps;
federal aid for education. The legislative program of the 1960s expanded
civil equality and, until the trickle-down economic policies of the Reagan
Administration, improved the economic standing of those Americans with the
fewest resources.

 These eras of progressive change offer a valuable lesson for us in today's
political setting.  Social justice, political rights and economic democracy
are not gifts bestowed on the people by benevolent members of Congress.  They
are hard-won victories achieved when popular movements, built from the
grassroots up, create a climate in which it is impossible for Congress to say
no.