Congressional resistance to President Clinton’s promise to let homosexuals serve in the military broke into open revolt Tuesday, threatening to derail Democratic plans for quick passage of family-leave and health legislation.
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said Republicans would offer an amendment to reaffirm the 50-year-old ban on homosexuals in the armed forces, which has always been a matter of Pentagon policy rather than statute. He said the amendment would be added to the first bill the Democrats bring up.
Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine said such an amendment was likely to pass if Democrats such as Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia remained opposed to lifting the ban.
Nunn heads the Armed Services Committee.
Democrats sent the family-leave bill to the Senate Tuesday, hoping to use it and a measure expanding research programs at the National Institutes of Health to prove they can pass major social legislation early in Clinton’s term. But because of the dispute over homosexuals in the military, Clinton’s second full week in office could be punctuated instead by sharp battle and perhaps a major defeat.
Senate action could either be in the form of a non-binding statement of its attitude or an attempt to write current policy formally into law, a step the House might resist. In either case, the vote would serve as a legislative black eye and would warn the president that Congress is ready to insist on the current policy.
Clinton stood firm on Tuesday after a meeting with congressional leaders, just as he did in an emotional meeting Monday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. White House spokesman George Stephanopoulos said, “The president is sticking by his commitment to ending discrimination against homosexuals in the military.”
He said Clinton “believes it should be done at first through some sort of presidential action” and added, “If we can avoid a legislative battle, that’s all to the good.”
The military’s objections to lifting the ban range from fears of disrupting a tight-knit culture and destroying long tradition to practical questions of living in cramped quarters for six months of sea duty.
Clinton first promised to lift the ban during the presidential campaign last year.
The suddenly intense congressional opposition on Tuesday seemed based both on hostility to the proposed change in policy and on a sense that Congress needed to be consulted, not only as matter of constitutional prerogative but as a question of political respect. Some Republicans had the added motivation of embarrassing Clinton.
Senate Democratic leaders were searching Tuesday afternoon for some compromise that would win the support of Nunn and thwart the Republicans.
In the House, there also appeared to be widespread opposition to relaxing the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces. One informed aide said that if the issue came to a vote directly, it would be hard to get more than a third of the representatives to support any change. But House opposition has not crystallized as fully around particular leaders as it had in the Senate.
Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the Republican whip, said he told Clinton at Tuesday’s leadership meeting at the White House that he would weaken his presidency if he picked a fight with Nunn “over turf.” He insisted Congress had a role in changing the policy toward homosexuals, and he said he opposed such a change for “social engineering” because it would weaken morale and efficiency in the armed forces.
