Rep. Bill Young’s missed opportunity on DADT repeal

Now that Congress has passed the don't ask, don't tell repeal, the final House roll-call last week on the measure was probably the last legislative action Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young will take regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation. While others celebrate Young's political longevity, it's important to acknowledge that from his beginnings in the Florida legislature in the 1960s, Young acted in critical ways against fair treatment of gays and lesbians. 

While his vote against the DADT mandate in Congress was not particularly critical (until January, he's in the minority, and the bill passed the House comfortably), his political career began in the firestorm of Cold War homophobia. In the Florida legislature, as documented by Jim Schnur in a chapter for an anthology on gay and lesbian history in the South, Young was a member of the Charley Johns Committee, which turned to a witch-hunt for gays in schools and universities after failing to find enough Communists in the Florida civil-rights movement and enough Communists in schools and universities. In defending the actions of this witch-hunt in the 1960s, Young said that the legislature "has responsibilities to the public to expose these people" (p. 150, referring to gays and lesbians). 

Today, most Floridians who know the story of the Johns Committee recognize that the committee represented the worst of Cold War hysteria to justify suppression of the civil rights movement and then, in Florida, attacks on gays and lesbians. To his dying day, Charley Johns defended his actions as head of the committee. I don't know if Bill Young ever apologized for his own involvement in the Johns Committee, but he had an opportunity to make up for it by voting for DADT repeal. I am disappointed that he failed to take that opportunity to redeem his actions in some small measure.