During Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977–1981), homosexual marriage was a radical fantasy, same-sex intimacy was outlawed in at least two dozen states, and gays and lesbians were unable to receive federal security clearance. Furthermore, leaders from both parties continued to mainly avoid discussing or endorsing LGBTQ concerns.
However, Carter—a southern Democrat and ardent Baptist—was notable for his early endorsement of pro-gay laws and his acceptance of LGBTQ activists.
According to Michael Bronski, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Harvard University and the author of A Queer History of the United States for Young People, “the first time we see the federal or White House response to LGBTQ issues is under Carter, which I think in the mid-70s is incredibly brave.” It would have been equally simple for him to remain silent.
Carter, a former governor of Georgia, supported legislation that is contentious even among some modern politicians while he was running for president in 1976. The Equality Act, as it was known, attempted to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. (In 2021, a revised law that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity passed the House but was blocked in the Senate.)
According to the National Archives, Carter stated, “I will definitely sign the Equality Act, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for special abuse or special harassment,” in response to a question regarding the legislation during a press conference in May 1976.
Carter’s staff issued a statement a few days after his public remarks, restating the presidential candidate’s position on the contentious matter and referencing his earlier remarks regarding the enactment of anti-discrimination legislation.
According to a copy of the statement on the National Archives website, he told Philadelphia Gay News in March 1976, “As President, I can assure you that all policies of the federal government would reflect this commitment.”
In a Bay Area Reporter essay later that year, civil rights activist Harvey Milk praised Carter, describing him as a man who feels the government has no business in a person’s bedroom. Milk was slain the year after he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming one of the nation’s first out gay elected officials.
Historians believe that the most important event occurred in 1977 when a group of about two dozen National Gay Task Force activists met with Margaret Midge Costanza, the presidential adviser, to talk about discrimination safeguards in the White House.
In addition to being the first White House meeting with gay activists, the event took place soon after the U.S. Civil Service Commission lifted its prohibition on gay employees in the federal government in 1975, according to James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.
He suggested that until then, a significant proportion of LGBT persons can be barred from and removed from government employment. In order to give the subject the presidential seal of approval and to send a message to the nation that homosexual people were citizens and should be treated as such, it was important to meet with gay rights leaders and activists within two years.
Kirchick warned that the conference, which was held while Carter was away at Camp David, the president’s country home, did not yield any concrete outcomes. Based on his study, he thinks that even had the government permitted the meeting, the former president would not have been able to attend because it would have been too contentious.
In reference to the Carter administration, Kirchick stated, “They did not want a photo op with the president and these leaders.” It was purposefully planned for when he was out of town.
However, the gathering was historic and symbolic, generating excitement among some of the most well-known anti-LGBTQ speakers of the 1970s.
In a statement to The New York Times at the time, former Miss Oklahoma and now anti-LGBTQ activist Anita Bryant stated that behind the eloquent plea against discrimination in employment and housing—which is not an issue for the closet homosexual—they are actually requesting that the office of the President of the United States grant them blessings in their bizarre lifestyle. Beneath cryptic legalese, what these individuals truly seek is the legal authority to suggest to our children that there is a viable alternative lifestyle in which being gay or lesbian is neither truly immoral nor unlawful.
According to Bronski, the growth of the religious right in the 1970s and individuals like Bryant, who started the notorious Save Our Children campaign in 1977, made what would have been a regular White House meeting by today’s standards all the more important.
As we can see, Carter is quite supportive of LGBT rights, as Bronski stated, and he is establishing a new national paradigm that goes against these organizations.
Carter reaffirmed his support for the LGBT community in 1978 when he urged Californians to reject Proposition 6, popularly known as the Briggs Initiative, a contentious and eye-catching law that attempted to prohibit gay and lesbian Americans from holding public school teaching positions.
According to a transcript of the speech released by the University of California Santa Barbara, Carter stated at a November 1978 Sacramento Get Out the Vote rally that “as long as I am in the White House, our Nation will always be identified as the Nation that will insist and fight for basic human rights.” Additionally, I would like to urge everyone to vote against Proposition 6.
By a vote of 58.4% to 41.6%, the measure was defeated, according to the LGBT Historical Society.
According to Bronski and other historians, Carter sowed the seeds for future presidents, even though his efforts to advance LGBT rights may not seem like much by today’s standards.
Bronski speculated that he might have been playing it safe in some aspects or that he might not have done as much as we thought he should have. However, he broke down obstacles for other Democratic presidents to do so by becoming the first to actually start articulating policy around this subject.
Carter s defeat
Historians have emphasized that it is impossible to remember what Carter accomplished for homosexual rights during his presidency without also considering what happened immediately after and what might have happened if he had been able to keep making progress—albeit slowly—for gays and lesbians.
About a year before to the first official government study on AIDS, Carter lost his 1980 presidential reelection campaign to Republican Ronald Reagan, a supporter of the Moral Majority. Activists continue to accuse the Reagan administration for failing to take the escalating health catastrophe seriously.
In 1982, Larry Speakes, Reagan’s press secretary, famously chuckled when asked if the president was monitoring the development of AIDS. Reagan didn’t bring up AIDS in public until 1985. The international nonprofit organization amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, estimates that 12,500 people had already lost their lives to the epidemic by that point.
“We would have seen a completely different federal response to the AIDS crisis and probably would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if Carter had won and been president when the AIDS crisis started,” Bronski said.
Jesus never said a word about homosexuality
Carter remained an outspoken advocate for homosexual Americans long after he left the White House.
Carter became one of the most well-known Americans to advocate for same-sex marriage in 2012, almost two months before then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden did. Additionally, Carter, who has been a Sunday school teacher since the age of 18, employed an unusual form of rationale to defend his stance: Christianity.
In an interview with HuffPost at the time, Carter stated that homosexuality was well-known in antiquity, long before Christ was born, and that Jesus never mentioned it. He never advocated condemning gay individuals in any of his lectures on a variety of topics. In my opinion, gay people getting married in civil ceremonies is perfectly acceptable.
Historians speculate that when LGBTQ Americans think of equality, Carter may not be the first person they think of. But they point out that his contribution to LGBTQ rights was braver and more significant than the recognition he has frequently gotten.
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