[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 139 (Friday, September 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8714-H8720]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REPORT OF FACTFINDING TRIP
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, we have had a fast 3 days. Started late on
Wednesday, finishing early today. Pressure is building up here for a
major budgetary struggle between the two major, only major parties in
the world's only superpower, on all of these budgetary issues.
We have come back from a long, what we sometimes euphemistically call
a district work period. We are supposed to cram in a vacation and work
hard. For some of us, it is hard work.
I took one of the more difficult and fast-moving factfinding trips of
my career, now that I am one of only two double chairmen out of all 435
Members of this Chamber. I chair a Subcommittee on Intelligence, the
Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, and I chair the
Subcommittee on Military Personnel, which becomes the most important of
all 5 military subcommittees under the Committee on National Security,
what used to be called Armed Services, and is still called Armed
Services in the House of Lords or the other Chamber, the Senate.
On this trip, in discussing the issues with new young enlisted men,
senior sergeants, petty officers, and the officer corps at all levels,
up to and including four-star admirals, at Naples, at the major air
base that is in command of all the bombing missions going on as we
speak over poor torn ripped Bosnia-Herzegovina. And at Brendezy, down
at the coast at the very heel of the Italian peninsula.
That is where we have our Navy Seals, where we have what was a major
listening post base. In all the world, there are only five listening to
everything, San Vito Air Station, using the international airport at
Brendezy where we keep our AC-130 Hercules special mission Spectre gun
ships.
I met with all the crews there. It is still classified whether or not
they are going in at night over Bosnia. These were the aircraft that if
we had them in Somalia over Mogadishu, we would have saved a dozen or
more lives of our best trained Army special forces and Delta Force,
Rangers and 160th Aviation Regiment, special armed squadrons.
Then I traveled with Congressman Greg Laughlin, the highest ranking
active reservist in the House or the Senate, of Galveston, TX, and we
went to Slovenia. A fascinating, brand-new country in the world. It
never had nation status, let alone a seat in the United Nations since
the dissolution of the Communist country of the former Yugoslavia.
{time} 1315
Then we went down to Croatia, met with Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali's special representative to all of the problems in former
Yugoslavia, Mr., that is his formal title, Mr. Sasushi Akashi, met with
him at the U.N. headquarters, the blue helmet home plate in Zagreb,
then went down along the Dalmatian coast, drove slowly through all of
the destruction wreaked upon one of the world's most beautiful
coastlines, looks for all the world like the California coastline
between Santa Barbara and Monterey--just torn apart. The international
airport in Zadar utterly destroyed except for the runways, all of the
international terminal buildings, hollow shells of aluminum, like a
nuclear explosion went off, the tower, all the windows shot out with
AK-47's by the retreating Bosnian soldiers. They almost cut Croatia in
half at that point, Zadar.
Then we went down to Macedonia, met with all of our American tripwire
forces out in the front outposts along the border, flew on white
helicopters, UH-60 Blackhawks that, of course, called themselves the
Whitehawks, with the United Nations stenciled on the sides, went out to
these American outposts, studied this poor city of Skopje, which had
been destroyed by an earthquake in 1963. It has never really made it
back to a stable, functioning city, still great pockets of poverty from
that horrible earthquake in 1963.
Then we flew over to Albania, one of the most godforsaken but still
physically beautiful countries in the world, and met with the president
there, Sali Berisha, Mr. Berisha; he is a European renowned heart
surgeon. His wife is a renowned doctor of pediatrics, a child doctor.
What a lucky country to go from the depths of communism with a
paranoidal maniac, Enver Hoxna, one of the last psychotic, paranoid
Communist dictators in the world, who literally took this beautiful
country of Albania, a brand new country created after World War I, not
a traditional nation on the face of the Earth, and just drove it into
the ground, more than a half-century of locked-up paranoia and total
Communist psychotic oppression, and now they have a wonderful president
who said to me and to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Laughlin], although
he wants to be in the United Nations and would like to be accepted into
NATO, he does not care what happens in the world if he just has the
friendship of the United States, just one on one, unilateral
friendship, and he thinks Albania will make it into the 21st century.
That is the identical message we got north of there in another one of
the eight parts of Yugoslavia that have spun off in Solvenia, same
message: ``U.S. friendship is what we want.''
In Albania, we looked at what was supposed to be a top-secret program
[[Page H 8715]]
and is now written about in all newspapers, the Predator, unmanned
aerial vehicle [UAV] program. The pilots at that base, both Albanian
and our U.S. Forces there, took us in a cave that the Chinese carved
out of a mountain, a cave as long as several football fields, and there
I looked at 24 or 25 MiG aircraft from the vintage of when I flew
almost 40 years ago. There were MiG-19, ``Farmer'' was our NATO
codeword, jets that they still fly, that were Russia's response to my
F-100 Supersabre, and older jets from Korea, MiG Alley, early 1950's,
MiG-15's and MiG-17's, the kind of airplane my colleague, the gentleman
from California [Mr. Cunningham], shot down in North Vietnam. At least
of his five victories, three are MiG-17's, all of this in this giant
tunnel. And the landscape of the country is scarred, marred
with 700,000 to 1 million concrete bunkers, pillboxes, machine gun
posts, some of them as big as the entire rostrum of this House, others
as big as from here to the other lectern, a million of them, maybe,
making the whole landscape look ugly, and there is no money to remove
them or drag them out to the sea and make a breakwater for a small boat
harbor on this beautiful Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic.
On that trip, at every stop I would take off my chairman's hat from
intelligence and put on my chairman's hat from military personnel and
ask our men and women at all levels of command what it will take to
keep them in the military, to keep that expensive training that they
were given to melt down the evil empire of the Soviet Union and stand
guard over freedom and be part of the world's only superpower, and
everywhere they talked about family, and quality of life; they spoke of
what it would take them to earn a proper living with groceries, their
compensation.
So, all around that hot area of the world, I saw again that America
is so lucky, as Ronald Reagan used to quote James Michener's great
fictitious, but more fact than fiction, novel from the Korean war,
``The Bridges of Toko-Ri,'' ``Where do we get such men,'' and now we
can say women, ``Where do we get such men and women?'' How are we so
lucky as to have them serve us?
The sad thing about this break, Mr. Speaker, is that we went through
some of the greatest anniversaries with the House adjourned. The 50th
anniversary of the end of the greatest crusade for freedom against
tyranny in all of recorded history during our break, the 50th
anniversary endings. We had adjourned by the time Sunday came up for
the 50th anniversary of the bombing at Hiroshima; 3 days later
Nagasaki, August 9.
On August 15 in the Pacific, on the other side of the dateline,
August 14 here, the end of shooting in the Second World War; not really
so; Japanese imperial warload staff beheaded prisoners, shot them,
killed all the prisoners at Unit 371 in Pingfan, outside of Mukden,
Manchuria. They called these godforsaken human beings ``logs,'' to
depersonalize them. They had shot them, amputated all four of their
limbs, one at a time, let them recover from each amputation, training
over a thousand doctors to go out to all the tentacles of the imperial
octopus that was so abusing the whole eastern perimeter, western
perimeter of the Pacific around Asia. They had boiled them to death to
see what it was like. They had frozen them to death. They had tied them
to trees and hit them with bombs and shrapnel and grenades. They had
put flamethrowers on them. They had infected them with anthrax, all
forms of biological warfare, and none of these people that I know of
were brought to justice.
That is why everybody is so grateful to the current Prime Minister of
Japan, that he offered an apology that we cannot get out of their
congress, their ``diet,'' but there were men killed after August 15
over there, and August 14 here. Many prisoners died.
My friend, Jack Singlaub, was parachuted in with a small OSS team to
the Chinese island of Hainan, under Japanese warload control. Notice I
say ``warlord,'' to distinguish ourselves from the free democracy of
Japan today, and it was mostly, it was all Australian and New Zealand
prisoners, no Americans there. He loaded them on trains from this
prison camp on the western side of Hainan island and took them over to
the biggest port on the eastern side, and five or six Australian and
New Zealand prisoners died on that train, but at least they died as
free men. That was a very rough 2-week period. All of the prisoners
were
under death orders. If the United States invasion forces of Operation
Olympic had set foot on the Japanese home islands, all prisoners were
to be executed. Many were beheaded and beaten to death in the streets
of Japanese cities if they were unfortunate enough to bail out over
their target. Many of them miraculously survived.
War crimes trials in Japan, but far less than those that were brought
to the bar of justice, Hitler's war criminals.
So we passed through all of those anniversaries without a word on
this House floor, because we were out. Then came V-J Day. I decided I
would spend V-J Day at our airbases encircling tortured Bosnia rather
than be in Hawaii, where I planned to be and was invited to go with a
World War II veteran, a young-looking gentleman from Arizona, Mr.
Stump. I wanted to be on that trip, but I was so offended by the photo
opportunities of the White House at the Normandy beaches to the
exclusion of some of our heroes when they should have been the focus,
that I did not want to subject myself to that, and I would have been
pained to hear Mr. Clinton call the U.S.S. Missouri, the battleship
upon which the Japanese surrender terms were unconditionally signed on
September 2, 1945, I would have been pained to hear Mr. Clinton call it
a carrier, an aircraft carrier. I would have been pained to hear him
refer to the front of the ship, the bow, as the bow, as in a bow in
your hair, and I guess he would call the stern the back side of the
ship. If that had been Vice President Dan Quayle making verbal mistakes
like that, you would all know about it. It would be headlines. But
people are probably listening to C-SPAN today, 1,300,000 who think I am
making that up. No, Mr. Clinton actually said those things, aircraft
carrier Missouri, bow of it, as in bow and arrow, the bow of the ship.
He got away with it. I preferred to be out with the troops in the field
rather than at those wonderful closing ceremonies.
But now a word here on the floor, Mr. Speaker. Here is what has been
painful to me over the last 4 years: Except for the gentleman from
Mississippi [Mr. Montgomery], two-star general, retired in the Army, of
the Montgomery GI bill fame, and the aforementioned gentleman from
Arizona [Mr. Stump], Navy retiree, except for one 1-hour special order
that they did on Iwo Jima, there has not been a single memorial on the
floor of the U.S. House of Representatives or the United States Senate
for any single 50-year anniversary of anything that happened all during
World War II, not Pearl Harbor, not the fall of Bataan, or the Bataan
death march, not Corredigor, not the comeback at Guadalcanal, not the
landings in Tarawa, not the Dieppe raid along the coast of Hitler's
fortress Europe, not Al Alamein, not the battles at Tobruk, not the
Kasserine Pass, not the landings at Sicily in July 9, 1943; we have
heard here in July 1993, not Salerno, not Anzio, not Operation Overlord
on D-Day, not Operation Dragon down on the southern coast of France,
nothing about Okinawa, which came after Iwo Jima or the Gilbert Islands
or Marshall Islands or the Battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of
Midway or the Battle of the Solomon Islands or the Santa Cruz Islands,
nothing for 4 years in the Senate or the House floor pausing for a
series of 1-minute speeches or 1-minute special orders. I am not saying
this to pat myself on the back; except for about 10 of my 1-hour
special orders, nothing, nothing on this House floor.
I remember an Oklahoma Congressman shut this place down. I remember
it because he lost his primary a few months later. I wondered if there
was a connection. I think his name was Congressman Risenhoover. He shut
this place down. We filled it with potted palms, and on Flag Day, June
14 in some late year in the late 1970's, I forget the year, we had the
great western singers, June Carter and Johnny Cash, standing up there.
We sang patriotic hymns, and we did Flag Day, and there was nothing
special. It was not the 50th anniversary of Flag Day, or silver
anniversary. It was just Flag Day, any June 14. The whole place shut
down, palms,
[[Page H 8716]]
potted plants all over at every entrance.
I have never seen the like of it, potted plants all around the front
here. We do not do that for a State of the Union with the Commander in
Chief standing up there. We did not do that for Douglas MacArthur or
Winston Churchill the two times he stood up there.
{time} 1330
I thought, ``Wow, we are going to do this, I guess, all during World
War II. Am I lucky to be here.''
And, when George Bush got elected, because I went with President Bush
to Pearl Harbor's 50th anniversary, and we stood there on that memorial
across the midships of the U.S.S. Arizona, still a ship of the line,
with the flag run up at reveille every morning. I thought, ``This is
going to be great, go through all these 50-year anniversaries with a 58
combat mission Navy attack carrier pilot in the White House.''
And instead we ended up with someone who had avoided the draft three
times, has insulted the military over, and over, and over with photo
opportunities, using them to try to up his ratings, and thank God it
fails every time, and here we are, past September 2, 1995, 50 years
gone by. No memorials.
Today I have an editorial, a counter-editorial, in the USA Today.
They always put in the left-right views.
They called my office at 2 o'clock yesterday, said, ``Give us
something quick. Senator Warner is not responding fast enough, the No.
2 man on Armed Services Committee in the other body.'' They said,
``Give us something on why the military should be built up.''
We pumped out something quickly. I sent a corrected copy on a fax to
USA Today at 3:30, and I said, ``Well, this will be in next week,'' and
it is in this morning, a turnaround of about 15 hours before it hit the
streets, and I would like to read it, Mr. Speaker.
It says, ``Military Needs Buildup.'' It is what every one of these
young, not-so-young, people all around the Mediterranean told me.
``Robert K. Dornan, opposing view: The military budget has been hit
year after year. Security demands that we spend more.''
Now I have not read the USA Today house editorial that says we must
gut defense even more, but here is my response on September 8:
``After 11 straight years of defense spending cuts, Republicans are
providing the national security leadership not found in the current
administration.
``Indeed, President Clinton's draconian defense budget would produce
another Carter-era ``hollow force'' reportedly underfunded by as much
as $150 billion. Congress, therefore, is not squandering money when it
votes to increase the Pentagon's budget by $7 billion more than
requested. Instead, it is restoring national security funding to
necessary levels.
``How soon we forget what is required to quickly and decisively win
on the modern battlefield.
``Today's military modernization is tomorrow's combat readiness.
Systems such as the F-117 `Nighthawk' stealth fighter and the Patriot
missile were not developed overnight. They were the culmination of
years of research and development. These revolutionary systems
drastically reduced our casualties'' killed in acting and wounded in
action) ``in Desert Storm.'' more than any other conflict in history
given the level of lethality, and violence, and speed, and
maneuverability.
``Today we can improve upon these systems with new weapons that will
further reduce the risk to American troops.
``The B-2 `Spirit' Stealth bomber,'' I helped to name that, so of
course I want to get the name in, ``carries eight times the payload of
the F-117, with greater range and crew survivability.''
Keep in mind, listening audience, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues who
may be packing up their bags in their offices to head back to their
districts, that the B-2 survived in this Chamber by 3 votes, 213 to
210, to defeat an amendment, mostly by people who have never served in
the military, to kill and shut down the world's only bomber production
line, the B-2 ``Spirit.''
``New missile defense programs, such as the upgraded Navy Aegis (A-e-
g-i-s) system, provide greater range, accuracy, and coverage than
Patriot missiles.''
We call that upper-tier Navy defense. Put two ships off Israel, two
ships off Korea, just two ships, and the footprint from both those
ships can keep Israel free from being struck with a nuclear weapon or,
as we now find out from the defecting son-in-law of dictator, mad-dog
killer Saddam Hussein; we now find out that, yes, they were driving to
completion of a nuclear weapon and were playing around with the most
deadly biological, and chemical, and nerve gas weapons since World War
II and would have used them, and may have used them; the jury is out on
that. So we need this Navy upper-tier Aegis system antimissile defense.
``Does the Pentagon need these expensive new programs? Ask the Air
Force pilots who will not have to attack highly defended enemy targets
in vulnerable, unstealthy aircraft because they will have the B-2. Ask
the Marines and Army troops who will not have to worry about Scud
ballistic missile attacks because of the Navy's new ballistic missile
defense.''
All of this, of course, predicated upon the conference between the
House and the Senate, the conference process that we are entering, that
we entered this afternoon. My R&D Subcommittee is meeting as I speak. I
decided that letting America know what we are doing was more important
than participating in that meeting because I am not the chairman of
that subcommittee; the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is.
My close in today's USA Today:
``These and other Republican initiatives in areas such as personnel
and training will not just maintain, but will enhance, the combat
capability that has so quickly deteriorated under Clinton's leadership.
``Those of us who visit,'' as I did in the Balkans over this break
our troops, ``and listen to our front-line troops are giving them what
they need,'' what they deserve, ``including equipment that will
drastically reduce loss of'' precious, ``life.''
``The Reagan revolution of the 1980's laid the foundation for'' the
victory in, ``Desert Storm. The Republican revolution'' that started on
November 8, ``of 1994 is laying the foundation for any future
victories, if that is our fate, and the survival of U.S. combat troops
well into the 21st century.''
Now, Mr. Speaker, I had intended to spend the better part of this
hour special order on defense on some of the votes that we won this
week. We won them all on the conservative side with the help of many
conservative members of the former majority party, the oldest political
party in America, the Democrats, but last night I kept a promise that I
made to a Navy Seal at Brandezy, Italy. I do not want to identify him
by rank, but let us put it this way. All the Seal's in the
Mediterranean depend on this fine young officer and Annapolis graduate
from decades ago.
He said to me, ``Congressman Dornan, I appreciate you being in the
Presidential race, although it appears you don't have much chance of
victory, as I appreciate Mr. Keyes, Alan Keyes, of Maryland, because
you discuss the moral issues which I believe are the critical issues of
our time.''
Now keep in mind this is a senior naval officer trained to the peak
of physical and mental performance for his country. He said,
``Congressman, I believe as a naval officer that the military culture
is the last stable part of American life from which we can begin the
rebuilding of our Nation's moral fiber, from which we can begin to
defend the moral and cultural ethos
that is collapsing around us.''
Now I would like to think there is a pocket of us on both sides of
the aisle in the House and the Senate that also believe that we are in
an advanced state of moral decline in our country.
He said to me, this naval officer, ``Did you see the cover story of
Newsweek in July on bissexuality?''
I said, ``No, captain, I did not.''
He said, ``Well, I canceled my subscription with a long letter to the
New York publisher and senior editors saying that this was the most
vile and corrupt article I've ever seen in my life.''
And I said, ``Well, every week in my office I get 10 magazines and
about 10 newspapers,'' and I said, ``I try to read as much as any human
being in the
[[Page H 8717]]
House or Senate. With all due immodesty, I've never seen anybody that
reads more.''
And I said, ``I did not see this particular Newsweek. I can go weeks
without even catching a cover story in Time, or Newsweek, or U.S. News
and World Report, or all the other magazines that we get. Then there is
all the great conservative publications, the moderate ones like New
Republic I try to stay up with, and Crisis, and First Things, and
cutting edge of Catholic and Protestant, conservative, magazines, and
of course Bill Buckley, my old pal, with National Review--awful lot to
read. We have tremendous responsibility here to stay informed on what
our Speaker Gingrich calls the ``information highway'' to be an alert,
informed man or woman in this place. It is an overwhelming job if
you're trying to inform yourself of all aspects of the popular culture
and try to cover the economic front, the foreign affairs front, the
human rights front, the defense front, all the social issues at home,
gang warfare, the O.J. Simpson trial, not as a gawking ``Lookie Lou,''
but as someone aware that this trial, as the Menendez trial has done,
can put our whole jury system in jeopardy.''
And I promised this Navy SEAL that I would get the Newsweek article
out of my huge piles of reading material in my office and take a look
at it. I have only been home since the first of September. I got it out
last night and read it. Here it is, Mr. Speaker. It is the Newsweek
issue of July 17, so it hit the newsstands on Monday, July 10. I read
it last night, and I agree with this naval officer, assigned at a
forward base in Italy, a kind of a man who will go in and put his life
on the line if another Captain Scott O'Grady gets shot down along the
coast. The Navy SEAL's will have the job to go in and rescue them under
fire, and I agree with this naval officer. This is the most corrupt
article, let alone a cover story, that I have ever read in an American
magazine in my life--Newsweek.
The Washington bureau chief, and we are having our problems right now
over another issue that personally involves my honor, and I will do a
1-hour special order or a personal privilege in the middle of the day--
no, I would not do that in September, budget month--to defend my honor
from an attack by a reporter who has only been--who was not even hired
when this issue came out, who attacked my honor and said I crashed four
aircraft in the Air Force. I have not crashed one. Ejected twice from
totally out-of-control aircraft, but he doubled that to four and said I
crashed them and said I was a black ace, one kind of black ace. The
only black aces I know were an F-14 squadron called the ``Black Aces''
in the unheralded until the HBO special in the last few weeks, the 99th
fighter squadron, and then the 332nd Fighter Group, the Tuskegee
airmen, our young fighter pilots in the Italian theatre of African-
American
heritage who are finally getting their recognition 52 years after they
entered combat. That is the only ``Black Aces'' I know about.
But I am having my problems with Evan Thomas, who I think is one of
the better talking heads. He will be on television tomorrow, on a
program called ``Inside U.S.A.,'' a handsome young man, and we are
having out problems on this, but I have not talked to him about this
issue, and I will. I am going to fly up to New York. I am going to go
see Donald and Katharine Graham. She is chairman emeritus and has
discussed this issue.
I almost wonder if I can read this in the Chamber, but listen to
this. I wish you folks were not leaving up there because--well, get the
Congressional Record tomorrow and read this.
Here is the article on bisexuality. It is under ``Lifestyle,'' of
course.
``Bisexuality is the wild card of our erotic life. Now it is coming
out in the open, in pop culture, in cyberspace, and on campus. But can
you really have it both ways?'' They asked rhetorically, question mark,
by John Leland. The answer is Newsweek thinks you can because in this
article, one of America's great magazines--when I was a little kid
coming out of St. Patrick's, I used to look at their beautiful
headquarters building right there on Fifth Avenue across from Tiffany
somewhere. Newsweek, which is owned by the Washington Post, one of
America's three major newspapers, all of them liberal: L.A. Times, New
York Times, Washington Post. They own this, so it is under Katharine
and Donald Graham.
Here is what Newsweek says about this issue. Brace yourself for
culture shock if you are still shockable.
They show here Theresa, and Ronelle, all these couples, Stephen and
Linda. Of course, she's 47 and he's 30. They all have multiple
partners, they all switch-hit, they are all AC/DC, they are dual-
gaited. I remember all the cute words in New York, and, after all, I
grew up in Manhattan and then west to Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, so I
know all the flippant dialog.
{time} 1345
Here is a woman, 48, with a young Hispanic guy, it looks like he is
about 17, 18, 19; he is in his early 20's. Freud said we are all
bisexual. He thought that exclusive heterosexuality was a problem. In
the copy it says that he thought homosexuality was a problem, and he
never got around to that, because he died and met God before he had a
chance to get into that.
But the article goes on, and by its commentary, approving of this
fifth gender. Bella Abzug stands up in Beijing, China, in the middle of
the world's most oppressive human rights, communistic dictatorship and
mentions homophobia and gets a standing ovation from all of the
assembled feminists of the world. if Ms. Hillary was in the room, she
would have given her a standing ovation.
So here in the picture of this blue-eyed, red-headed guy, Tim, 24,
with Ellen, 30 years of age. She has done it all, it is always older
women and younger guys in these bisexual things. Listen to this. ``The
bisexual blip of the 1970's was an offshoot of the sexual revolution.''
Of course, Newsweek's position is the sexual revolution was just
grand. Tell that to 200,000 people dead of AIDS, another million
infected in this country, and 10 to 20 million affected all around the
world. Make love, casual sex like alley cats, not war. So they refer to
the sexual revolution in an approving way.
``The bisexual blip was an offshoot of that revolution. It was
straight with a twist. By contrast, the current bisexual movement rises
from the gay and feminists movements.'' Notice it did not say lesbian
wing of the feminist movement, just the feminist movement. ``For a
generation that came of age during the gay rights movement, same-sex
relationships or experiments no longer carry the stigma they once
did.'' Stigma. What would that mean? Would that mean sin? Right and
wrong, evil, banal sin, mortal sin?
Newsweek magazine, with this article, Mr. Speaker, and anybody
listening, make no mistake about it, Newsweek magazine, with this July
17 cover story, is a direct frontal attack on everything that I was
ever taught by my parents, by every teacher I had in grade school, high
school, and college. It is a direct frontal assault on Mother Theresa,
on Pope John Paul II, on Billy Graham, or every Protestant, Catholic,
and Jewish theologian in this Nation. It is a frontal assault on Moses,
right before my eyes, on the Jewish rabbi and great lawgiver Mimones
over here; it is a frontal assault on the justice code of almost all of
the 23 men whose medallions you see up in this Chamber: The Pope, Pope
Innocent, Pope Gregory, St. Louis, Pope Alphonse. It is an assault upon
every moral code in this country, but it says, there is no more stigma
to promiscuity and groping around like alley cats, and any drug-
infested party you can go to, and it gets worse. No longer a stigma.
Get this next line. I hope you are watching, Evan Thomas. If my
office is listening, Mr. Speaker, I hope they call Newsweek because he
is in his office this afternoon, and ask Evan Thomas to please turn on
the television and listen to this. This is not in quotes, this is
Newsweek writing, this is John Leland writing, with the help, and I am
going to mention him right now, of Steve Rhodes, contributing in
Chicago, Peter Katel in Miami, Claudia Kalb and Marc Peyser in New
York, Nadine Joseph in San Francisco, and Martha Brant in Washington,
in the Washington office and bureau reports.
Get this next line, after there is no stigma: ``More and more of us--
at work * * *'' Is this Newsweek
people at work?--at school, in our families, and
[[Page H 8718]]
in our entertainments--``move comfortably between gay and straight
worlds.''
``Most of us in our work move comfortably between gay and straight
worlds and in our schools?'' Then they go to a quote: ``Those of us who
are younger,'' says Rebecca Kaplan, 24, a psychology major at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology--what are your SAT scores to get
into MIT? She says, ``those of us who are younger owe a great deal to
gays, lesbians and bisexuals who came before us.''
Who came before us? That is a line for George Washington in his
inaugural speech, April 30, 1789. We owe this to Benjamin Franklin and
to George Mason up here, we owe it to them, Thomas Payne and those who
came before us, those who died at Lexington and Concord, those who
suffered during the six and a half years of the Revolutionary War. Any
African-American can say, we owe this to those who died in the
conflict, to the terrorist John Brown and his sons, we owe it to
everybody who came before us, our freedom.
What was the greatest scene in the wonderful movie, ``Glory,'' when
Morgan Freeman says to the young rebel Denzel Washington, he says,
white boys have anted up and died for our freedom; now it is our time
to ante up, and he rallies the 4th regiment to go against Fort Wagner,
and they gave their lives in the fight for freedom to keep this
country. As it says here, tolerance, liberty and union on the other
side, those who went before us.
``The bisexuals, lesbians who went before us, we owe it to them.''
She is going to make a great psychologist. Still in school at age 24.
She says, ``because of them,'' Rebecca continues, ``I was able to come
out as a bisexual and not hate myself.'' Here is this word feminism
again, not the lesbian branch of feminism. Feminism has also made
romantic attachments between two women--either provisional or lasting--
more acceptable, even privileged.
Do you know that I had to be a Congressman approaching my sixties
before a young graduate of Holyoke told me that the majority of women
at that college would say they were lesbians? That she had to form on
campus a heterosexual club to defend themselves. They were not just
defending virginity, they were defending normal heterosexuality. And
she said, of course, most of the women are 4-year lesbians, or more
accurately a 3-year, 9-month lesbian. Peer pressure, sexual lesbian
experimentation, and then as, some radical lesbians have said, dripping
bile from their lips, they have said, and then the sisters betray us,
not in this order necessarily, and go out and get themselves a dog, a
station wagon, children and a husband.
Is that what Newsweek means by provisional lesbians? Just while they
were in college, at a school of higher learning, one of the privileged
of the world, to get advanced education beyond high school?
Then it says, after privileged, ``as president of the National
Organization for Women, Patricia Ireland sets a quiet example.'' She is
a big mouth, so what does quiet mean? ``She has both a husband and a
female companion.'' What kind of a wimp is her husband down there in
Miami that he lets her keep a lesbian roommate up there in Washington,
DC. where she does the work of NOW, preparing to send Bella Abzug to
rant on in Beijing, China about homophobia? Incredible. And there were
some people at NOW that voted against the Nation's most famous lesbian
becoming head of NOW.
Now, this in Newsweek, and this is in quotes, ``Namely every college
or university in the country
and some high schools now have gay and lesbian student centers; sex
with one's own gender, for anyone who is curious,'' that is you, Mr.
Speaker, that is everybody in the gallery, that is these two staffers
sitting here, that is our pages, that is me, ``for anyone who is
curious, section with one's own gender is now a visible and protected
part of campus culture.''
And protected by Newsweek, ladies and gentlemen. Queer studies. I
thought queer was a politically incorrect word. ``Queer studies and
gender studies are now part of the national curriculum. A popular T-
shirt spotted recently in a Connecticut high school puts it this way:
Do not assume I am straight.'' That is a high school kid.
``As one 17 year old bi says,'' we do not know if it is a boy or
girl, 17 year old, someone over 18 rapes a 17-year-old young lady on a
date, that is a statutory rape. This is a minor child that Newsweek is
writing about. ``A 17-year-old minor bi says `It is not us versus them
anymore. There is just more and more of us.' '' Tim Horing, but there
is an umlaut--I did not know Newsweek's typewriters had umlauts over
the 0--21, a sophomore--why is he a sophomore at 21? He should be a
senior or junior--at City College in San Francisco, describes himself
as ``typical of bisexual youth. We just refuse to label ourselves as
any of the five food groups.'' That is male heterosexual, female
heterosexual, male homosexual, female homosexual, and the bi's. ``We do
not want to be any part of the five. We revel in the fuzziness, in the
blurred images. Working class, Roman Catholic,'' and, oh, does the New
York Times and the networks as CBS did in their CBS reports last night,
do they love to attack Cardinal John Joseph O'Connor and the Roman
Catholic Church, if they get a Catholic or practicing Baptist family or
an orthodox Jewish family, oh, to get somebody from a traditional
Jewish or Roman Catholic to switch over and talk about how they are a
recovering Catholic or a recovering Jewish person, because of all that
terrible confirmation and Holy Communion and bar mitzvah and bat
mitzvah, oh, they love to get one of this.
And get this, Tom's father is a retired New York narcotics cop. A
narco guy taking away another one of their flesh privileges, to get
high and then grope out boy for all the warm flesh.
``Horing had his first sexual fantasies about the Bionic Woman, and
then in his teens he admitted to himself in a series of difficult steps
that he was also attracted to men. He came out to a few friends in
school, and at his graduation when his name was called, Timothy Horing,
six rows in the auditorium mischievously,'' no, not mischievously,
``yelled out `The bisexual; Tim Horing, the bisexual.' A surprise to
his parents.''
No, a gut-ripping heart seizure for his New York retired narcotics
cop and his Roman Catholic mother.
``For the most part, he has been in monogamous relationships.'' You
like that, ``for the most part?'' ``Usually with men.''
Oh, I see. I always said for my entire life that bisexuality was
basically a cover story for homosexuality. That when they captured the
adjective ``gay'' to say that they were happier than your average pair,
more cheerful, more mirthful, that then, if they said they were
bisexual, they could say ``Well, I date the whole base. I can date
anybody on Capitol Hill. I am a switch-hitter. I am AC-DC, I am bi. I
can go for anything. You are missing out on half the world.'' But we
find out he basically dates men.
As we go all the way through this, most of it is male homosexuality,
not bisexuality. Though he is now dating two gay men and a bisexual
woman. I see. He is spreading himself around. Two homosexual men and
one half-homosexual woman. What would that give him in the rating of
chess pieces? What would that make him, 87.75 homosexual?
He says, young Tom, ``I never wanted a white picket fence, but I do
want someone I can settle down with and raise my Benetton kids.''
Benetton. Is that the Benetton Colors out of Italy that put Ronald
Reagan in major news magazines with cancer, sarcoma, AIDS sores all
over his face? Is this Benetton that pushes homosexual money into every
corner of America and everywhere else their clothing is marketed?
I notice that the Justice Department today under Janet Reno is
investigating Calvin Klein jeans to see if they used underaged children
in their soft core pornography, latest wave of disgusting ads, and
Klein, unless he gets taken to court, is laughing all the way to the
bank again, because negative soft- or hard-core pornography sells in
modern America.
They just had an adult bookstore convention in the Sheraton Universal
Hotel in Los Angeles, and I am reading in one of my Los Angeles Times
clippings that the business, in spite of the January 17 earthquake 2
years ago, has rebounded and doubled. You do not see porno theaters in
your markets anymore, because it is in all the hotels for traveling
businessmen to demean somebody else's sister, wife, somebody else's
daughter, who did not have the
[[Page H 8719]]
love of a father, and it is in all the video stores, including
Blockbuster. The ripping apart of these young gals from these
transitional neighborhoods who never new the loving touch, the moral
touch, of a father, to hug them and kiss them and guide them through
school.
They are out there as the young whores of our society being used by
the porno industry. And no matter how many commit suicide like Karen
Applegate from a beautiful little town in Wisconsin.--I have spoken to
her mother. No matter how many kill themselves. Six playmates have
killed themselves over the years. When I asked Hugh Hefner that once to
his face, he turned red and did not want to discuss it and said it was
a lie. I knew them each by name, starting with Marilyn Monroe, his
first playmate.
{time} 1400
But this guy says he wants to raise his Benetton kids in a swinging
orgy household. His partner may be a man or woman, he says. I don't
feel forced to choose. I don't have to make any tough choices.
Then it shows this very pathetic human being with his baby. He has
gone through every orgy situation available to the humankind. And when
people ask him what his little baby is, man or woman, he says ask the
baby. He has a little boy or girl and he says, ask the baby. Smart
aleck. Pray for him. He is 42 and he has three or four people on the
hook. It goes on and on as it gets worse.
Softening tensions. Softening tensions. This is Newsweek. That is a
paragraph title. For many bisexuals, it has not been easy. When I came
out in '88, says Melissa Merry, 31, energetic Chicagoan who calls
herself Mel: I was told by people from local lesbian support groups not
to come out as a bisexual or I would be asked to leave.
They did not want the fence straddling. Well, when I got to some of
these paragraphs about high schools, the first thing that flashed in my
mind, as an Irish-American, was William B. Yeats poem read when Hitler
started World War II. And he died that year, Yeats. It is called ``The
Second Coming,'' about the beast being born, the Antichrist and
slouching off to Bethlehem to be born. Those are the last lines, but it
begins turning and turning in the widening gyre, as in gyrations,
falcons, circle. Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon
no longer hears the falconer. Things fall apart. The center cannot
hold. Everywhere the blood din tide is loosed. Everywhere the ceremony
of innocence is drowned.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned by Newsweek. The best lack all
conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. There is an
intensity to this article and it is evil and it is the worst.
When I saw in here they are claiming James Dean, the actor who died
at age 24 after only three movies, when I see they are claiming Marlene
Dietrich as a bisexual lesbian, and Cary Grant, my favorite actor as a
young man because of everybody's favorite movie quote-unquote ``Gunga
Din,'' when I saw that, I went to the end to see how many women
participated in--what is the author's name again, with John Leland in
this disgusting, vile piece--and while I was back at the tail end of
the article reading all the violence--by the way, if this were in Time
we would not know who contributed to this. I could not call any of
these people and say have you lost your moral compass totally at this
magazine? Does Donald Graham read this, this cover story of this
corruption, this drowning of innocence? And as I was reading, I decided
I would look before I finished the story at the last line.
Now, let me tell you a story about myself personally. When I was a
young man in Beverly Hills, just out of high school, and I heard these
rumors, because my uncle is the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, Jack
Haley, I grew up in that community. I knew who dodged the draft. I knew
the heroes who went off to combat, like James Stewart and Tyrone Power.
We know who all the ones that were rumored to be homosexuals. I knew
about Rock Hudson 10 years before it came out in the press.
I had a small bit part in a movie ``Gathering of Eagles,'' and he
minced across the set and the director said cut. And Rock turned around
and said was I mincing too much? And the director said, just do it
again, Rock. I witnessed that, and everybody talks behind the scenes.
Just as in fashion design, in ice skating, in supernumeraries, on
Broadway stage, in ballet, and now in some parts of government there is
a larger percentage than the 1 percent of homosexuals out there across
America. And when I worked on the sets of Hollywood trying to feed my
five children and dreaming about running for Congress someday, I had
long philosophical discussions with a lot of young homosexual men in
their 20's, and they would tell me about Rock and all the stars that
they just were dying to get with some night; wanted them, and then to
see them up there 50 feet high up on the silver screen and know that
you had sexually been with them. What a trip.
And how did I rationalize Cary Grant when I was in high school? I
remember working out a rationale that when God gives you a lot of
talent and you make a lot of money in your 20's or 30's--what did Robin
Williams say after he came off cocaine and watched his friend John
Belushi die? He said cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making
too much money.
It was the same way in Hollywood. Always has been. Or in any
profession where money flows fast into the hands of the young. Look at
all our rock stars. Look at Kurt Cobain blowing his brains out.
Look at Jerry Garcia. Look at Marilyn Monroe. Look at Elvis. Look at
Jimi Hendrix. Look at Jim Morrison. Look at Janis Joplin. Whether it is
booze or heroin or drugs, and orgies for all of them.
I watched Elvis Presley using his staff to pimp for him. I thought
what a tragedy for this polite young man from Tupelo, MI. I am trying
to sell him a script called the 101st American, about Vietnam, because
he had served honorably in the Army, and I am watching his staff hit on
young pretty extra girls for him. They rented a big mansion up in
Beverly Hills below the head of the owner of the L.A. Rams, who is now
dead, and you could hear the orgies going on all night long.
He died naked, on drugs at 42 years of age, and now you can get a
postage stamp and lick Elvis and stick him on your letter and say there
went the most talented man in rock singing in our lifetime dead at 42.
And in that suite of stamps you can get Marilyn Monroe. Do we forget
how old she was in August of 1962 when she died? 36 years old. 36 years
old! At my age, that is a kid. We are celebrating these two deaths with
their most glamorous picture.
Remember the debate in the Post Office department: Do we want the
fat, older drug besotted Elvis or the younger Elvis in his prime? We
picked the younger one. And he was a polite young man. What a tragedy!
So I watched all these people corrupting themselves, and I watched
others, like Jimmy Stewart and my Uncle Jack and others. I remember
Danny Thomas telling me I have never told a dirty joke in my life, Bob.
Do not ever forget that. My uncle told me, never stoop to dirty humor
on the stage. It is too easy to get laughs. Today I watch all these
comedians. It is a category with the medical word for male organ. That
is all they do, are jokes on genitalia.
It is sickening what is going on in Hollywood. But what was my
rationale for Cary Grant? Here it was, I remember it vividly, I was in
my teens. I said when you have too much money, and you can have any
beautiful woman in the world, and you start going to wild Hollywood
parties and drinking too much--we did not know about drugs much in
those days--and you start drinking too much, and you are at an orgy,
whatever moves, I guess. It is all a mortal sin. It is all promiscuity.
It is all flesh. Flesh is flesh, so you experiment with everything.
So I do not think Cary Grant was a homosexual or a bisexual. He just
got carried away at those orgies. That was my rationale so I could like
Sergeant McChesney of Gunga Din with McLaglen and with Sergeant
Ballentine Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Years later, in a debate running for the Senate seat that Pete Wilson
eventually won, I am debating one of the candidates back in the pack,
because I am still back in the pack in the Presidential race, he was a
State senator, he was raised as a German-American
[[Page H 8720]]
Roman Catholic, he was a colonel in the Marine Reserve, and I pointed
out to him in a radio debate in 1982 at a station in Pasadena, KRLA--
how is that for a memory--I said, you know something my State Senate
friend, reaching out and grabbing any kind of flesh, whether
heterosexual or homosexual, lust is lust. It is one of the seven deadly
sins. It is all a mortal sin whether normal or abnormal.
He went ballistic. Would not accept that. Then I found out he had a
scandal brewing. He had two college students where he taught as a
professor, a marine officer, who were pregnant with children out of
wedlock. He bragged, quite properly, at least he was
pro-life. I could not understand why he took such exception to saying
that God is not going to judge a promiscuous homosexual any more
harshly than he will judge a promiscuous heterosexual. It is all lust.
It is all the ceremony of innocence being drowned as we do this to our
children.
So there it is, when I am a teenager rationalizing Cary Grant and
arguing on a radio show in a California Senate race in 1982. Here is my
point for telling those two little tangential tales. My eyes jump above
all the bylines of these people, Steve and Peter and Claudia and Mark
and Nadine and Martha, and here is the last line of this disgusting,
vile, decadent piece from the Graham empire of the Washington Post
Newsweek magazine and other small newspapers.
It says in the last paragraph, in San Francisco recently Tim Horing--
remember him, Roman Catholic, parents retired New York narco cop
father--he was telling his friends about how he changed his approach to
picking up boys. How old was Horing? 21. Hey, Newsweek, did you slip
here in your investigative reporting? Telling his friends how he had
changed his approach to pick up boys? Is he a 21-year-old chicken hawk
hitting on runaway young men on the street who also, in most cases,
until recently, when peer pressure overwhelms even good attentive
Jewish Christian mothers and fathers. In the old days, last year, last
decade, it was young boys who never knew a father's masculine touch, a
mother's hug, a mom or dad taking them to a baseball game or fishing.
It was young men who ran away from inattentive alcoholic families that
ended up on the street of once glamorous Hollywood Boulevard to be
preyed upon, P-R-E-Y-E-D upon, to be taken off for porno films and
turned into midnight cowboy male street whores all along Selma
Boulevard behind beautiful Jesuit Blessed Sacrament Church in
Hollywood.
I drove down that street when I did Michael Reagan's show a month
ago, and there they are, still huddling in the driveways with less
business because now most of them are infected with AIDS. So Tim
Horing--I have to check if he was 21. Yes, he is 21. He says the boys
that I pick up now--he has changed his approach. ``I used to say are
you queer? Then I switched to, do you like boys? Now his favorite line
is, do you like me?''
As he sees it, ``I have gone from the political to the historical
attraction to the very personal. All that matters is if they like me.''
This is the new bisexual moment, Newsweek says. This is their close in
a nutshell.
And I close with this line, Mr. Speaker. ``Hard fought, hard thought,
and distinctively individual. It is a thorny narrative, fraught with
questions of identity and belonging. And in the end, it is really about
the simple, mysterious pull between warm human bodies when the lights
go out.''
My teenage rationale for Cary Grant. We are in advanced moral decay,
Mr. Speaker, and I am going to stay in the Presidential race as long as
I can, because there is not anyone in the race like Congressman Robert
K. Dornan at age 62.
____________________