R.I.P. Mario Cuomo

"Vote for Cuomo, not the homo!"

Posters bearing that message lined Queens Boulevard in the days leading up to the 1977 primary to determine the Democratic Party's candidate in that year's election for the mayor of New York City.  

Just about anyone who witnessed that campaign will tell you it was one of the ugliest in his or her memory.  I would concur with them:  That message, believe it or not, wasn't even the meanest or nastiest thing one candidate said about another in that race.

But it was almost certainly one of the sleaziest.  Cuomo--Mario, the father of current New York State governor Andrew--always denied that neither he nor any of his staffers had anything to do with creating or posting that message.  I believe him.  So do most other people, even those who were against everything he stood for, or who simply disliked him.  There was no shortage of either of those kinds of people.

Among them was Ed Koch, who won that primary and the election.  Until the day he died nearly two years ago, he insisted that Mario was responsible but later would say that he "forgave" but "didn't forget."

Rumors about Koch's non-heterosexuality followed him throughout his life.  Even in 1977, in the pre-AIDS flowering of the Gay Liberation movement, such an allegation could have derailed his road to Gracie Mansion; any evidence that it was true would have blocked it altogether.  Even in New York City, there were--and still are--homophobes.  

Now, I just happen to be one of those people who believe that Koch was gay but have never cared about it.  I had other reasons for disliking him and his style of governance, none of which had to do with his actual or perceived proclivities or lifestyle.

The irony is, of course, that Mario Cuomo would have been one of the last people to use a charge of homosexuality against Koch, or anyone else.  If anything, Mario was more unabashedly an ally of LGBT people than his son is.  The reason why same-sex marriage and other LGBT-friendly legislation passed under the younger Cuomo's residence in the Governor's Mansion is that the political and social climate has allowed for it.  

Andrew was elected Governor of New York State in 2010, in the middle of Barack Obama's first term as President.  His father, in contrast, earned his first of three gubernatorial election victories in 1982, just when the effects of Ronald Reagan's alliance with Christian fundamentalists--and his profoundly anti-labor (remember: he fired all of the nation's air traffic controllers when they went on strike the previous year) policies--were re-shaping this country's discourse and governance.  Mario's three terms in Albany coincided with the Presidencies of Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as the first two years of Bill Clinton's.  While the latter was nominally a Democrat, he won the 1992 Presidential election by co-opting the policies of Reagan and Bush the Elder.  Mario, on the other hand, stuck to his New Deal Democrat ideals--which, he always said, were an outgrowth of his Christian faith.  

In other words, Andrew has been surfing the tide of history that his father had to swim against.  But, to be fair, it must be said that it wasn't his championing of LGBT rights that cost Mario a fourth term as governor in 1994.  Rather, it was another of his core principles--one that, by the way, caused me to vote for him:  his staunch opposition to capital punishment.  Every year that he was Governor, the State legislature introduced a bill to restore the death penalty in the Empire State.  Every year that he was governor, he vetoed it.  One of the first things his successor, Republican George Pataki, did upon assuming office in 1995 was to sign it.

I think that his steadfast commitment to his principles may have been a major reason why he chose not to run for President, even though his party practically begged him to do so in 1988 and 1992.  If that's the case, his instincts were canny:  Clinton, who stood against much of what Mario believed in, won. 

(Actually, many would argue that Clinton won by not standing for anything at all--and with perhaps-inadvertent help from third-party candidate Ross Perot.  I would not dispute such an argument.)

So, in brief, with Mario Cuomo's death yesterday, this state--and nation--lost who may have been the last true liberal and the last true intellectual, as well as one of the few politicians with any real principles, this country has ever had.  And, oh yes, a champion of LGBT rights before it was fashionable. 

Like Being A Nazi--Or In The KKK

"Coming out" is just like declaring that you're a Nazi, a member of the Ku Klux Klan--or a rapist.

At least, that's what the late General Carl E. Mundy believed.  In 1993, not long after Bill Clinton was elected to his first term, the General--who was then Commandant of the Marine Corps--and the President met with Vice President Al Gore and other White House officials to discuss the issue of gays in the military.  

Not long after that meeting, the Clinton administration would implement "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a policy that, it seemed, made no one happy. (Some might say that's the definition of a compromise.)  To be fair, it might have been the best anyone could do.  After all, Mundy was not alone among the military's top brass in his opposition to letting gays serve, and the military probably could not continue its old policy of banning gays outright.  

DADT was finally repealed in 2010.  

This note from the 1993 meeting was among 10,000 pages of notes released yesterday by the William J. Clinton Presidential library:

What The Repeal Of DADT Won't Change

When "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed, I pointed out--on this blog and to people I know--that it wasn't an unmitigated victory for LGBT who are in, or want to join, the military.

For one thing,  I expressed concerns that DADT's repeal could actually make LGBT people in the military more vulnerable to sexual, and other kinds of, harassment than they were when DADT was the official policy.  Under DADT, some gay servicemembers were "flying under the radar," so to speak, and other servicemembers could only make assumptions about the sexual orientation (or, in some cases, gender identity) of other servicemembers.  No one wants to go through the embarrassment and humiliation, not to mention the legal problems, that could stem from assuming that someone was gay and harassing him or her.  With DADT gone, gay servicemembers can be more easily identified--and harassed or worse.

Also, the repeal of DADT did not clear the way for transgender people to serve in the Armed Forces.   One who identifies as such cannot join; anyone who comes to identify as such, and begins a gender transition, after enlisting is not allowed to remain in uniform.

There is still another problem that the repeal of DADT didn't, and couldn't, address:  The culture of the armed forces is not, and probably never will be, tolerant, much less accepting, of people who are not identifiably heterosexual and cisgender.  The very sorts of traits and values valued and promoted by and in the military are not exactly hospitable to diversity in gender expression and sexuality.  Plus, the emphasis on creating "traditional" families (ironic, when you consider that military families have some of the highest rates of divorce) will probably ensure that the military brass won't be welcoming toward LGBT people.  That Pentagon computers block any website they deem to be LGBT-friendly, while allowing unfettered access to such as Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, ought to tell you something about the military commanders' real attitudes toward LGBTs.

Plus, I'm not optimistic about the outlook for LGBT people in the military now that almost everyone expects Senator Chuck Hagel to be nominated as Secretary of Defense. While he says he is "committed to LGBT military families", his track record suggests otherwise.  In 1998, he opposed then-President Bill Clinton's nomination of James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg on the grounds that Hormel was "aggressively gay"--which, according to Hagel, would prove an impediment to doing the job.  He finally apologized for his slur two weeks ago.  But he still hasn't apologized for derogatory comments he made about Congressional Representative Barney Frank.  

I'm waiting to see just how "committed" Sen. Hagel will be to LGBT military families.  

An Execution of the Eve of Veterans' Day

In a very, very dark sense, it's fitting that John Allen Muhammad was executed on the eve of Veteran's Day. I unequivocally oppose the death penalty--yes, even for someone like Muhammad--and war, for any reason. For one thing, I figure that if a man who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in World War II (but who wrote, ahem, Thank God for the Atom Bomb) could tell me, "There is simply no way to justify one human being to kill another," what argument is there for any war or the death penalty? For another, I have come to understand that the only people who benefit from either one are the men (and, yes, almost all of them are men) who are the powers behind the social, economic and political systems in which both are conducted. There is never any justice for the loved ones of the victims of either monstrosity; there is no such thing as "closure" after such a loss. And revenge is not justice.

Also: No one has ever corrected or prevented a crime by committing the same sort of crime. The "war to end all wars" indeed! Finally, I simply cannot stomach the idea of a state, no matter how benevolent, having the power of life and death over any human being. Now, I know someone is going to say, "Well, would you rather that John Allen Muhammad have the power of life and death over someone else?" Of course I wouldn't. But he didn't have such power once he was captured.

As for war: What in the world are American troops doing in Afghanistan? What were they doing in Iraq--under Bush I or Bush II? And what, pray tell, were we doing in the Balkans region under the Clinton regime? How can anyone who has any respect at all for life put another person in a country where he's hated just because he's there by people who did nothing to harm him or the country he hails from?

Even if you accept the premise that American invlovement in, say, World War II was justified, how can you have so little respect for what your sons, fathers or neighbors accomplished and sacrificed in such a war that you would so cavalierly put them in some place where they face danger for no useful purpose?

I am thinking again about the story "Gunnar Berg" posted on his blog. How many people would refuse to fight, or set their "enemies" free if they could see the common humanity they share: That the desires and dreams of their enemies aren't so different from their own, and that perhaps their adversaries' children are, in some ways, like their own. Then perhaps they would understand the truism that war is between brothers. And that is the reason why nobody wins, ever.

Plus, in killing someone, you place him and whatever he represents above all else. Muhammad, as a result of his execution, will have had more attention paid to him than any of his victims ever had. And in a war, so much effort and materiel go into tracking down and killing "ememies" that those enemies take precedence over everything else--whether it's the economy, education or one's own loved ones