    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 2, 1999]
    [Pages 1661-1665]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1661]]

    Remarks at an Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality Dinner in Beverly
    Hills, California
    October 2, 1999

        Thank you. Let me say, first of all, I thank you for that. I'm
    profoundly moved. And I was thinking when I was watching David
    Mixner make those remarks that 30 years ago,
    when I let him sleep on my floor--[laughter]--when we were much younger
    men in England, and I didn't charge him a nickel for it--[laughter]--I
    never dreamed that either of us would be in this place tonight doing
    these things. [Laughter]
        David's life has taken a lot of twists and
    turns since then. He's had his ups and his downs like all the rest of
    us. But I can tell you something, when I met him when he was young, I
    thought I had never met a person whose heart burned with the fire of
    social justice so strongly. He has never forgotten the roots of his
    childhood. He has never forgotten not only the pain that he and other
    gay and lesbian Americans have endured; he also cares for other people
    who are dispossessed and downtrodden and underrepresented and often
    forgotten.
        And tonight I was watching him, and he
    introduced his wonderful sister--who
    has also been a friend of mine for nearly 30 years now--and I was
    thinking how fortunate we are in this country at this time, with all the
    things we've had to do, to have had his energy, his heart, his devotion,
    his passion. It was 8 years ago that he and Scott Hitt and a few other ANGLE members met with me this week 8
    years ago, here. Then in May of '92 we had a big event out here, and
    some of you were there. And I told you that I had a vision of America,
    and you were part of it, that we were all part of the same community.
        Well, tonight I thank you for helping to make that happen. I thank
    my good friend Governor Gray Davis for the
    leadership he has given in California. I thank our leader in the House of Representatives, who--when David
    made that crack about the ``Canterbury Tales'' and how we're known by
    our traveling companions--[laughter]--it kind of made me feel sorry for
    Dick Gephardt. [Laughter] You talk about a guy that gets up and goes to
    work every day under adverse conditions and continues to do the right
    thing, he does.
        But I know that Representatives Baldwin
    and Becerra and Kennedy and Sherman and Waxman are here, and they're his good fellow travelers. We just may need five more in the
    company to make it a much better trip.
        I want to thank Bill Melamed, Skip
    Paul, Gwen Baba, Roberta
    Bennett for putting this together. I want to
    thank the members of our administration who came: Sean Maloney, Karen Tramontano, Minyon
    Moore, Fred Hochberg,
    Richard Socarides, Marsha Scott. And I want to thank Scott Hitt, especially, who's been the Chair of the AIDS council.
    He's having his last meeting as Chair on Monday, and he's been
    magnificent, and we ought to give him a big hand. [Applause]
        I'd also like to thank the Gay Men's Chorus. I was back there
    feverishly trying to write down all those lines. [Laughter] I want to
    call Hillary and give her those best
    lines tonight. You know, I'm trying to remember them all. It was
    unbelievable. If someone would furnish me with the lyrics of that song,
    I would be eternally grateful. [Laughter]
        You know, I'd like to put what brought us all here tonight just for
    a minute. I know a lot of other people are going to speak and have a lot
    of great things to say, but I would like to put this in, just for a
    moment, in the context of history and the larger context of our future,
    and how the fight for equal rights and equal opportunity and full
    participation to build one America fits in with all the other things we
    should be doing as a country, and how what we are at home will determine
    what we can do around the world in the new millennium.
        When I ran for President in 1992, most Americans felt things were
    pretty dismal in this country. The economy was in bad shape; the society
    was divided; all the social indicators--crime, welfare, and other
    things--were going in the wrong direction. Politics was, as we all
    remember from the convention they had back then on the other side, a
    matter of division, you know, just drive a wedge in society and make
    sure your wedge is bigger than their wedge; you get more votes, you win;
    and if

    [[Page 1662]]

    everybody is all torn up and upset, who cares, you're in power.
        And over and over and over again, things in Washington were sort of
    repeating themselves like a broken record. And I felt that we could do
    better with a unifying vision. That's why I set out a vision of America,
    and you were part of it. But I also had a vision that we could build an
    economy that was good for working people and employers. I believed we
    could build a country where we could grow the economy and make the
    environment better, not worse.
        I have always believed that the real purpose of life and growth is
    to try and figure out how to develop these unifying visions and to move
    closer to them and to break down all these funny walls we have to put up
    in our minds to organize life into little boxes so we can figure out how
    to get from here to there.
        And, you know, in '92, the American people just sort of took a
    chance on me and Al Gore. I mean, it was an argument we made and there
    was no evidence for it because the other crowd had been in so long. We
    just made an argument. And it was not an easy race. A month after we had
    that meeting out here in May of '92, I won the California primary. And
    the headline the next day was that the exit poll showed that all the
    people that voted for me really wanted Ross Perot
    to be President. [Laughter] And I was in third place.
        And then he and President Bush got in a fight about who messed up whose daughter's
    wedding or something. [Laughter] You remember that? I mean, it was an
    amazing--and I thought to myself, people don't have jobs; they're being
    foreclosed on; why are you guys fighting about this? The wedding went
    off without a hitch. What is this about? [Laughter] And somehow the
    American people decided to give me a chance, decided to give Al and
    Hillary and Tipper and all the people that came in the administration a
    chance.
        I guess what I'd like to say tonight, first of all--not with
    arrogance, but with humility--is that we now know that there is evidence
    that we're right and that pulling things together and moving forward
    actually works. We have the lowest unemployment in 29 years, the lowest
    welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the
    lowest crime rates in 26 years, the first back-to-back budget surpluses
    in 42 years, the highest homeownership in history, the longest peacetime
    expansion in history.
        And you have to--15 million Americans took leave under the family
    leave law. And when it was vetoed in the previous administration, they
    said, ``Oh, well, we've got to veto this bill because if we let people
    take time off from work when their babies are born or their parents are
    sick, why, it will ruin the small business economy.'' And every year,
    we've set a new record for new small businesses in America.
        Ninety percent of our kids are immunized against serious diseases
    for the first time, our young children. We're giving 5 million more of
    them health insurance. A hundred thousand young people served in
    AmericCorps. I could just go on and on. And along the way, we gave
    America the most diverse, truly representative government by far in the
    history of America. That included you and everybody else.
        What I want to say to you is, this is not an argument anymore.
    [Laughter] We have evidence. And so you should be of good cheer. And
    when you look ahead to these elections in 2000, you should be absolutely
    sure that anybody who is not with you knows they're doing it in the face
    of the evidence.
        And because--what really bothers me about what's going on in
    Washington now, it's like there are all these people out there making
    decisions in the congressional majority as if the last 6\1/2\ years just
    didn't happen. And that bothers me. So I say to you, when they say,
    looking at the Vice President and our party, ``Well, America needs a
    change,'' I agree with that. America always needs a change. We've got a
    lot more to do on your agenda. America needs a change. The question is
    not whether we'll change, but how are we going to change? How are we
    going to change?
        You mark my words, the world is changing so fast in how we work and
    live and relate to each other and folks around the globe, that the world
    will change. The question is, how? And are we going to use this
    unprecedented moment, the chance of a lifetime to say, okay, what are
    our big challenges out there, and seize them? Or are we going to do what
    got us into so much trouble in the first place? Are we going to pretend
    that the last 6\1/2\ years just didn't happen? That's very important.
        And I want to try to put the things that you're thinking about now
    into that context. What are the really big challenges facing America
    that affect you, too? One, the aging of America--I hate it because I'm
    doing it. [Laughter] But

    [[Page 1663]]

    I'm the oldest of the baby boomers. The number of people over 65 will
    double in the next 30 years; there will be two people working for every
    one person retired and drawing Social Security.
        Now, we have never been in a position, until now, in my lifetime, to
    deal with that challenge. But we now have the ability to run the life of
    Social Security out 50 years, to add more than a decade to the life of
    Medicare, to cover prescription drugs for elderly people--three-quarters
    of them cannot afford quality prescription drugs today--and to do it in
    a way that all of you who are younger than that should rejoice about.
    Because I can tell you those of us in the baby boom generation are
    plagued by the notion that our retirement will be so expensive for our
    country that it will burden our children and our ability to give our
    grandchildren the childhoods they deserve. But we can fix it now. So I
    gave them a plan to do it. So far, they say no.
        Another thing that really bothers me: we've got the largest and most
    diverse group of children in our school in history. We never had over 53
    million children in schools, and they come from more different
    backgrounds than ever before. And that will be a godsend to 21st century
    America if, but only if, they all have a world-class education. And I
    think they're entitled to it.
        So I gave Congress a plan to build and modernize 6,000 schools and
    hire 100,000 teachers for smaller classes; make sure all the kids had
    computers in their classrooms; make sure we stopped social promotion,
    but had after-school programs for the kids who needed it; and more of
    these charter schools that California has led the way in bringing to our
    children. So far, they said no.
        Funny thing, maybe Mr. Gephardt will
    talk about this later, but one of the most interesting things is last
    year, right before the election in '98, they got religion on this
    education program. [Laughter] And they supported this big downpayment on
    our plan for 100,000 teachers, and we funded 30,000 of those teachers.
    And you had those real liberals, like Mr.
    Armey--[laughter]--going home. This is serious business; ask Dick. You
    had these real liberals going out and saying, ``Man, this is a great
    thing we've done. We've made a big downpayment on 100,000 teachers;
    we're going to put 30,000 teachers out there, and this is a great
    Republican program because there is no bureaucracy in it. We just give
    it to the schools, and they hire the teachers.'' They thought it was the
    greatest thing since sliced bread before the election.
        They have just voted not only to refuse to fund any more of those
    but to no longer earmark the money for the 30,000. So there's a big
    difference here.
        I'm worried about the families of our country. I'm worried about all
    these working people. How are they going to have the child care they
    need? How are they going to have the health care they need? Why don't we
    pass the Patients' Bill of Rights that protects working people? There's
    a difference between the two parties on that, and I think it's
    important. We're finally going to get a chance--we've been working for 2
    years--finally going to get a chance to vote on the Patients' Bill of
    Rights in the House next week.
        I'm very worried about this fabulous economy, because we've left
    some people behind. Yes, we've got the lowest poverty rate in 20 years,
    but there are still people in places that have not felt this recovery.
    If you come from--a lot of you come from other places, the Mississippi
    Delta, Appalachia, the Indian reservations, many of the inner cities. So
    I want to do some things that I think will change all that. I want to,
    first of all, give Americans with money the same incentives to invest in
    poor areas in America we give them to invest in poor areas around the
    world. I think that's important.
        I hope in the near future we'll be able to make access to the
    Internet as universal as telephone access is. It will have a huge impact
    on the economy. Last night I was in northern California, and I was with
    some people who work with eBay. A lot of you probably buy things on
    eBay. [Laughter] It seems like everybody does now. And I learned that
    over and above the employees of that company, there are now over 20,000
    people, including a lot of people that used to be on welfare, who
    actually make a living buying and selling things, trading on eBay, over
    20,000 people.
        Well, I'm telling you, that means nothing at the Pine Ridge Indian
    Reservation in South Dakota, where the unemployment rate is 73 percent.
    Now, we can do better. And we ought not to quit until every American has
    the chance to participate in our prosperity if he or she is willing to
    work. And I won't rest until that happens.

    [[Page 1664]]

        I want you to keep a checklist in your mind, and when I get to the
    end, ask yourself what's all this about, what's it got to do with you as
    Americans? This is part of being part of America. I think we need to do
    more, not less, for the environment. The Vice President has this livability agenda to deal with, using all kinds
    of computer technology to alleviate traffic congestion, to buy more
    green space in urban areas. We're trying to lead the world toward
    recognizing that this global warming is real, but that you do not have
    to end your economic growth, because now there are technologies
    available to allow us to grow the economy as we reduce our greenhouse
    gas emissions. There are people in the other party who believe that this
    is some sort of subversive plot to wreck America's economic future.
        Not very long ago, I came out here and went to San Bernardino, to
    the Inland Empire, and we announced a housing development for low income
    working people in which the developers pledged, by the use of energy
    conservation technologies, to cut the utility bills of these low income
    working people by 40 percent. And I just got a report that the average
    reduction is 60 percent. That's good for the economy. That's not bad for
    the economy, and it's good for the environment.
        Let me just mention a couple of other things. I am very concerned
    that America, even though we've got the lowest crime rate in 26 years,
    is still a pretty dangerous country compared to other countries. We
    should be the safest big country in the world. This is a free and
    prosperous place. We welcome all kinds of people. It is not rational.
    Why aren't we the safest country in the world? Because we haven't taken
    reasonable steps, not enough of them, to keep guns out of the hands of
    criminals and children. And because, frankly, even though we've put
    100,000 more police on the street in community policing, we've still got
    neighborhoods that don't have enough coverage.
        So I gave Congress a plan to deal with both those things: put 50,000
    more police officers out there to prevent crime in the highest crime
    areas of the country and to deal with guns and so forth. They say no.
    Our crowd says yes; their crowd says no. Big difference.
        What about our role in the world? I've tried, from Bosnia to Kosovo
    to the Middle East to Northern Ireland, to stand up for the idea that
    people ought not to be murdered or moved wholesale because of their race
    or their religion. We have worked to support other countries and to
    build the capacity in Africa to prevent future Rwandas, because people
    ought not to be murdered because of what tribe they're in. And you can
    define tribe however you want. [Laughter]
        We're about to start a great debate on the Comprehensive Test Ban
    Treaty, to end nuclear testing, something that Dwight Eisenhower and
    John Kennedy wanted us to do years ago. We're finally going to have a
    chance to do it. In so many of these areas, there are partisan
    differences which surprise me. And let me come back to you.
        Why are we for the hate crimes legislation? Why are we for ENDA?
    Because if we can't build one America, it's going to be very hard to
    have a unifying force that will deal with every other one of these
    issues. And that's what I want you to think about. Don't you think that
    it's interesting that here we are on the verge of this new millennium
    with all these absolutely breathtaking technological breakthroughs that
    people who are technologically challenged, like me, can hardly keep up
    with? [Laughter]
        I mean, isn't it amazing to you that we have--modernity is bursting
    out all over in the form of high technology. And yet, the world's
    largest problem and America's largest problem, that you can see when
    those kids got shot at that Jewish school and that Filipino postalworker
    was murdered here; that you could see when that guy who said he belonged
    to a church that didn't believe in God but did believe in white
    supremacy killed all those people of color and wounded others in
    Illinois and Indiana; that you could see when Matthew Shepard was
    murdered and James Byrd was torn apart; and that you can see in the
    tribal slaughters of Rwanda, and the persecution of the Kosovar
    Albanians or the Bosnian Muslims or the fights in Northern Ireland or
    the continued agonies of the Middle East--here we are on the verge of
    this great modern world, where we can make movies with virtual reality
    now, and virtual reality seems sometimes more real than what is real,
    and the biggest problem we've got is the primitive, age-old fear and
    hatred and dehumanization of the other people who aren't like us.
        And so I say--I'm nearly done; I just want to say this--[laughter]--
    I'm going to do everything I can, every day that I have, to remind
    people of that, that we have to be one America.

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    We can have honest differences over issues, but we can't have honest
    differences about whether we share a common humanity. And we cannot be
    under the illusion that either material prosperity or technological
    breakthroughs alone can purge the darkness in our hearts.
        I believe that America's best days are still out there. I believe
    with all my heart that we can find a way to marry prosperity and peace
    and humanity. But we must have a unifying vision. I want to say, again,
    I am grateful to people who have worked in my administration who have
    made me more alive to the concerns of your community, not only those who
    themselves are gay and lesbian, but others, beginning with my Vice
    President, who has been terrific on all of
    that in ways you will never know.
        But people are still scared of people who aren't like them. And
    other people are scared of themselves, and they're afraid they won't
    count unless they've got somebody to look down on. And if you have to
    find somebody to look down on, it must be somebody that is different
    from you. Because if you look down on somebody who is just like you,
    then you're looking down on yourself. [Laughter] And so we, in our
    little minds, come up with all these boxes. But all of life is a
    struggle to find a more and more and more and more unifying vision that,
    at least for me, makes us both more human and more in tune with our
    maker.
        I wish I could have done better. But we've done pretty well. And
    we're a long way from where we were. But I want you to think about this
    a little bit every day between now and next year, 13 months until the
    millennial election to define what America will be like; whether we will
    continue to embrace these big challenges and change in a positive way,
    building on what we now have evidence of; whether we will continue to
    look for those unifying visions that allow us all to join hands and go
    forward together.
        And I want you to remember the enthusiasm with which you greeted me
    tonight. And I want you to remember that it's easy to shout in the
    moment. But the world is turned by those who day in and day out, with
    courage and determination and heart and hope, stay the course. We need
    you. America needs you. I still believe in the future of America, and
    you are a part of it.
        Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:10 p.m. in the International Ballroom at
    the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to ANGLE
    member David Mixner, who introduced the President, and his sister,
    Patricia Mixner Annison; H. Scott Hitt, Chairman, President's Advisory
    Council on HIV/AIDS; Gov. Gray Davis of California; and ANGLE members
    and dinner cochairs Bill Melamed, Skip Paul, Gwen Baba, and Roberta
    Bennett. The President also referred to ENDA, the proposed employment
    nondiscrimination act.