Contact: White House Press Office,
202-456-2100 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION Gay and lesbian Americans have made important and lasting
contributions to our Nation in every field of endeavor. Too
often, however, gays and lesbians face prejudice and
discrimination; too many have had to hide or deny their
sexual orientation in order to keep their jobs or to live
safely in their communities. In recent years, we have made some progress righting
these wrongs. Since the Stonewall uprising in New York City
more than 30 years ago, the gay and lesbian rights movement
has united gays and lesbians, their families and friends,
and all those committed to justice and equality in a crusade
to outlaw discriminatory laws and practices and to protect
gays and lesbians from prejudice and persecution. I am proud of the part that my Administration has played
to achieve these goals. Today, more openly gay and lesbian
individuals serve in senior posts throughout the Federal
Government than during any other Administration. To build on
our progress, in 1998 I issued an Executive Order to
prohibit discrimination in the Federal civilian workforce
based on sexual orientation, and my Administration continues
to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which
would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on sexual
orientation. Yet many challenges still lie before us. As we have
learned from recent tragedies, prejudice against gays and
lesbians can still erupt into acts of hatred and violence. I
continue to call upon the Congress to pass meaningful hate
crimes legislation to strengthen the Department of Justice's
ability to prosecute hate crimes committed due to the
victim's sexual orientation. With each passing year the American people become more
receptive to diversity and more open to those who are
different from themselves. Our Nation is at last realizing
that gays and lesbians must no longer be "strangers among
friends,'' as the civil rights pioneer David Mixner once
noted. Rather, we must finally recognize these Americans for
what they are: our colleagues and neighbors, daughters and
sons, sisters and brothers, friends and partners. This June, recognizing the joys and sorrows that the gay
and lesbian movement has witnessed and the work that remains
to be done, we observe Gay and Lesbian Pride Month and
celebrate the progress we have made in creating a society
more inclusive and accepting of gays and lesbians. I hope
that in this new millennium we will continue to break down
the walls of fear and prejudice and work to build a bridge
to understanding and tolerance, until gays and lesbians are
afforded the same rights and responsibilities as all
Americans. NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested
in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do
hereby proclaim June 2000 as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. I
encourage all Americans to observe this month with
appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that
celebrate our diversity and recognize the gay and lesbian
Americans whose many and varied contributions have enriched
our national life. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
second day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand,
and of the Independence of the United States of America the
two hundred and twenty-fourth. WILLIAM J. CLINTON Thirty years ago this month, at the Stonewall Inn in New
York City, a courageous group of citizens resisted
harassment and mistreatment, setting in motion a chain of
events that would become known as the Stonewall Uprising and
the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights
movement. Gays and lesbians, their families and friends,
celebrate the anniversary of Stonewall every June in America
as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month; and, earlier this month, the
National Park Service added the Stonewall Inn, as well as
the nearby park and neighborhood streets surrounding it, to
the National Register of Historic Places. I am proud of the measures my Administration has taken to
end discrimination against gays and lesbians and ensure that
they have the same rights guaranteed to their fellow
Americans. Last year, I signed an Executive order that
amends Federal equal employment opportunity policy to
prohibit discrimination in the Federal civilian work force
based on sexual orientation. We have also banned
discrimination based on sexual orientation in the granting
of security clearances. As a result of these and other
policies, gay and lesbian Americans serve openly and proudly
throughout the Federal Government. My Administration is also
working with congressional leaders to pass the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit most private
employers from firing workers solely because of their sexual
orientation. America's diversity is our greatest strength. But, while
we have come a long way on our journey toward tolerance,
understanding, and mutual respect, we still have a long way
to go in our efforts to end discrimination. During the past
year, people across our country have been shaken by violent
acts that struck at the heart of what it means to be an
American and at the values that have always defined us as a
Nation. In 1997, the most recent year for which we have
statistics, there were more than 8,000 reported hate crimes
in our country - almost one an hour. Now is the time for us
to take strong and decisive action to end all hate crimes,
and I reaffirm my pledge to work with the Congress to pass
the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. But we cannot achieve true tolerance merely through
legislation; we must change hearts and minds as well. Our
greatest hope for a just society is to teach our children to
respect one another, to appreciate our differences, and to
recognize the fundamental values that we hold in common. As
part of our efforts to achieve this goal, earlier this
spring, I announced that the Departments of Justice and
Education will work in partnership with educational and
other private sector organizations to reach out to students
and teach them that our diversity is a gift. In addition,
the Department of Education has issued landmark guidance
that explains Federal standards against sexual harassment
and prohibits sexual harassment of all students regardless
of their sexual orientation; and I have ordered the
Education Department's civil rights office to step up its
enforcement of anti-discrimination and harassment rules.
That effort has resulted in a groundbreaking guide that
provides practical guidance to school administrators and
teachers for developing a comprehensive approach to
protecting all students, including gays and lesbians, from
harassment and violence. Since our earliest days as a Nation, Americans have
strived to make real the ideals of equality and freedom so
eloquently expressed in our Declaration of Independence and
Constitution. We now have a rare opportunity to enter a new
century and a new millennium as one country, living those
principles, recognizing our common values, and building on
our shared strengths. NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested
in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do
hereby proclaim June 1999 as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. I
encourage all Americans to observe this month with
appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that
celebrate our diversity, and to remember throughout the year
the gay and lesbian Americans whose many and varied
contributions have enriched our national life. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
eleventh day of June, in the year of our Lord nineteen
hundred and ninety-nine, and of the Independence of the
United States of America the two hundred and
twenty-third. But wait! There's
More! The following is President Clinton's recent speech to the
Empire State Pride Agenda in New York. It was his third
appearance as President in a public setting before a gay
rights group. His attendance was testimony to the growing influence of
gay voters in New York elections. For Immediate Release Sheraton New York Hotel and Tower THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much for your energy and
your enthusiasm, your passion and your wonderful welcome. I
want to begin by thanking Jeff, who has been a wonderful
friend and advisor, a prodder and supporter to me. And I
thank him so much. (Applause.) And thank you, (Senator) Chuck Schumer, for running and
winning and for all you have done to make this a better
state and a better country. (Applause.) I'd also like to
thank two other members of the Congress who are here,
Congressman Jerry Nadler and Congressman Anthony Weiner, for
the work they do for you. Thank you. (Applause.) Let me begin by saying something I need to say a lot in
the time I have left as President: thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you for the support, the guidance, and the urging you
have given to the Vice President and me, and to our
administration and our families. Thank you for the example
you have set. Thank you for helping Chuck Schumer to get
elected. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn and
grow, and do our jobs better, and serve all Americans
better. Jeff said that, you know, last year the Vice President
came, and this year Chuck and I are here. And you're looking
for a speaker. I think, you know, you ought to invite a
woman to speak next year. (Applause.) And if you want, I
have a suggestion. (Laughter.) Actually I talked, as chance would have it, to both the
Vice President and to Hillary this afternoon -- (laughter)
-- not so I could tell you that I did, either. (Laughter.)
But they asked me what I was doing -- there's a lot more
attention on what they're doing than what I'm doing now, but
they did ask me what I was doing, which was nice, that
someone, somewhere in America still cared what I was doing.
(Laughter and applause.) So when I told them what I was
doing, they said to give you their best wishes, and they
wish they were here. (Laughter.) Jeff mentioned that seven years ago, when I first ran for
President, I said I had a vision for America and you were a
part of it. I met with a group of activists from your
community here in early 1992, and in California in late
1991. And I began to try to listen and to learn and to
understand why so many of these issues have presented such
big problems for America. One couple came through to see me earlier tonight, two
men; one was from Australia, the other from New Zealand and
they said that as a couple, they hadn't the same immigration
rights coming into America as they did in either Canada or
New Zealand. I don't think that's right; I think that ought
to be changed. (Applause.) But I think the first thing I want to say to you -- I
want to talk more about this, but I'm obviously giving a lot
of thought these days to what happens to America over the
long run. We enter a new century, we enter a new millennium,
the way we work and live and relate to each other and relate
to people around the world is changing in profound and
speedy ways. It's almost difficult to grasp. More of it is
good than bad. But we all have to be much more open to each other if we
want this to work. We've got to learn to listen as well as
to talk. We've got to learn to feel as well as to think. We
have to learn as we're all told we should do from childhood,
to stand in the other person's shoes. We have done what we
could to make the future one of equal opportunity and equal
responsibility and equal membership in our American
community, whether it is in fighting to pass the hate crimes
law or the employment nondiscrimination act or to invest
more in research, prevention and treatment for HIV
patients. I would like to take just a few moments tonight to try to
put all the things you care about into a larger context of
where America is and where I hope America will go. When I
started running for President, I did so because I thought
the country was in trouble and without direction and growing
more divided. First, economically. Unemployment was too
high, job growth was too low, incomes were stagnant,
inequality was increasing. And there was a sense of literal
despair about it in many places. I worried about social division. You remember, we had a
riot in Los Angeles. But everywhere, there was this quiet
sense of unease. And every campaign, it seemed to me, was
yet another example of how we could sort of carve up the
electorate and make one group resent another, and hope that
your group was a larger group of resenters than the other
group. And it seemed to me that that was a bad way to run a
country. And it wasn't just anti-lesbian and gay, it was tensions
between the races, tensions between immigrants and citizens.
And it built on this whole pattern of thought that had
accumulated in Washington over decades that everything had
to be divided into hostile camps. You couldn't be pro-labor
if you were pro-business, and vice versa. You couldn't be
pro-economic growth and be in favor of improving the
environment. You couldn't be pro-work and pro-family. We had
to have these divided views. You couldn't have an urban
policy if your really cared about what was going on on the
farm. You know, we don't think like that. None of us do,
instinctively. We always try to think of how we can live an
integrated life, and how our minds will think in an
integrated way that pulls things together and moves things
forward. But everything about our politics was about how to
pit us against one another. And since we all wake up every morning -- I know maybe
none of you do, but some days I wake up on the wrong side of
the bed, in a foul humor. (Laughter.) I'm sure you don't
ever do that, but I do sometimes. (Laughter.) And it has
occurred to me really that every one of us has this little
scale inside, you know. On one side there's the light forces
and the other side there's the dark forces in our psyche and
our makeup and the way we look at the world. And every day
we wake up and the scale is a little bit tilted one way or
the other. And life is a big struggle to try to keep things
in proper balance. You don't want to have so much light that you're just a
fool for whatever comes along. But if the scale tips dark
even a little bit, things turn badly for people and those
with whom they come in contact. And it can happen for
communities and for a whole country. So, anyway, when I ran I thought maybe I could change the
way we think about politics. And if we do, maybe we can
change what we do and how we do it. And, you know, there's an old adage that the Lord never
gives you more than you can handle, but I have been severely
tested in this resolve. (Laughter and applause.) But most
days, you know, it's been kind of fun, but bewildering.
(Laughter.) So anyway, we came up -- Al Gore and I -- (applause.)
Well, for whatever reason -- and the American people took a
chance on me and Al Gore in 1992. And we got the Democrats
together, and we tried to reach out to the Republicans. And
usually they said no; sometimes they said -- a few of them
would say yes. But we said, look, let's take a different direction -- on
the economy, on crime, on welfare, on the environment. Let's
try to think of a way to integrate the things that we want
to achieve, and build a creative tension so we could move
the country forward. And let's try to build a country where
everybody has a place. And we just made an argument in 1992.
It was just an argument. You -- no one could know for sure
whether it would work. You know, I'm rethinking my position about wanting
everybody to have a cell phone in this country. (Laughter
and applause.) He's a good guy, don't worry about it.
(Applause.) But anyway, so we made this argument, you know, and you
guys took a chance. And New York really stood behind us,
gave us a chance to serve. But it's not an argument anymore. Those of you who've
been with us six and a half years, when you go out to
discuss citizenship and issues, and the future, say, look,
whatever you want to say about that crowd, there are certain
things that you can't dispute. We now have the lowest
unemployment rate in 29 years; the lowest welfare rolls in
32 years; the lowest crime rates in 26 years; the lowest
poverty rates in 20 years; the first back-to-back surpluses
in 42 years; the longest peacetime expansion in history; and
19.5 million new jobs. You can't argue; that happened.
(Applause.) And every time -- (applause) -- every time -- (applause)
-- every time we did something that tried to reconcile our
economic objectives with our other objectives -- whether it
was family and medical leave or vetoing the first two
welfare bills because they didn't have guaranteed food and
medicine coverage for poor children and enough money for
child care, or trying to clean up the air and the water, or
saying that the system we had for taking care of little kids
and immunizing them -- we were nuts and we were determined
to reach 90 percent immunization, which we did, by the
way. All of these things -- people would say -- or, raising
the minimum wage, or you name it. That was always going to
be something that would hurt the economy. It turned out that
that was wrong, that putting things together made all of our
efforts reinforce one another. I feel even more strongly about that when it comes to
putting people together. One of the things I've spent an
enormous amount of time doing in the last two years is
trying to make sure America is Y2K ready. I've even got
these little things that look like beanie babies that are
Y2K bugs I have around just to remind me that we don't want
there to be one. You know, to most people, that's about adjusting a
computer. But if you think about it, there is a lot more
than mechanics involved in being ready for the new
millennium, and a lot more than economics involved in being
a successful country. When I signed the executive order to prohibit
discrimination in the federal work force based on sexual
orientation, I thought I was helping us to come together.
(Applause.) I think ENDA will help us to come together. I think the fact that we have gay and lesbian Americans,
like Jim Hormel and over 200 other openly gay and lesbian
people serving in appointed positions in our government
throughout the administration, doing normal jobs --
(applause) -- I got so tickled when you were reading -- you
know, if you look at our people and what they do, they do
real jobs. They're out there showing up. And every time they
come in contact with somebody, they destroy another
stereotype. They rob people of another attack.
(Applause.) You know, when we were in that awful battle that I waged
and didn't win over the military service issue, there was a
national survey run which showed that the most significant
factor tilting people in favor of the so-called gays in the
military policy was whether they consciously were aware that
they had known a gay person. And those who said they were
consciously aware that they had a personal relationship,
contact with a gay person were two to one in favor of the
policy. (Applause.) Now, I say that because I believe that our whole society
is like all of us are individually. We've got these scales
always tilting back and forth between the forces of hope and
the forces of fear. And what people do not know, they more
easily fear. What they fear, they can easily hate. And what
they hate, they quickly dehumanize. And it is a slippery
slope. So I say to you, this hate crimes legislation is
important. People say, well, you know, the killers of James
Byrd got the death penalty in Texas, and maybe you don't
need it. But we do need it, because there are 8,000 reported
hate crimes in 1997 alone -- about one an hour. And people
need to focus on it. When those kids got shot at the Jewish Community Center
school, and then that Filipino postal worker got murdered,
and then the former basketball coach at Northwestern, and
the young Korean Christian walking out of his church got
shot in the heartland of Illinois and Indiana. And all of
those things happened. And all of you know that we are now
observing the one-year anniversary of the death of young
Matthew Shepard, and I want to say I am honored beyond words
that his mother, Judy, is with us tonight. And I'd like to
ask her to stand. (Applause.) I thanked her tonight before I came out for her
continuing work. And she looked at me and she said, I'm just
a mom. (Applause.) But when I was in Los Angeles last week,
speaking to the ANGLE group, a young person came up to me
and said that I had given her more legitimacy and sense of
security and self-worth than she had gotten in her own
family. And I said to this child -- I want you to know, because
this is the point I'm trying to make; I'm not bragging on
me, here, I'm here to make this point about our country -- I
said, you've got to be patient with them; they're afraid.
You've got to stay with them; they're scared. And it is amazing to me -- I have spent so much time as
President, on the one hand trying to maximize your access to
the wonders of the modern world -- you know, we're hooking
up all the classrooms to the Internet; we got this E-rate,
so that the poor schools can reach across the digital
divide, and all the kids can work computers in every
classroom in America; we have passed the Telecommunications
Act, and we've got over 300,000 new high-tech jobs just in a
couple of years; and we're trying to invest in a newgeneration Internet; and we're about to break the human
genome code, and when we do that, when mothers bring their
children home from the hospital after giving birth, they'll
have little genetic maps that may -- some people believe
literally may help to raise life expectancy for children
born early in the next century to as much as 100 years. And, you know, it's all so exciting. But it is profoundly
sobering to consider that at the time of greatest
technological change in all of human history, we are most
bedeviled at home and around the world by the most primitive
of human failings -- the fear of the other. (Applause.) Think about what I have done as your President, how much
time I've spent trying to help the nation heal up from all
these school shootings, or what happened in Oklahoma City,
and the hate crimes I mentioned. And then think aboutthe
parallels we have -- they're all individual instances; I
recognize that. But think about the parallels in terms of
the failings of the human heart and mind with the ongoing
problems in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Bosnia and
Kosovo, in Northern Ireland, in the tribal slaughters of
Rwanda and other places in Africa -- where people really
can't believe they matter unless they have somebody to look
down on that they can dehumanize and justify killing. So
that's how their life counts-- when we ought to be trying to
tell people that they should be excited by the differences
between people, secure in the knowledge that our common
humanity is more important than all the differences that we
have. (Applause.) And somehow we have to do this. And words alone won't do
it. And laws are important, but laws alone won't do it,
either. And we've got to go out and confront our neighbors,
including our own families. We've got to ask people to
listen as well as to talk. And we have to help people to get
beyond their fears. You know, when I go and give speeches to political
groups, I tell them that I want America to continue to
change, that I myself would not vote for anyone who ran for
President saying, vote for me, I'll do just what Bill
Clinton did, he did a good job -- because things are
changing. And I talk about meeting the challenge of the
aging of America and reforming Social Security and Medicare,
and meeting the challenge of the children of America, the
largest and most diverse group ever, and giving them all a
world-class education, and meeting the challenge of a 21st
century economy by putting a human face on globalization and
trade by investing in the markets of America that had been
left behind in the poor areas. By giving everybody access to
the Internet so we can fully bridge the divide, and by
paying the country's debt off. I talk about these things. I talk about meeting the
challenge of global warming. And it's mostly modern stuff
looking to the future, and it's all profoundly important.
But if you look at the journey of a country to find its true
spirit, the most important thing is that we try to be one
America that is a force for the common humanity of the
world. It was, I think, a very human feeling that led the
Congress finally to work with us to dramatically increase
funding for all elements of the AIDS fight, so that now we
have continued reductions in AIDS-related deaths and a
commitment to genuinely find a cure and a vaccine. I think
it was a human thing. We've still got a long way to go. You
know we do. And we pick our targets when we, as a country, when we're
defensive. I was outraged this week when the first African
American ever to serve on the State Supreme Court of
Missouri was voted down after having been handily voted out
of the judicial committee of the Senate with the Republicans
voting for him; they voted him down on the floor of the
Senate by misrepresenting his record on capital punishment
so that the Republican senator from the home state would
have an issue to run againstthe Governor on relating to
commuting the sentences to life without parole for those who
murdered other people. So who cares about the symbolism of the first African
American judge ever on the Missouri Supreme Court. You know,
not many people, African Americans, are going to vote for
this guy anyway. Throw him to the wolves. Destroy his
career. Distort his record. Who cares? I need a political
issue. And we all have to be afraid of that, of objectifying
others for short-term gain. On the other hand, look at the number of people who are
in the government, in all forms of our economic and social
life. There's a reason the President is here, besides my
heart. It is the right thing to do, and you have been heard.
You have been heard. You have been heard. (Applause.) There is a reason -- there is a reason the Senator is
here. There is a reason Al Gore came here last year, apart
from his passionate conviction about the moral propriety of
being here, and the right thing to do. We now know that
because you are willing to work and speak and stand, we can
move the body politic in the right direction. People are fundamentally good, but they're paralyzed when
they're scared. And in spite of all these issues that I go
around advocating, that I passionately believe in, if I were
told that I was going to have to leave this old world in 72
hours and I could just do one thing for America -- and that
was it, and I just had to pick one thing, I would try to
leave one America. Because if we were together; if we were
willing to have all of our differences be differences of
opinion, and not to be afraid of one another, and never to
dehumanize one another, we would be not only a better
country here, our influence for good abroad would be
exponentially greater even than it is today. And we would
have a chance -- (applause) -- we would have a chance to
give our children the millennium that they deserve. So I say again, the most important thing I want to say to
you is thank you. I'm proud of what we've done together. I
wish we could have done better. I hope we can do more. But never forget, you deserve most of the credit. And you
will get more as you fight harder, but also as you are human
to people who do not see you. (Applause.) You must -- you've
got to believe in this great country, that this is
fundamentally a good country; that Alexis de Tocqueville was
right when he said America is great because America is
good. But you know, we've done a lot of things that were pretty
lousy, starting with slavery, as Thomas Jefferson said. So
we all are always in the process of learning to be better;
of learning how our attitudes and our actions are in
conflict with what we believe. Life is a constant struggle,
therefore, for true integrity, for integrating your mind and
your body and your spirit. And so is the life of a
nation. I am indebted to you because I happened to be President,
and to seek this job, at a time when you were raising these
issues, and you gave me a chance to make a contribution. You
made me a better President; you made me a better person. Don't give up, and don't you ever turn dark. Don't do it.
We can still make the America of our dreams. Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause.)
[Oddly,
President Bush has neglected to name a Gay & Lesbian
Pride Month
for 2001 & 2002. And 2003. And 2004. Probably a clerical
error;
I understand he's very busy.]
WASHINGTON, June 2
The following was released today by the White House:
GAY
AND LESBIAN PRIDE MONTH, 2000
Here's
1999's version:WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)
October 7, 1999
New York, New York
9:56 P.M. EDT
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