Religious conservatives instinctively understand the damage George W. Bush is inflicting on the dying and discredited anti-gay aspects of their world-view.
By appointing Scott Evertz, an openly gay man, to head the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, Bush has crossed an important political and cultural threshold. Incredibly, some gay leaders and writers - who once predicted Bush would never hire an openly gay person - have missed the significance of this moment.
Just as it took a scion of wealth to bring us a New Deal, a Southerner to end segregation, an ardent anti-Communist to open diplomatic relations with China, and a Democrat to end welfare as we knew it, it will take a conservative Republican to cement the gains made by the gay civil rights movement over the years. Bush's action both reflects and reinforces the emerging national consensus that gays should have an equal place in the life of the nation.
Evertz becomes the first openly gay person ever appointed by a Republican president. He also becomes the first gay person to lead the federal AIDS office. Either of these alone would be significant; together, they are a watershed.
The appointment not only proves Bush's oft-professed willingness to hire people regardless of sexual orientation, but it also signals the importance he places on combating AIDS. Just before the Evertz appointment, Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that AIDS is a national security issue. When Republicans call something a matter of national security, you know we mean business.
Evertz will report directly to Margaret La Montagne, Bush's domestic policy advisor, which means he will have access to the highest levels of decisionmaking in the White House. He will also be part of a task force of heavy-hitters - including Secretary of State Colin Powell and gay-friendly Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson - who will address the long-ignored international aspects of the AIDS epidemic.
It's instructive to review the reaction of some gay politicos who toiled mightily to find fault with Bush despite the appointment. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the organizational embodiment of the gay left in Washington, conceded it was "an historic, positive step," but devoted more than half of its press release on the subject to criticism of Bush's proposed budget freezing or barely increasing some elements of federal AIDS funding. This reaction was predictable.
Far more disappointing was the response of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), usually a more sensible and centrist voice for gays in Washington. HRC spokesperson David Smith pooh-poohed the appointment of Evertz, comparing it with the alleged 152 openly gay appointees under Bill Clinton.
Yet none of the Clinton appointees served in a position more critical to gays than the one Evertz will hold. Few, if any, of Clinton's gay appointees had the direct access to the White House that Evertz will have. Personally, I'd rather have one openly gay person serving as the AIDS czar than a hundred appointees under Clinton, the most important of whom labored over patents, housing, and relations with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
The most tortured reaction from the left criticized the appointment because it supposedly represents - I love this - identity politics. Thus, "Queer in America" author Michelangelo Signorile, whose career has skillfully exploited identity politics, has suddenly found Jesus on the issue: "[T]here are pitfalls and limitations to identity-based politics," he announced in a column, "and we're about to find out the hard way."
Similarly, a board member for the Milwaukee gay community center worried the appointment would reinforce stereotypes about gay men: "I almost would have rather heard that a woman was heading [the AIDS office]."
Never mind that many of the country's top experts on AIDS are gay men (who are still disproportionately afflicted by the disease) and that not one of Clinton's three appointees to the position was gay. For people like Signorile, Bush is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
Religious conservatives have a far better grasp of what's happening now on gay issues in the GOP. They were furious at news of the Evertz appointment and became downright apoplectic when it was learned, just days later, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had hired another openly gay man to screen applicants for jobs in the Defense Department.
James Dobson, an influential evangelical leader, charged that Bush is "creating confusion and frustration for millions of pro-family, social conservatives." The Family Research Council complained that the appointment "sends the wrong message [about homosexuality] to the American people." Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition indicted the Bush administration for being "absolutely disloyal" to religious conservatives and for "stab[bing] us in the back." Robert Knight, on behalf of Concerned Women for America, accused Bush of "advancing the homosexual agenda through appointments."
The most noteworthy reaction on the right came from Republican leaders in Congress, who said ... nothing. Knee-jerk homophobes in the GOP today, like hold-out segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, are increasingly isolated politically.
When the history of the gay civil rights movement is written, the spring of 2001 will mark an important season of consolidation. It was then, the history will say, that a Republican president finally had the courage to defy the anti-gay rogues in his own party. Though such progress is reversible, Bush, cautiously but perceptibly, is truly "advancing the homosexual agenda," which is, after all, about nothing more than equality.