Gays and Lesbians Need a Real Movement : Rights: Emulate black churches in the civil-rights struggle and pull together the efforts of 15,000 local groups under a national umbrella.

This year began for gays and lesbians with hope and hype: a new President who accepted our support and returned a solemn pledge to include us within his vision of a just society. He appointed lesbians and gays to government positions and began to make good on his campaign pledge to allow us in the armed forces.

The media responded with a new level of coverage. The march on Washington saw hundreds of thousands of lesbians and gays celebrate and show ourselves proudly to our fellow citizens. It seemed the “Gay ‘90s” really had arrived.

Ten months later, it is all too clear how empty was the promise, how premature the celebration. The President had no stomach for the battle that would have accompanied his making a stand on the military ban. It is hard not to be angry with him, because he took our money and raised our hopes. But our support for him was always more sincere than his for us.

Even the disgusting spectacle of Sen. Sam Nunn and the military brass who made a media circus out of our right to serve equally in the armed forces has its positive side. It should be completely clear that the issue with respect to gay rights, in or out of the military, is prejudice.

In a way, this frees the gay and lesbian movement to rethink its options. We have numbers, we have a cause, we have allies, but we have to do it for ourselves. That probably means scrapping the outmoded organizational style of a movement born in an era when even standing up in public was activism. The work the organizations do is often good, but they don’t work well together and they are not prepared to win the battles gays and lesbians are fighting. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, for instance, does an excellent job with court cases. But it is free-standing, like the NAACP legal defense fund without an NAACP to have given it birth.

We need a national organization, an umbrella like the African-American and women’s movements have had, with local chapters and democratic processes for leadership and issues choices. There are at least 15,000 local gay organizations of all sorts: bowlers, teachers, runners, hackers, square dancers. They could be the gay movement’s equivalent of the black churches, which were the galvanizing base of the civil-rights struggle.

Lesbians and gays need to learn how to participate in a long-term freedom struggle. Coming out is the first step, but learning how to regularly contribute time, thought and money--how to be part of a movement--also is crucial. This is particularly hard for homosexuals to do; coming out of the closet means you have stopped heeding the dictates of culture and family. This sometimes feels like a surrender of identity. Lesbians and gay men need to learn how to support their organizations and leaders. What the feminists call horizontal hostility--taking out frustration on a movement’s leaders--has been a feature of gay political and social life. That doesn’t excuse leadership failures, of which there have been plenty. But leadership and followership are equal parts of successful movements.

Gays and lesbians need to develop ideas as well as strategies. We need to think individually and together about what our goals are, how to go beyond responding to prejudice. The religious right presents a powerful challenge, but it also presents a false model. To respond to the religious right is to combat prejudice. For instance, the Rev. Mel White argued the Rev. Lou Sheldon to a standstill on “Larry King Live,” because White knows the Bible doesn’t say the things about homosexuality that the religious right routinely claims.

But that is not enough. We need to develop the information on lesbians and gays that sound, non-homophobic public policy needs. There is no gay RAND, no gay Brookings Institution, no gay Heritage Foundation. There needs to be, for without information, our cause is doomed.

There is also a lesson that non-gay Americans should learn from the military ban. One can hear the media’s sigh of relief, enough of that, let’s get back to the real issues. But precious as health care and prosperity may be, so too is freedom. The ugly truth is that the attempt to lift the ban on gays in the military has resulted in a hardened policy against gays and a temporary victory for the anti-homosexual activists who think getting at gays and lesbians is a first step toward restoring the America of their clouded imaginations. Guess who’s next on their agenda.