Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Basketball diaries
Salon's Jake Tapper goes among the redwoods, with camera in hand, at Bill Bradley's Madison Square Garden fund-raiser.
By Jake Tapper
[11/17/99]

Trump takes Miami
The billionaire panders to Reform Party loyalists and Cuban dissidents as he toys with seeking the presidency.
By John Lantigua
[11/16/99]

High-tech ambulance chasing?
Attorneys register EgyptAir domain names, seeking to comfort families, not attract clients.
By Anthony York
[11/16/99]

Pilots ponder the mysteries of EgyptAir crash
Those who fly planes want to know why the autopilot was disconnected, the engines were shut down and nobody contacted air-traffic controllers.
By Phaedra Hise
[11/16/99]

Did relief pilot seize control from captain?
As Egyptians protest the move toward a criminal probe, reports emerge that a crew member said a prayer and plunged the plane into the ocean.
By Alicia Montgomery, Fiona Morgan and Daryl Lindsey
[11/16/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Sometimes it's like being in a crucible," he says of his toughest political days. "But you get put through the fire and you realize what's important." For Robb, that has led him to emerge as one of the most outspoken senators in the country on an issue far from near-and-dear to the hearts of his voters: gay and lesbian rights.

Robb was the only Southern senator to vote against the "Defense of Marriage Act," a warning shot against the recognition of gay and lesbian unions. He opposed "Don't ask, don't tell," and he's repeatedly appeared at fund-raising galas for the Human Rights Campaign.

"On social issues, he's turned quite liberal," Sabato says. "Gay rights are not too popular in Virginia. Not even really in Northern Virginia. And in Southern Virginia [such a stand] is deadly."

Robb denies that he's "suddenly turned into a huge bleeding-heart," though he adds that he "sees there's discrimination that's taking place, and it's race and it's orientation and it's gender." The issues never came up when he was governor, he insists. "I've always been on the progressive side of rights and social issue ... I think the majority of Virginians are there, too." He acknowledges, however, that "the positions that I've taken on some of these high-profile issues are very easy to misrepresent or demagogue, so it'll be a real challenge."

Robb says that he's seen a lot of discrimination, and has opposed it his whole life, though he only recently has begun standing up against it. As a young Virginian attending Mount Vernon High School, his school bus would drive through a black ghetto "and that bothered me then," he says. "But I was in high school." Subsequently, as an ROTCer, and a soldier, and a 'Nam vet, he sat out the civil rights movement.

As a clerk with the judge advocate's office, Robb was given responsibility for officer qualification records of all Marine officers in any disciplinary hot water for any reason. His files "included a couple cases where an officer was suspected of being gay." It didn't matter "that they had combat records that were superb ... the conventional wisdom, which I nominally accepted -- I didn't advocate it, but I accepted it -- was if you're gay and you're in the military, you present a potential security risk, you can be blackmailed. We later learned that there was never -- apparently anywhere in military history -- where they found a case when anybody was actually blackmailed for sensitive national security information.

"I thought there's something fundamentally wrong" with the policy, he says. "If somebody -- whatever their own orientation may be -- if they have an outstanding record, if they perform in a way that was outstanding in combat, I mean, it was very clear to me that their careers were over. They didn't know it at the time. I'm not sure that they knew then that the derogatory information had been put in their record, and that at some point they were going to be discharged and it may have been under conditions other than honorable. If you say, 'We're going to keep you from serving your country if you are something that we disapprove of,' I mean, this isn't conduct, it's status. I don't follow that. As Barry Goldwater said, 'I don't care if they are straight, I just care of they can shoot straight.'"

I pointed out to Robb that such a position might not resonate with Virginians next year.

"It's exactly the things where I'm going to be called on the carpet that I think I have a mission," he says. "I get more satisfaction from government service since I've been doing that more vocally. I wasn't voting 'wrong' when the issues came up before, but I feel much better about myself" since taking these stands. "I will come home, and I will be pumped up ... I feel like I'm more valuable if I'm willing to stand up for what I truly believe in ... and I can make up for passing through the area that I used to drive through. Or because I was a Marine Corps officer and I saw ... discrimination adversely affecting the careers of people who served with distinction."

The majority of voters might not appreciate his stand, and he knows that. But there are moments when young men and women come up to him and thank him for speaking out on gay and lesbian rights. "When someone comes up to me, it's a very human connection. I'll know that I've touched that young man's life. And I didn't even know what kind of burden he was carrying. Frequently young men or women come up to me and thank me in ways that you couldn't begin to pay me for. There are worse things to work for."

"I get satisfaction when I stand up for something that's unpopular but I know it's right," Robb says. "And I know eventually history will demonstrate that I was on the right side -- even if I may have been politically ahead of my time."

Sabato says that Robb's near-death experience (politically speaking) in '94 has led him to boldness. "I think he has suspected all along that this may be his swan song," Sabato says. "He's never admitted it publicly, and he'll certainly give it his best shot next year, but at some level of his subconscious I suspect that he thinks that this may be his swan song. And he's tried to vote in a way that will make him and his children and his grandchildren proud. I know it sounds corny."

Robb insists that he will win. He has a sense of timing, he says, and he will come on strong after Labor Day and will emerge victorious. But there's a sadness in his voice, a resignation. Several times during our interview he starts to tear up. His voice cracks and his eyes well with tears when talking about his family and how they've stuck by him, how his running for reelection is "selfish" in a way. "And they say I have no emotion," he says.

The other time he chokes up is when he tells me about his father-in-law, President Johnson, and how after a major heart attack LBJ disobeyed doctors' orders to be with members of Texas' Mexican-American community who had just lost children in a bus accident.

"There was a time when I needed their parents, and they were there for me," LBJ said. "And they need me now."

"Three weeks later he died," Robb says. "That's when I knew about commitment. That's when you knew a lot of things taken as politics, if they really reach down into somebody, they can mean something. I married his daughter; I fought in his war. But it wasn't until then that I really understood what motivates some people to public service."

Sen. Robb wants me to emphasize that he doesn't think he will lose. He thinks he will win.

But, Robb adds, "I would be quite content to lose for the right reasons if that's to be the case."
salon.com | Nov. 17, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon