Washington Blade - January 23, 2004

Every time the Democrats have a contested presidential primary, it gets harder for gay and lesbian voters to choose which candidate is most supportive of our civil rights. It's what you'd call a nice problem.

Just 12 years ago, a little known governor from Arkansas made history by actively reaching out to gay support, and Bill Clinton was rewarded in the 1992 primary with "pink dollars " and gay votes, especially among the activists who play an outsized role in picking the party nominee.

Four years later, that support translated into a decidedly mixed record for the incumbent: some important executive orders, including one prohibiting anti-gay discrimination in the federal workforce, and a handful of mid-tier appointments of openly gay officials. But Clinton bungled gays in the military, accepting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell " despite his '92 campaign promise to end the ban, and he signed the notorious Defense of Marriage Act.

In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign issued an early endorsement of Vice President Al Gore, who got outflanked on gay issues by upstart challenger Bill Bradley. Pressure from the former New Jersey senator nudged Gore the frontrunner into improving his positions on gay issues, including full repudiation of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell. "

Bradley even advocated amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect gays not just in employment but in housing and public accommodations, only to see Gore use the issue cynically as a "wedge " with black leaders.

For gay Democrats, the choice that year was between their champion (Bradley) or the prohibitive favorite (Gore).

GAY DEMS FACE a similar quandary in 2004, except this time the field is more crowded and the choice that much more difficult. Coming out of the always-surprising Iowa caucuses, four candidates remain viable for the nomination: Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. All four are, by any measure, pro-gay and would represent a marked improvement over George W. Bush.

Of the four, John Edwards is the least viable and among the least supportive on gay issues. His record, after only one term in the Senate, is spartan, and he is the only one of the four who has failed to embrace civil unions for same-sex couples.

Most telling, this candidate who waxes poetic on the stump about the "politics of the possible, " whatever that is, has already on gay issues resorted to the "politics of the wedge " - much as Gore did four years ago. When Dean said he intended to push the debate in the South beyond "guns, God and gays, " Edwards faulted the New Englander for ducking a "values " debate important to his region.

John Kerry was the big winner in Iowa and is enjoying a bounce in New Hampshire. But the senator with the long face has a mixed record on gay issues and has done nothing to suggest he will show leadership on our issues.

Among gay audiences, Kerry points out that he was the only senator up for reelection in 1996 to vote against the politically popular Defense of Marriage Act. But his GOP opponent that year was Gov. Bill Weld, whose record on gay issues was far more supportive than Kerry's.

Asked this week to defend his DOMA vote after President Bush vowed support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, Kerry told ABC News, "I have the same position as the president, " even though Kerry has said he is actually opposed to such an amendment. Earlier this year, Kerry cited procreation as the primary reason marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, even though his own marriage to heiress Teresa Heinz is childless.

During his tenure in the Senate, Kerry has also cast some questionable, and downright insulting votes, including a prohibition on immigration for people who are HIV-positive, a federal crime (with jail time) for HIV-positive healthcare providers who fail to disclose their status, and - most upsetting - a "no promo homo " measure that barred the use of federal funds in schools to "promote homosexuality. "

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam vet, says he supports a full repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, " but as recently as the 2000 Democratic primary he took Gore and Bradley to task publicly for the same position. At the time, Kerry said rather bizarrely that allowing gays to serve openly was "a bad idea " because commanders needed the discretion to remove gays from particular units if they endangered unit cohesion.

A NUMBER OF gay Democratic activists jumped aboard early on the campaign of Howard Dean, drawn by his decision to support and sign the first-of-its-kind legislation in 2000 that created civil unions. But Dean's role in the raucous debate that surrounded that law is less than perfect.

We should not forget that Vermont's highest court had ordered the governor and legislature to adopt full marriage or its equivalent, leaving Dean only three real choices: (1) defiance, a la obstructionist Southern governors who rejected racial desegregation; (2) support for full-fledged marriage; or (3) support for a separate but "equal " institution.

Dean chose the easiest of the three, compromise, rejecting gay activists who argued (then and now) that anything other than marriage is inherently unequal. In Massachusetts today, where that same debate is repeating itself, activists are labeling the Dean position, now favored by the Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, as anti-gay.

Many of the gay activists who have so ardently supported Dean's candidacy have not even given the race a second look since the late entry of WESLEY CLARK, the former NATO commander whose positions on gay issues are indistinguishable from those of the former Vermont governor.

Clark's advantages over Dean are numerable: His military record and upbeat campaign make him much more electable, especially in regions where Dean's angry rhetoric falls flat, as it did in Iowa. As a former military leader, Clark speaks with greater authority on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell " than Dean, who skipped Vietnam over a supposed bad back to go skiing for six months.

Like Dean, Clark talks with what appears to be complete comfort about gay issues and has been accessible to the gay press, including not just this newspaper but the Advocate, and Sirius Satellite Radio's OutQ network. In each of those interviews, he has not just taken positions but promised "leadership. "

Dean's angry and divisive rhetoric is red meat to hardcore Democrats, but a President Dean is likely to polarize politics much like Clinton and Bush before him, and our agenda is likely to go nowhere in that political climate. As a centrist, Clark has managed to sharply criticize the Bush administration while not dividing up the country into "us vs. them. "

When Dean and the Vermont legislators who supported civil unions faced reelection, conservatives launched a movement called "Take Back Vermont " aimed at ousting them all from office. Dean has curiously adopted a modified version of the same divisive mantra, "Take Back America, " for his presidential campaign.

After four years of a president who has been a divider, not a uniter, despite his claims to the contrary, the Democrats need a nominee, and this country needs a president, who knows how to bring us together, while still doing right by gay and lesbian Americans. Wes Clark is that candidate.

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