From: rrizzo@BBN.COM (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: The gay 90s begin!
Keywords: Clinton lifting the ban, Harry Truman, common sense
Date: 28 Jan 93 04:08:04 GMT
Reply-To: rrizzo@BBN.COM (Ron Rizzo)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
NNTP-Posting-Host: archive.bbn.com




While I'm still here....

We seem to be the center of attention these days!  Did you see Maria
Shriver's TV hour last night on gay families, marriages and dealing
with homophobia in everyday life?  One of the "case studies" happens
to be one of the President's leading staffers.  He came out to the
Clintons 16 years ago, the first straightpeople he told.  Another "case"
is the recently appointed editor-in-chief of the country's leading
hip-hop magazine.

Tonight's Boston Globe has articles on:

	- the overwhelming support in the Massachusetts congressional
	  delegation for rescinding the military ban on lesbians & gays

	- Ted Kennedy agreeing to sponsor a gay rights bill in the US
	  Senate

It also has a column by Globe staffer Thomas Oliphant demythologizing
worries about Clinton's "slim political capital" and the political costs 
for a new president of lifting the ban.  Here are excerpts (quoted without
permission):

	HARD-HEADED SQUISHINESS ON GAYS IN THE MILITARY

	Washington - It is said here by otherwise serious people that
	Congress could by legislation overturn an executive order by
	President Clinton ending the armed forces' overt discrimination
	against Americans who are gay.

	Baloney.  Such legislation would be vetoed in an instant, and say
	what else you will about Congress, two-thirds of its members are
	not eager to be recorded as bigots.

	It is also said here, again by the presumably serious, that the
	Senate - perhaps even in a few days - might attach an amendment
	banning homosexuals from service to some pending bill and thus
	accomplish the same result.

	Baloney.  Despite what you may have heard from low-balling
	Clintonians and posturing bigots, the Senate could easily reject
	such an amendment, and even if it didn't, the scheme would fail
	in the House, where rules requiring amendments to be germane to
	the legislative vehicle to which they are attached are strict.

	In short - assuming only that Clinton has a backbone - his sensible
	two-stage plan to end the last vestige of formal bigotry in the
	armed services is more rather than less on track.

There's another matter that ought to be staring everyone in the face, a very
close historical analogy that makes qualms about lifting the ban ludicrous
and "pragmatic" political arguments against it specious in the extreme.

Namely, Harry Truman's executive order in the 1940s to end racial segregation
in the US Army, which many historians are willing to entertain as Truman's
greatest single achievement as president.

A lot of people now hollering about Clinton's lifting of the ban took Truman's
name in vain all during last fall.  But since Election Day not a whisper has
been heard about the Missourian.

Does anyone know the legal and political facts about Truman's famous executive
order?

I don't know, but I'd be willing to guess a majority of legislators in the 
1940s were probably opposed to racial integration, and especially to a 
President forcing by fiat the integration of one of the armed services.

I doubt the Supreme Court would have favored it, even though not too many
years later (1954) then-lawyer Thurgood Marshall successfully argued before
the Court in Brown vs. Board of Education for an end to racial segregation
in the public schools.  (By the way, what I hear is that as many as 5 Supremes
want to retire, an automatic majority for any president appointing replace-
ments.  Whether "ultra/conservative" justices have the moral fiber to hang
on through sickness and old age as crusty liberals managed for years at a
stretch remains to be seen.  I think that, true to form, they'll wimp out.) 

I certainly think a majority of public opinion would have been opposed to
Truman, and, even more, simply unwilling to change the military status quo.
I doubt the brass, the officers corps, or even the majority of enlisted men
& women at the time would have agreed with Truman.

Rarely does politics and history afford such close, neat parallels.

So much for political calculation.  The only resort left to a bigoted pundit
is to deny the analogy, by invoking some of the foolish kinds reasons you
hear when people refuse to draw obvious parallels, such as "gays amd lesbians
aren't a true minority" or the irrelevant "gays and lesbians can hide" or the
odd "it's an insult to black Americans." 

I'm watching and counting political heads.  I'll remember who said and did
what in the august halls of our federal government.

Bemused,
Ron