ABSTRACT

As Bill Clinton's inauguration approached, only a few of the exuberant lesbian and gay activists in Washington took seriously the early sniper fire from the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and the religious right. The new President had made the removal of the ban on gays in the military a signal of his commitment to lesbian and gay rights, and the transition frenzy after the November election lent even more credence to the view that the issue would be dealt with immediately. In an area like military policy, that seemed to lie so clearly within the prerogative of the executive, doubters about the President's capacity to lift the ban seemed insufficiently plugged into the kinds of energetic policy networks that were forging the new optimism.