WE'LL HAVE A GAY OLD TIME
LABASH, MATT
WE’LL HAVE A GAY OLD TIME By Matt Labash Chicago Billed by its sponsor as the first-ever “gay political convention,” OutVote ’96 promised to be a Tommy Tune musical opening smack in the middle...
...The Human Rights Campaign, which sponsored OutVote, is an organization of ice-water pragmatists who’d rather talk precinct programs, fund-raising, and voter mobilization for gay-friendly candidates than make placards and scream at people...
...Except consensus in the activist community isn’t as cut-anddried as one might think...
...A Manhattanproject-style war on AIDS...
...The only issue Clinton cares about is getting reelected...
...If there was the possibility of any political fallout, they were the first to advocate pulling back...
...If Nixon can do China, why can’t Dole do AIDS...
...Well I’ve done guys with big hair, and I’m not impressed...
...Actual quote from Steve Michael: “It’s a big therapy session...
...Given a choice between Clinton and Dole, I’d go with Dole...
...One goes to such an event eagerly anticipating jaunty bursts of color from the nipple-cuffed, softball-cleated fire-snorters who usually comprise the crowd...
...Because with all the Clinton/Gore ’96 pink triangle signs, the workshops headed by DNC and Reelect Clinton/Gore staffers, the Emily’s List panelists, the speeches by Henry Cisneros and George Stephanopoulos, and the video greeting from Clinton himself, one started noticing a slight partisan accent...
...Such cynicism was rare at the HRC-fest, and if any bubbled up, it was squelched by peppy little numbers like Paul Yandura of Gay & Lesbian Clinton/Gore ReElect, who encouraged us to sell at least ten friends on Clinton’s spotless record...
...They’re sitting around telling each other they’re special and matter in Clinton’s vision...
...But niggling inconsistencies could not dampen the HRC apologia...
...This election cycle, it has given over five times as much money to Democrats as Republicans, and on its 144-race endorsement sheet, Republicans garner a mere 14 nods...
...There was gay Republican Steve Gunderson sharing a microphone and a kiss at the lunch dais—with his non-Republican “co-author, partner and conscience,” Rob Morris...
...Nobody’s been able to get one—and they were saying it was about 30 just a few months ago...
...Here’s an incomplete list of pledges Clinton has welshed on: Gays in the military...
...He stood there beaming during the playing of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” his latissimus dorsi hyperextended from having his hands raised by two taller lesbians with much longer wingspans...
...Well, I suppose it existed at one point in time,” he says, laughing nervously, “but you’re just going to have to take my word for it...
...Actual quote from Judith Light, star of the sitcom Who’s the Boss?: “It is my personal prediction that Mr...
...He’s not likely to have done anything that would ruin that opportunity...
...Which begs the question, Is HRC a non-partisan gay-rights advocacy group or a Democratic auxiliary...
...Ask them for a list,” implored Steve Michael...
...Support for the president was unmistakable from the hissing inspired by George Stephanopoulos’s asking us to shut our eyes and imagine all the jowly Republican Satans who would go unchecked if the Democrats lost the election...
...A veto of the 1996 defense authorization bill with Dornan’s amendment requiring expulsion of all HIV-positive military members (Clinton vetoed it once, then signed it before a bipartisan effort repealed the amendment...
...Needle-exchange programs...
...Okay, so it’s not exactly screaming headlines for a gay organization to go whole-hog Democrat...
...The only costume on display was borne by some hulking Adam’s apple stuffed into a floralprint dress, wobbling around on stacked heels— and he didn’t make much noise...
...And if, in talking it through, one encounters hold-outs who bring up bothersome corruption scandals, simply adopt the rationale of Brian Bond of the DNC: “This is a president who knew he wanted to be president when he was 12 years old...
...The HRC says “the choice is clear,” but a second Clinton term has decidedly non-Republican activists like Michael coughing hairballs in the manner of a practiced denizen of one of the cattiest backlots in politics: “They’re the most worthless, pathetic organization in the gay community...
...Though he’d been disinvited from an HRC event earlier this summer (as a result of Clinton’s stance on the anti-gaymarriage bill), Stephanopoulos was out of the doghouse and back in the clover...
...If it had proved to be a gentler world, he would’ve acted upon his assurances...
...But not touted quite as loudly were his reversals and equivocations...
...Not this time...
...But it doesn’t take much wooing, since Steve Michael and others allege they’re already on their backs for Clinton...
...But besides those literalist nags who expected a middleclass tax cut, few constituencies were promised as much and delivered as little as the gay community by the president...
...Sure, it endorsed him all the way back in February, before primary season was over and before he felt compelled to assure the straight world he’d sign the anti-gay-matrimony Defense of Marriage Act (Dole received an HRC spanking for sponsoring the same measure...
...Trust me,” he assured the crowd, “I can’t go anywhere without telling someone how great Clinton is...
...So I did, calling Richard Socarides, the White House Liaison to the Gay & Lesbian Community, who assured me the number of appointees was over 100 but said the administration doesn’t compile lists and wouldn’t supply one even if it did—in order to protect employees...
...It is where, as more traditional hardliners like ACT-UP’s Steve Michael suggest, chi chi activists become Vichy activists...
...But wait...
...While wiry men with Caligula bangs hopped on their chairs and stabbed the air with their pelvises, vamping it up for C-SPAN, Stephanopoulos took his rightful place beneath the bunting and balloon drop...
...Well, it may not be 100 when you consider people who have left,” says Socarides, “but we know because of receptions we give for the gay and lesbian appointees...
...An executive order banning discrimination in all federal agencies...
...But I thought they were openly gay,” I respond, “and how do you know you have 100 if you haven’t got a list...
...This occasionally comes up in the context of events,” he replies, “but no one usually questions it further...
...They called the conventioneers “delegates,” but no roll call was necessary...
...Troy Perry, were less circumspect: “Pat Buchanan, you’re going to die and go to Hell...
...And yes, in 1992, its membership pumped Clinton about $2.5 million (though it had never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 12-year history)—and it’ll kick in around another million this year...
...And a good thing too...
...The HRC would take issue that it’s completely in the tank for Clinton...
...Meow...
...travel ban for foreigners with the HIV virus...
...While HRC staffers spent their time in San Diego financing anti-Republican ads about the “anti-gay-marriage bill” (a bill Clinton couldn’t endorse fast enough on both constitutional and moral grounds), the HRC is co-hosting six parties with Clinton’s reelection campaign during the Democratic National Convention...
...But everyone from HRC executive director Elizabeth Birch to HRC celebrity spokesmodel Candace Gingrich insisted this was a non-partisan convention thrown by a non-partisan organization...
...Actual quote from Elizabeth Birch: “President Clinton told us that his vision of America includes us, and if that vision is not quite as clear as we might always wish, it is nonetheless extraordinary...
...Agree with them or not, activists by their very nature are paid to remain unsatisfied, and many regard Clinton as the most gay-friendly president in history...
...One out of three gay voters supposedly went Republican in the ’94 elections, which was the impetus for a doubling of the response to the HRC’s direct mail...
...And the unfulfilled promises and boisterous claims didn’t seem nearly as pressing—like the administration’s highly touted “over 100 openly gay and lesbian political appointees...
...Clinton is actually a very good, deeply well-intentioned human being who wanted to be our Savior as much as we wanted him to be, but he was hit by a blast of reality in the forces of resistance and small-mindedness that took him overwhelmingly by surprise...
...Birch herself fostered a spirit of bipartisan equanimity when invoking Bob Dornan, Phyllis Schlafly, and the two Pats, Robertson and Buchanan: “We are trying very hard to hate the sin but love the sinner—in their case, it is very tough...
...This isn’t a gay convention,” Michael says, “just the HRC sugarcoating Clinton’s record and taking us down this silly little path of assimilation...
...People have a good feeling about him, but they sometimes need to be talked through it...
...They raise money from Republicans to give primarily to Democrats,” says Tafel...
...If you give receptions,” I ask, “then maybe I could get the invite list from whoever puts those together...
...And with its $8 million budget, 60 staffers, its ranking in the top 50 PACs, and proactive ground organization in over 150 races this fall, the HRC is a force that warrants heavy courtship...
...He stops short...
...Though the overtly partisan Log Cabin Republicans have a much smaller membership (10,000), executive director Rich Tafel says a recent survey of his members shows nearly half have been or are members of the HRC...
...They wouldn’t make a list of that available...
...He’s been horrible for gays, but the cocktail-party revolutionaries at the Human Rights Champagne Fund melt because George Stephanopoulos shows up to work his look at their convention...
...The HRC dismisses Michael as a flame-throwing media hound, but his assessment of Clinton’s aptitude for political expediency on gay issues is corroborated by none other than David Mixner, who worked as a ’92 campaign strategist swinging much of the gay vote for Clinton but was later arrested outside the White House for protesting Clinton’s gays-in-the-military cave-in...
...Rob got all the sassy lines about those tacky, bejeweled Republican heifers he saw in San Diego, while Steve wrinkled his nose as straight man, shooting a couldn’t-you-just-puthimin-a-pepper-grinder-and-sprinkle-him-over-salad look at his beloved...
...The largest gay organization in the country (it claims 175,000 members), HRC is a haven for a more subdued Italian-silk and tasseled-loafer set, where well-to-do’s can discuss election strategy and be dazzled by each other’s White House access...
...WE’LL HAVE A GAY OLD TIME By Matt Labash Chicago Billed by its sponsor as the first-ever “gay political convention,” OutVote ’96 promised to be a Tommy Tune musical opening smack in the middle of a pallid season—the week before the Democratic convention and in the same town...
...Most of them don’t...
...This didn’t deter the HRC from dispatching Clinton/ Gore propaganda on the president’s stellar gayrights record—from endorsing the Employment NonDiscrimination Act to eliminating barriers for gays to getting security clearances in the executive branch to setting up a presidential liaison to the gay community...
...It doesn’t exist...
...The 30 recommendations of Bush’s National Commission on AIDS...
...In his new book Stranger Among Friends, Mixner writes of the administration in a chapter entitled “Betrayals”: “If there were gains to be made by supporting us, they would speak out...
...It was marvelous campaign stagecraft...
...More important than votes,” says Tafel, “gays are an ATM machine for politicians, especially with all that West Hollywood and New York money...
...Others, like the very gay Rev...
...Abolition of the U.S...
...The two men, promoting their new tome House and Home, did a little he said/he said schtick that made even George HamiltonAlana Stewart banter look dignified...
...A powerful cabinet-level AIDS czar...
Vol. 1 • September 1996 • No. 49
