Gay and Lesbian Rights Topic Guide

Upon Clinton’s inauguration, approximately a dozen White House staffers and administration appointees, many of whom had worked in his campaign and as part of his transition team, were openly gay. During his eight years in office, President Clinton would appoint openly gay men and lesbians to all levels of government, including judicial and cabinet appointments and top Executive Branch positions requiring Senate confirmation. He nominated more than 150 openly gay and lesbian appointees, including:

• James Hormel, U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, the first openly gay U.S. Ambassador;
• Fred Hochberg, Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration, the first openly gay person appointed Deputy in a Cabinet-level agency;
• Bruce Lehman, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate;
• Roberta Achtenberg, Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, the first openly lesbian woman confirmed by the U.S. Senate;
• Virginia Apuzzo, Assistant to the President for Management and Administration, the first openly gay or lesbian Assistant to the President; and many others.

“…people who wish to do so should be able to serve their country if they are willing to conform to the high standards of the military… the emphasis should be always on people's conduct, not their status.”

President Clinton, DADT Announcement, July 19, 1993

Until 1993, non-heterosexual people were explicitly barred from serving in the American armed forces, and homosexuality was considered both a disqualifying trait from recruitment and grounds for court-martial and discharge from service. President Clinton campaigned on a promise to end the prohibition against gay and lesbian people serving in the military. But once in office, the administration’s efforts were quickly met with strong opposition from members of Congress and the armed forces. The compromise the administration sought left feelings of betrayal among both the gay community and the military community. The resulting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy technically permitted gay and lesbian individuals to serve in the military, but did not allow them to do so openly, and banned “homosexual activity.” President Clinton announced the new policy knowing it would raise concerns on both sides of the debate, but said he believed it was “the right thing to do, and the right way to do it.”

Button associated with gays and lesbians in the military. 2009.015. William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum collection.

The full name of the policy at the time was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue.” The "Don't Ask" provision mandated that military officials not ask about or require service members and applicants to disclose their sexual orientation. The "Don't Tell" provision stated that a service member could be discharged for proclaiming to be a homosexual person, or indicating an intent or a tendency to engage in homosexual activities. The "Don't Pursue" provision established the threshold required to initiate an investigation. A "Don't Harass" provision was later added to the policy, seeking to ensure the military would not allow harassment, spurious investigations, or violence against service members, including threats to claim a service member was homosexual in order to put them at risk of discharge. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was eventually repealed on September 20, 2011. According to a report published in 2024, the Department of Defense estimates that approximately 13,500 service members were discharged as a result of this policy.

On April 27, 1953, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, which set criteria and guidelines for investigating federal employees and potential federal employees to determine whether they posed a national security risk. Whereas President Truman’s earlier Executive Order 9835 of 1947 primarily focused on an individual’s perceived loyalty to the United States in order to weed out communist influences, Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450 expanded the criteria used to determine a “security risk” to include more general estimations of the person’s character, stability, and reliability. Its language was broad: "Any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion."

The criteria of the order relied on pathologizing queer identities as “sexual perversion,” and the presumption that gay and lesbian individuals could be targets of blackmail by foreign powers because they lived closeted lives and therefore posed an automatic security risk . Executive Order 10450 led to the firing of over five thousand federal employees on the suspicion of being homosexual, and led to thousands of job applicants being barred from federal jobs. The order was a result of, and contributed to, the Lavender Scare of the 1950s.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12968 was the largest overhaul of the criteria for the issuance of security clearances in 40 years. Alongside changes in financial data disclosure requirements and the appeal process, the text of the order’s non-discrimination language reads that “The United States Government does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation in granting access to classified information,” and states that no interference or objections about suitability for access to classified information could be raised based solely on the sexual orientation of the employee.

Response to EO 12968 was mixed. Equal rights groups embraced the order, as they had been lobbying for just such an executive order since Clinton took office. Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement, that this executive order was “an important step toward ending governmentally-sanctioned job discrimination against gay and lesbian people.” At the same time, the conservative Family Research Council issued a statement denouncing the order, stating that homosexuality was “a pathology with very serious implications for a person's behavior… a behavior that is associated with a lot of anti-security markers such as drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity and violence."

The issue of legal recognition for same-sex marriages became an increasingly central facet of the fight for equal rights in the 1980s, as the HIV/AIDS pandemic brought questions of inheritance, visitation rights, and survivor’s benefits to the forefront. In 1993, the Supreme Court of Hawaii issued a ruling in the ongoing case, Baehr v. Miike, that the state’s denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples constituted sex discrimination, and required justification by the state to be considered valid. The state created the Commission on Sexual Orientation and the Law to study the issue of granting benefits to same-sex couples, which issued its report on December 8, 1995, recommending that the legislature allow same-sex marriages. The following year, the presiding judge ruled that the state should issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Though the ruling was stayed and voters of Hawaii would pass an amendment to the state constitution in 1998 limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, the case raised concerns among those who did not support same-sex marriage. They were concerned that, were one or more states to legalize same-sex marriage, the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution would require all other states to also recognize those marriages.

In May of 1996, Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA) and Senator Don Nickles (R-OK) introduced the bill that would become the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to the House of Representatives and Senate. This three-pronged bill was designed to prevent any motion towards recognizing same-sex marriages at the federal level. Section One of the law banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages by defining marriage strictly as a union between one man and one woman; Section Two allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages that might be granted by other states; and Section Three codified the non-recognition of same-sex marriages for all purposes of federal marriage benefits, including insurance and social security survivors’ benefits, immigration, bankruptcy, and the filing of joint tax returns. The bill passed both houses of Congress with large majorities, effectively making it veto-proof.

President Clinton criticized the bill as unnecessarily punitive and divisive, but also said that he “long opposed governmental recognition of same-sex marriages, and this legislation is consistent with that position.” He added that the bill “confirms the right of each state to determine its own policy,” and that DOMA “should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation.” Multiple agencies and lobbying groups encouraged him to reconsider signing a law which expresses, as remarked by the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, “the belief that gay men and lesbians are second-class citizens who lack the value of other Americans.” Clinton would sign the bill into law in September 1996.

As late as 2008, Clinton would still insist that DOMA isn’t homophobic. But by March 2013, in a Washington Post op-ed, he encouraged the Supreme Court to reverse the very law he had enacted: “I now know that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law itself is discriminatory. It should be overturned.” On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor ruled Section Three of DOMA unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause.

Letter to President Clinton from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, urging the President to reconsider his intention to sign Defense of Marriage Act. Records of the National AIDS Policy Office. Series: Daniel Montoya's Files. Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. September 1996 DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] - Final Draft.

Exactly two years later, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that Section Two of DOMA was unenforceable, as marriage was a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. Although several iterations of a bill to repeal DOMA entirely were put forth in Congress from 2009-2015, it wasn’t successful until the 117th Congress of the United States passed the Respect for Marriage Act of 2022.

HRC (Human Rights Campaign) Quarterly Magazine Cover, Winter 1996. 2004.046.002. William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum Collection.

During the 1992 presidential race, Bill Clinton would be the first ever political candidate to win the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest queer lobbying organization in the United States. In November of 1997, he would also become the first president to address a gay and lesbian organization, speaking at a sold-out Human Rights Campaign dinner about the on-going work to expand civil rights for all Americans. In his speech, Clinton echoed sentiments found in President Harry Truman’s June 29, 1947 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Truman had been the first sitting president to address the NAACP, likewise pledging his support in the continuing struggle to cure the nation of prejudice and hate.

"…The only limit to an American's achievement should be his ability, his industry, and his character. When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans. Many of our people still suffer the indignity of insult, the narrowing fear of intimidations, and, I regret to say, the threat of physical and mob violence. Prejudice and intolerance in which these evils are rooted still exist. The conscience of our nation, and the legal machinery which enforces it, have not yet secured to each citizen full freedom of fear. We cannot wait another decade or another generation to remedy these evils. We must work, as never before, to cure them now."

President Harry S. Truman, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), June 29, 1947

President Truman’s Address Before the NAACP, June 29, 1947, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

Clinton had disappointed many in the community by compromising on efforts to fully integrate gay & lesbian individuals into the military, and by signing the legislation that effectively prevented same-sex marriage; a few hecklers in the audience reminded him of such during his speech. Otherwise, however, President Clinton’s plainly-stated support and clear intention to not waver in that support was met with enthusiastic applause.

HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch said in her own remarks that evening: “Because our needs were almost as great as our expectations, it was inevitable that we -- you and this community -- would experience both shared disappointment and some disagreement. But Mr. President, you have played a brave and powerful and indispensable role in the march toward justice for us.”

“Hate crimes … leave deep scars not only on the victims, but on our larger community. They weaken the sense that we are one people with common values and a common future. They tear us apart when we should be moving closer together. They are acts of violence against America itself…."

President Clinton, Radio Address to the Nation, June 7, 1997

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1968, crimes motivated by prejudice against a person’s “race, color, religion, or national origin” became federal offenses, but it wasn’t until 1985 that the term “hate crime” came to exist.

On November 10, 1997, President Clinton convened the first-ever White House Conference on Hate Crimes, where he announced significant law enforcement and hate crime prevention initiatives. These included the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which would extend the protection of current federal hate crimes law to include those who are targeted due to sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act was introduced in the House and Senate on November 13th, but ultimately remained mired in committee hearings without being passed.

On May 28, 1998, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13087. The order amended President Nixon’s Executive Order 11478 prohibiting discrimination in federal civilian employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, physical ability, and age, to include sexual orientation as a protected class. The change applied to most civilian federal employees, the United States Postal Service, and to civilian employees of the armed forces; it did not extend to military service members affected by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or to certain excepted services such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Starting in 1994 and continuing well past the end of the Clinton Administration, Congress repeatedly proposed and failed to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by employers with at least 15 employees. The bill would later be amended to add gender identity protections, but still would not pass. The Equality Act, which proposed to expand non-discrimination protections to include employment as well as housing and education, would be introduced in 2015 and subsequent terms, but would likewise fail to pass.

In 2020, in the landmark case Bostock v Clayton County, the Supreme Court held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was prohibited by the protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the Court’s ruling, the discrimination “because of sex” prohibited by Title VII was determined to apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, because employers were accepting of certain conduct (e.g. attraction to men) in employees of one sex but discriminating against the same conduct in employees of a different sex.

Addressing Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Federal Civilian Employment: A Guide to Employee's Rights. Records of the Office of the Public Liaison. Series: Elizabeth (Julian) Potter's files. Implementing the E.O. [Executive Order 13087].

2006-0227-F: Records on Gays in the Military from January 20, 1993 to July 31, 1993.

• This collection consists of documents that were previously restricted under the Presidential Records Act but have since been released and digitized separately

2013-0028-F: Records on the Defense of Marriage Act, gay marriage, same-sex marriage, same-sex unions, and domestic partnerships.

2015-0017-F: Records concerning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

2015-0370-F: Records regarding Executive Orders 12968 and 13087.

2018-0359-F: President Clinton’s Letter to Jon Larimore, System Operator of the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau (GLIB) Computer Bulletin Board System.

2020-0005-F: Records relating to Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (1995)

The following collections include records related to, but not solely focused on, LGBTQ issues:

2023-0849-S: Records of Julian Potter, Office of the Public Liaison.

2008-1238-F: Records concerning Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy.

2011-0582-F: George Stephanopoulos files regarding communications and/or press strategies.

2011-0587: Records of Dee Dee Myers, Office of the Press Secretary.

2012-0181-F: White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject File HU (Human Rights)

2012-0741-F: Records of Alexis Herman, Office of Public Liaison.

2014-0748-F: Records on Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

2015-0142-F: June Shih's Speechwriting files regarding the 1997 Human Rights Campaign speech and the 40th Anniversary of the Desegregation of Central High School remarks.

2016-0201-S: Records of Josh Gottheimer.

2006-0458-F: Records of Don Baer.

2019-0849-S: Office of the Staff Secretary: R. Paul Richard's Files.

2007-1468-F: Records concerning Opinion Polling.

2017-1164-S: Records of Lissa Muscatine.

2015-0959-F: Records of Minyon Moore.

Audio Visual Collections

Sites

• “A Record of Progress for Gay and Lesbian Americans,” The Clinton Administration
• https://www.hrc.org/resources/state-equality-index Human Rights Campaign State Equality Index 2024
• https://www.aclu.org/documents/lesbian-and-gay-rights-during-president-clintons-second-term-working-paper-published-citizens “Lesbian and Gay Rights During President Clinton’s Second Term: A Working Paper Published by the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights,” January 15, 1999
• https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/henry-hugh-shelton-oral-history-chairman-joint-chiefs Miller Center’s Oral History of Henry Hugh Shelton
• Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998) - The Nomination of James C. Hormel
• Homosexuals in the Federal Government and Personnel Security (Eisenhower Library Subject Guide)
• The Mattachine Society of Washington D.C.’s page on Executive Order 10450 (includes a high-res scan of an archival version of EO 10450)

Articles

• “These People are Frightened to Death”: Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare by Judith Adkins (Prologue Magazine, Summer 2016)
• Bill Clinton Tried to Avoid the DOMA Trap Republicans Set. Instead, He Trapped Himself. - POLITICO
• Clinton's Legacy on Gay Rights | Foreign Affairs
• Clinton Appoints Gay Man as Ambassador as Congress Is Away - The New York Times (1999)
• Clinton Ends Ban on Security Clearance for Gay Workers - The New York Times (1995)
• Gay Philanthropist's Nomination to Become Ambassador to Luxembourg Dies in the Senate - The New York Times (1998)
• Lott Says Homosexuality Is a Sin and Compares It to Alcoholism - The New York Times (1998)
• Matthew Shepard, 20 Years On – Clinton Foundation (by Richard Socarides)
• Dying to be normal: Gay martyrs and the transformation of American sexual politics (2019)
• The 1990s, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and DOMA - A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States - HUSL Library at Howard University School of Law
• Bill Clinton: The Rolling Stone Interview, December 2000
• Statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the Department's Proactive Review of Don't Ask, Don't Tell Records

Books

• *Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts
• *Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus & George Chauncey, Jr.
• *Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement (edited by Mark Thompson w/ forward by Randy Shilts)
• *We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown (of @lgbt_history on Instagram) (Part IV covers 1980-1994, and the 20-page conclusion hits over the major points from 1995-2017)
• The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson (2004)
• The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America by Dr. Eric Cervini