Most G/L organizations supported Gore because of his public support for ENDA and other gay-related policies. Log Cabin Republicans, a G/L GOP group, ran a vigorous campaign for Bush. Kevin Ivers, Log Cabin’s communications director, said that it’s too early to divine Bush’s intentions regarding the gay and lesbian community.
The skepticism surrounding Bush’s feelings toward the G/L community stems largely from his actions while serving as governor of Texas. During his six years in office, Bush blocked passage of hate crimes legislation and seemed uninterested in including gays and lesbians in what he has frequently referred to as his brand of “compassionate conservatism,” according to leaders of the G/L Rights Lobby of Texas. During the campaign, Bush declined to answer questions about ENDA, except to say that he was generally opposed to “special rights” for gays and lesbians. Frank told Dallas Voice that gays and lesbians should expect to lose most of the important progressive policies that were enacted by executive order during Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House. “We will lose the appointments of openly gay and lesbian people in the federal government,” Frank said. “Bush understands that’s important, because he’s already appointing prominent African-Americans, women and Hispanics. In February, Bush told Time magazine “an openly known homosexual is somebody who probably wouldn’t share my philosophy.” There is some confusion about the president-elect’s stance on this issue as following a meeting with Log Cabin members during the Republican primaries, Bush said that he would not rule out appointing gay people, but would not appoint “Activists” who were interested in pursuing their own agenda. Frank also pointed to other Clinton executive actions affecting gays and lesbians that Bush might choose to abolish, i.e., Clinton liberalized U.S. immigration policies to allow G/L foreign nationals working in the U.S. to bring their partners here, he rescinded an Eisenhower-era order denying top security clearances to gays and lesbians and he banned anti-gay discrimination in the federal government’s hiring policies. “Those policies are probably gone [under Bush],” Frank said. Throughout the election, many G/L leaders stressed that the next president may have the opportunity to reshape the U.S. Supreme Court. Several justices may retire or succumb to ageing in the next few years.
It is also no secret in Washington that Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most rigid conservative ideologue, covets the position of Chief Justice now held by William Rehnquist. Bush has said that he admires Scalia, who is adamantly opposed to gay equality. According to many legal scholars, it was no coincidence that it was Scalia who fought the hardest among the justices to prevent the manual recount of Florida votes that could have put Al Gore in the White House. “The big impact of this election is that we’ve probably lost the Supreme Court for my lifetime,” said Dave Fleisher of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It would be a miracle for all of the centrist judges to hang in there for another four years.” Frank noted, “We lost the Boy Scout decision [in the Supreme Court] 5 to 4. If Al Gore had won, we could have won that 5-to-4 or 6-to-3.” Another important gain under Clinton was the appointment of a White House liaison to the gay and lesbian community. Bush has not signaled his intentions on that subject, but many doubt that the position will be continued. Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that lobbies for gay and lesbian issues on Capitol Hill, agreed with Ivers that it’s still too early to tell what direction Bush will go on gay issues.
“We at HRC will try to reach out and build relationships with the new administration,” Stachelberg said. “I don’t think that right now we ought to close our shop and head for the hills. There are some opportunities. We’re under no illusion that it’s going to be easy, but it’s always going to be a challenge. My sense is that Bush doesn’t want to rock the boat if he doesn’t have to.” The Bush transition team has been floating the name of former Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana as their most likely appointee as Secretary of Defense. Coats’ record on gay and lesbian equality is extremely negative, a bad sign for those hoping that Vice President-elect Dick Cheney’s suspected view of gays in the military would prevail. Cheney has an openly lesbian daughter and said in 1991 that the total ban that existed on gays in the armed forces at that time was “a bit of an old chestnut.”
For Fleisher and others, the lesson of the campaign is that the gay and lesbian vote makes a difference given the present polarization of American voters. “If we’re serious about increasing our power, we have to ID people who are with us but don’t vote, and then figure out a way to change their voting behavior,” Fleisher said. “If you can build lists of pro-gay voters, then you can use those lists again and again and build on them. In close states like Florida and New Hampshire, if we organize in a more rigorous and effective way, then the outcomes will be different. The gay community could have changed this election.”
Almost everyone interviewed for this article said that state and local organizing is more important than ever before. “Almost every state legislature comes back into session after the first of the year,” Elliot said. “State and local politics are where the action is.” To that end, both the Lesbian Gay Rights Lobby of Texas and the Texas Gender Advocacy and Information Network and the Lesbian Gay Rights Lobby of Texas have scheduled lobby days to encourage gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Texans to visit their legislators during the upcoming session of the state legislature, which convenes next month. For more information on those groups’ lobby days, call LGRL at 412-474-5475 and TGAIN at 713-778-4662. Reactions to Bush Victory
Log Cabin is cheering, HRC will be professional, NGL won't recognize the new president, and other activists are dispirited, depressed and angry. The gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), having been rebuffed by George W. Bush while he wooed the religious right, at one point in the campaign staged a radio advertising campaign against him while many of the group's members supported his Republican challenger John McCain. But Bush went on to meet first with his own handpicked group of gay Republicans and later to mend fences with Log Cabin, and once he was officially nominated LCR spoke out strongly in support of his candidacy. On December 13, LCR issued the following statement headlined, " A Time for Unity: Election 2000 Comes to a Decisive End": "We applaud both Vice President Gore and President-elect Bush for their gracious speeches to the nation this evening. The election is over, and it is time for the nation to unite behind our next President.
"We stand at the brink of a new administration, after what was a long and arduous process for both sides in this election. We now have an almost evenly split Congress and a narrowly elected new President. The election results, in fact, reflect a nation that is not bitterly divided, but one that is remarkably united behind sound, centrist principles and beliefs. The American people want leaders who work together to advance these centrist principles, which put bitter partisan and ideological interests aside and foster bipartisan solutions to the problems they are most concerned with. Gay and lesbian Americans are no less eager for such leadership, and no less deserving of having it.
"We have an enormous opportunity ahead of us, and we should seize it together. We must build a truly bipartisan movements, and reach out to our new Republican President, reach out to a much wider spectrum of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and build a broader consensus on issues and policy than ever attempted before. To be successful requires compromise and new approaches from all of us, opening our minds to new ideas and concepts perhaps never before considered. Most importantly, it requires a common ground acknowledgment from all of us that our nation comes first, and that we owe it to our country to build a truly bipartisan movement going forward from this moment in history.
Human Rights Campaign
The ostensibly non-partisan Human Rights Campaign (HRC) bet all its chips on a Gore victory. HRC executive director Elizabeth Birch worked with the Democratic Party platform committee and gave a nationally televised address to the Democratic National Convention. On December 14, HRC issued the following short statement "In the Wake of Election Finality HRC Pledges to Continue to Work for Equality in New Political Environment: Election Outcome to Provide Challenges, But Not Insurmountable. We know there are challenges ahead, but HRC has long proven its ability to operate professionally and effectively on shifting political terrain," said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch. "We will continue to work in a strong, bipartisan fashion to further our progress. With challenge comes opportunity, and we will seek to advance, not retreat, from issues important to our community." National Gay Lobby
The Internet-based National Gay Lobby (NGL) on December 13 issued an open letter to its members with the note that, "The important issue now is not whether George W. Bush or Al Gore, or a Republican or a Democrat, becomes our next president. For the first time in our nation's history that I am aware of, not only the outcome, the basic honesty of a presidential election is in question. This is the issue upon which our collective attention should be riveted. The important questions now are how will Americans deal with an individual whose right to assume the presidency is shadowed with even a hint of doubt, and what will we do to ensure that such a situation never happens again.
"State courts may rule on points of state law and the U.S. Supreme Court may hand down decisions on the constitutional validity of laws and court actions, but in the end it is the American people who will decide if George W. Bush is our president. As long as he isn't yours or mine, he will never be ours. And, if we are steadfast in our resolve to deny this pretender all but the outward trappings of the presidency, neither will anyone who in the future, through his or her actions or as a result of actions undertaken on his or her behalf, places the legitimacy of their election in doubt. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, at noon on January 20, 2001 and until the lawful election of or the appointment of a constitutionally identified successor to William Jefferson Clinton, the office of President of the United States of America will for the first time in history become vacant." Speaking Personally
Latina lesbian activist Gloria Nieto, who also addressed the Democratic National Convention, was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 14 regarding minority voters' loyalty to Gore, saying, "For him to stand up and say the system was wrong is what many people of color have been saying for years."
Gay journalist Rex Wockner included the following segment in his regular weekly "The Wockner Wire" feature for PlanetOut.com, to be posted December 15, under the subhead "Lost Faith": "The USA is as corrupt as any Third World banana republic. The messy butterfly ballot in Palm Beach, excessive carding of minority voters in Miami, Republican doctoring of absentee ballot applications, Florida's top election official being Bush's top campaign official, thousands of never-counted votes, partisan U.S. Supreme Court justices with family conflicts of interest, and then, finally, a declaration by the Supremes, after they've delayed everything repeatedly, that we've run out of time! I'm dispirited, depressed and angry. Any faith I may have had in America is history. In a few months, it will probably hit me just how grave a realization this is."
Gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile lambasted the U.S. Supreme Court for its actions leading to Gore's concession, in a lengthy opinion piece posted December 13 on Gay.com entitled " The Ultimate Marionettes”. He wrote in part that, "If such a court decision occurred in a despotic banana republic, where a high tribunal circumvented the people's vote and installed a leader who would help keep its grip on power, we'd have a name for it -- and it wouldn't be 'closure,' as many of the access-driven TV pundits have been dutifully calling what is nothing but an unbridled abuse of power. Bush has been described as a puppet on the hands of Daddy Bush's henchmen, big corporations and the religious right, but now the curtain has been raised on the Republican Party's five world-class marionettes on the US. Supreme Court. The idea -- and it was only an idea -- of an impartial judiciary! is dead and buried, as Justice John Paul Stevens effectively said in his stinging dissent from the majority that ended the Florida recount for good."
