Why gays will miss Jesse

Steve Friess

The camera zoomed in on those curvaceous lips fluttering before a Senate microphone, moving in slow motion to expose those crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. As he barked some condemnation of the gay “lifestyle,” the footage that was deliberately grainy, the angle deliberately unflattering.

The effect was brilliant: I hated this evil man.

I was a Northwestern University student just starting to come out of my closet, taking a then-groundbreaking course on gay and lesbian history. My open-minded New York family, while not realizing I was gay, sheltered me from such bigotry, so it was now up to my new community to inform me through video clips like this one who my enemies were.

The dishonorable senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, topped every list. His words startled me in their bluntness and cruelty, enraging me enough to recognize the need for gay advocacy groups and civil rights protections for gay people.

Jesse just had that effect on people. And so, as euphoria sweeps the gay world over Helms' announcement that he'll quit after next year, the question remains: Who else in America could have that effect on people?

Gays and lesbians are mistakenly rejoicing. Even as I live in China this year, friends and relatives are showering my e-mail box with wire reports detailing the demise of American homosexuality's Public Enemy No. 1. The national gay lobby, Human Rights Campaign, rushed out a press release recounting the senator's greatest hits and insisting that Helms "will not be missed."

HRC's fundraising crew clearly wasn't consulted on that. For decades, Helms served as an easily identifiable, easily hated villain capable of infuriating most any gay or gay-friendly person into writing a check. The national gay-rights agencies must have raised thousands, if not millions, of dollars via clips like the one my Northwestern professor once showed my class.

The right wing has the Clintons; we had Jesse.

There was no easier way to embarrass those who support more mainstream Republicans than to note that he's a powerful member of their party. When my father repeated a Rush Limbaugh mantra last fall that electing Al Gore could put ultra-lefties like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Ted Kennedy into positions of influence, I countered that a Bush win would give the same sort of power to the GOP's Jesse. Who else could I have named to make my father cringe, too? Trent Lott, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay just don't have the pizzazz.

Indeed, HRC was right when they declared Helms' departure the end of an era, but that was an era when folks like Helms spouted off without reckless abandon, letting unabashed homophobia show. He didn't sugarcoat his opposition to Clinton appointee Roberta Achtenberg in 1993 with blather about what a nice person she is or how much he respected her for her conviction to her principles. No, he came right out and said he couldn't vote for her because she's a "damn lesbian."

Gays always knew where we stood with Jesse and, as difficult as he was to hear, he never tried to delude appeasers like the gay Log Cabin Republicans into imagining there was even a faint potential for progress. Jesse didn't want our votes or money, so he didn't soft-pedal his disgust for us.

The new era that officially begins when Helms goes home is one in which homophobia will become increasingly subtle, increasingly difficult to prove. Few intelligent Americans -- even those who agreed with Helms -- could seriously claim that Helms' stances on Achtenberg or a score of other gay-related matters were anything less than out-and-out bigotry. He used crass language and he appeared mean. He wore his ire for gays like a badge.

The new enemies will be far more savvy, much harder to prove. President Bush is willing to meet with the Log Cabin group and hire a few tokens to inoculate himself from charges of bias. Newt Gingrich told the media he knew gays are good citizens. Even Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the next best thing to Helms these days, cloaks her rhetoric in a sheen of compassion and alleged science.

Other civil rights movements -- think Jews, blacks and women -- have suffered similar fates after dramatic successes. These groups frequently point out bias in the workplace, marketplace or the media, but nobody really believes them anymore. And, when something horrifyingly obvious does happen -- say a black man is chained to a car and dragged to death -- it is so far beyond the realm of everyday life that people acknowledge the horror but never relate it to bigotry in the rest of the culture.

Sure, there are still blatant anti-gay advocates uttering absurd and cruel comments, but they're ultra-right-wing religious leaders like Gary Bauer and Lou Sheldon who have no actual legislative power. What made Helms so significant was that here was a guy uttering the statements you might expect from a fringe kook, but he couldn't be dismissed as such because he had a vote in the world's most prestigious legislative body.

HRC better put away those party hats and start hunting around for a new poster boy. That's really all Helms was, not a genuine power in his own right.

No, if Jesse succeeded in blocking or turning back gay progress, he did so only with the concurrence of at least 50 other equally problematic, if quieter, senators. And, for the majority of his time in the Senate, his party wasn't even in power.

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