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EPILOGUE. Queer Comes Home
- University of Arkansas Press
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EPILOGUE Queer Comes Home It’s always what we don’t fear that happens, always not now and why are you people acting this way (meaning we put in petunias instead of hydrangeas and reject ecru as a fashion statement). —RITA DOVE, “BLACK ON A SATURDAY NIGHT,” FROM ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS1 O n May 18, 1992, Bill Clinton entered the crowded Palace Theater in Los Angeles, California. It was a full month before the crucial California Democratic primary, and Clinton was lagging behind and fighting hard to be the party’s presidential nominee. There, in front of an audience of hundreds of gay men and lesbians, mostly gay men, some very ill, Clinton gave what many consider to be the best speech of his campaign and perhaps his career. It was a fundraiser, and one that netted an impressive $100,000 for Clinton’s run for the Oval Office.2 He was not the first presidential contender to court the gay vote. Walter Mondale had done it in 1982 speaking to the newly formed Human Rights Campaign.3 But something was different about Clinton. At the podium, Clinton made promises, some later forgotten and some kept. Clinton told the audience that as president he would lift the ban on homosexuals in the U.S. armed forces. He promised the appointment of an AIDS czar to combat the epidemic that too many in the 183 audience knew firsthand. He promised that someone who was HIVpositive would address the Democratic National Convention in July.4 Standing at the podium, in front of dozens of rolling cameras and flash units, Clinton told the audience, “I have a vision, and you’re part of it.”5 Then in closing, his voice began to crack and Clinton tried to put into words what had happened, what was happening to the gay community in America. He spoke these words: If I could, if I could wave my arm for those of you that are HIVpositive and make it go away tomorrow, I would do it, so help me God, I would. If I gave up my race for the White House and everything else, I would do that.6 Some could have dismissed it as almost tacky political pandering. But as on-hand Washington Post political reporter David Maraniss would later write, judging “from the tone of his voice and the look on his face, many in the audience said they were inclined to believe him.”7 Clinton’s election as the America’s forty-second president in the fall of 1992 is where this work ends. It was an election that marked a clear transformation for the nation and gay and lesbian Arkansas. An Arkansas governor was speaking to a group of gay men and lesbians not in Little Rock, Fayetteville, or Eureka Springs but in Los Angeles. Clinton’s election would put Arkansas into the national spotlight, under national scrutiny, and with him, gay and lesbian Arkansans were increasingly brought into the fold of a national identity.8 Any alternative modernities were clashing. Gay Arkansas would benefit from falling into line with a larger, nationalidentity.Afterall,withanationalidentitycamenationalresources. Arkansasplaintiffsseekingto topple the state’ssodomystatute found valuable help in their effort from the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a national gay and lesbian rights group based in Chicago. Arkansas would be ahead of the curve that round, toppling the sodomy law within the state before the U.S. Supreme Court had the chance to eliminate it. The Miss Gay AmericaPageantflourished underNormanJonesand would befranchised across the nation until finally being sold out of state completely in 2005. Itwould notgofar, relocatingjustacrosstheMississippi RivertoMemphis. Gay men and lesbians across the nation saw advertisements for Eureka 184 EPILOGUE [54.152.216.170] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:49 GMT) Springs’s restaurants and hotels in out-of-state gay publications and came to town spending their dollars freely and openly. New enemies came as well. The Republican National Committee sent thousand of mailings from outside the state during the 2004 presidential election telling Arkansans they had reason to fear the gays and lesbians who walked among them. The mailer showed a simple black leather Bible with the word BANNED superimposed across it. Next to it, sitting in a white porch swing was a man receiving a wedding ring on his finger from another man kneeling at his feet. Stamped across the two men was the word ALLOWED. The pamphlet warned, “This will be Arkansas if you don’t vote...