Recently, and quite late to the game, I had the opportunity to see the excellent HBO documentary, Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I probably don't have to tell you that it was reportage and analysis on the history of gays in the military, the establishment of the â┚¬Å”Don't Ask, Don't Tellâ┚¬Â ban on gays and lesbians serving openly, and the subsequent repeal of that nefarious and insulting policy.
In the HBO doc, Democrats are universally cast as heroes. (John McCain comes off as enormously mean-spirited and a little nutty.) And Democrats are, in fact, the ones who have actually done positive things for gay and lesbian Americans.
The Clinton White House took a lot of flack from both sides for the torturous dance that was (mercifully, past tense) â┚¬Å”Don't Ask, Don't Tell.â┚¬Â Without debating that, gays and lesbians achieved political prominence during the Clinton/Gore administration, and were rewarded with recognition and action. Out gays and lesbians were appointed to high office. Real money was finally mobilized to battle the AIDS epidemic. The administration consistently said the right things in public, even when political reality dulled much of the tangible progress we sought.
More importantly, even back then we had the unerring sense that the two most powerful couplesâ┚¬â€ÂBill and Hillary, Al and Tipper (we can't forget the Tipper)â┚¬â€Âbelieved in their hearts that gays and lesbians were fully equal and fully invested in the American experiment. It's an old joke that Bill Clinton was the first black president. I always think of him as the first gay one, too.
It's easy to forget where we had been a short time before. Gay men fought and lost a war in the 80s and early 90s against both a disease and an uncaring Federal government. Ronald Reagan and George Bush watched passively like it was happening on television. For them, of course, it was. At the height of the epidemic, Reagan never referred to AIDS publicly.
But with baby boomers in the White House, we had the sense that they were actually friends with out gay people. They understood what being gay is really about because, as is always the case, knowing a gay person is the highest predictor of believing in full equality for gays and lesbians. (For defenders of Nancy Reagan, Rock Hudson was in the closet so he doesn't count.)
Such ideasâ┚¬â€Âthat knowing a gay person makes you (shock!) more gay-supportiveâ┚¬â€Âare table stakes these days. Gays and lesbians are more visible and more accepted these days than at any time in our history. There were close to 500 openly gay delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotteâ┚¬â€Âat least one from every state. These are truly salad days in the fight for equal rights, with more victories to come.
This next generation won't stand for anything less. I've seen it with my own two eyes: for those under age 25, being anti-gay subjects you to the ridicule of your peers.
And so that leads me to our current election. The LGBT community voted for President Obama in 2008 in astonishingly, historically high numbers. Since then, he has been criticized by some gays and lesbians for not doing enough to support us, or for not doing it quickly enough.
It should be easy now, the thinking goes, to push through all of things that gays and lesbians want; to make us fully equal in the eyes of the law. We scratched your back, Mr. President. We really did.
Some gays and lesbians I've spoken to, and whose posts I read on Facebook, even suggest we should sit this election out since the Democratic incumbent did so little for us.
But here's the deal: The most dangerous dog is the one that's mortally wounded, and that's true for ideas as well. History is turning the page on a generation of people who maintain crazy, disproven notions about our community. And they know itâ┚¬â€Âor at least they sense it. So the polemic gets louder, the messages more polarizing, the screeching more unpredictable and hateful. It's the last flash of a star that is falling out of orbit.
Problem is, those people can still manage to get elected. And so they must be dealt with. The American political vessel is a battleship, not a speedboat; it can't make hairpin turns.
The president hasn't moved as quickly on a great many thingsâ┚¬â€ÂLGBT and otherwiseâ┚¬â€Âas many of us hoped he would. But he's on the right side of us, and the right side of history, and that surely beats the alternative.
