The gay movement, Linda Hirshman writes in her review of Dustin Lance Black’s new play 8, never had a Truman:
Likening the gay movement’s triumphs in federal court and the military to the civil rights movement’s accomplishments obscures the real meaning of what the gay movement has achieved. And how America has changed in the six decades since Harry Truman courageously signed that order and Justice Earl Warren persuaded the Supreme Court into unanimity on the unconstitutionality of racial caste. No politician—no president and no Supreme Court justice—put his or her political capital and power behind the gay victories in the military and the courthouse. The gay movement won them, and continues to win them, largely by itself. It’s a bootstraps movement.
That there would be no Truman became alarmingly clear in 1993. At the time, the military had a policy that homosexuality was grounds for discharge from the military, period. In numerous public statements, at fundraisers in the gay community and elsewhere, then-candidate Bill Clinton had honorably, but, in retrospect, naively, promised to end the policy. Gay activist, and longtime Friend of Bill, David Mixner, famously called him “our Truman.” But when the resistance, first from the religious right and then from more mainstream players, like Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, surfaced, Clinton folded and signed on to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Worse, Congress made the policy a law. David Mixner chained himself to the White House fence.
Over the course of the next 18 years, the gay movement undid DADT itself. The two people left in the movement headquarters when DADT was passed, Dixon Osburn and Michelle Benecke, borrowed a couple of computers and started the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. At first the SLDN had the modest goal of just stopping the military from “disappearing” the service members it thought were gay in enforcing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Get a lawyer in, they figured. Citizens have a right to a lawyer. Get a lawyer and you start to look like a citizen. Citizens don’t disappear.
Oh, we had a Truman, all right, and Babe Paley never forgave him.
So… the civil rights movement didn’t win its own victories? Black people just sat around helplessly, waiting for brave, clever white men like Truman to save them? This is the claim you’re endorsing?
The end of DADT is a great thing. That doesn’t excuse this pernicious exercise in ahistorical backslapping. This article could have stood perfectly well without the spurious comparison to the CRM. Anyone who knows the first thing about the latter knows that every tiny advance in civil equality had to be fought for every inch of the way.
LOL @1
@2, I get what you’re saying. I do. But try thinking about it this way: Truman and Warren were powerful people who helped move forward the cause of racial equality. No, they didn’t do all the heavy lifting. I’m no historian, but my guess is that at least Truman and possibly Warren had to have some heavy convincing to take the actions they did–we don’t know the names of those who did the convincing. A ton of groundwork was laid before the landmark steps occurred.
But where are the powerful people taking dramatic action for the cause of gay rights? It’s been more than 40 years since Stonewall. Is Ted Olsen the best we can do? He’s cool and all, but he’s no Truman.
@2 – The absolutes are unnecessary here. Nobody’s saying anything even remotely like what you’re suggesting. Mostly, what @4 said, but settle down. The point of the statement that we don’t have a Truman on this case is that we don’t have the powerful political allies that the previous civil rights movement had.
@4 Good point with Olsen. As a big shot Republican lawyer and former solicitor general, he’s probably the highest-ranking politician to put his career on the line for gay rights. No one near the power of President Truman has taken significant steps for gay rights. Obama has done some but gay rights in 2011 is much more publicly acceptable than civil rights in 1948.
It’s a little simplistic to act like the repeal of DADT had nothing to do with powerful government officials, and everything to do with gay activists. Certainly community-based and grass roots organizing drove gay rights forward, but in the end of the day repeal still required the president’s signature. Much in the same the president will be required to take action on repealing DOMA. Her argument is too pat, too neat, and too simplistic. It’s a fine editorial, but wouldn’t pass muster in a history journal.
I always like to remind people to read the timeline of the military’s desegregation. President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. The Navy and the Air Force complied fairly quickly. The Army and the Marines dragged their heels. In 1953 – 1953! – 95% of black soldiers were serving in integrated units. Not 100%. 95%.
Anyway, just a reminder that it was a difficult and protracted fight. A lot of people think that Truman just decided it was going to be one way, and snapped his fingers. Not by a long shot.
Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama are both personally responsible for the repeal of DADT. Remember how it was, like, THE last thing that the outgoing Congress did last year, before the insane wing of the Republican Party took over?
It’s thanks to Lieberman and Obama that Congress acted when it did. Without them, we’d be waiting another 2 years at least. Of course it’s thanks to the tireless efforts of activists that L & O stepped up when they did – but they DID step up.
The gay rights movement got it’s strength from every Pride march of courageous people in every town, big and small. All those thousands of people who had the courage to pass anti-discrimination laws in towns big and small. All in the face of lies and liars, and hate and violence because they each knew the truth about themselves and the people they loved. And they voted. And they came out to friends and family. And they raised money. And it became a river that cannot be stopped. There may be setbacks, our brave forebearers saw many, and heartbreak, we saw many, but we will never stop fighting because we have truth and character and heroes. And our enemies have only hate and lies. And hate and lies cannot win the war.
I don’t read this editorial as discrediting the CRM as just waiting around on white politicians to take care of things. I do read it as criticising present day officials for a lack of political courage.
Loving V. Virginia was decided in favor of equality when such a stand was very unpopular with American citizens. We are still trying to shove our legal system–inch by inch–toward equality, and the poll numbers are roughly 50/50.
Back then our leaders did some leading. Today, they wait until the right thing is also the safe and easy thing.
You say, “triumph for the gay movement”; I say, “self-serving way to score faux-lefty points while also increasing the supply of working-class people enticed into dying in murderous military adventures.”
@12, and I say you’re a false-dichotomy philosopher who thinks one cannot favor a cause without being indifferent to all others, or celebrate a victory without contributing to the defeat of everything else. Binary thinking, I think it’s called. And it’s wrong, of course. Reality triumphs despite your passé pessimism.