A philanthropist's trial by fire.

Nominated to be ambassador to Luxembourg James C. Hormel endures Personal attacks by conservatives

As a visible member of the gay rights movement for more than two decades, James C. Hormel has said, "Define yourself, or risk being defined by others." But during the nearly yearlong battle over his nomination as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, the gay philanthropist frequently has found himself caricatured by his opponents on the religious right, who have variously labeled him antifamily, a North American Man/Boy Love Association supporter, and an anti-Catholic bigot.

Following the protocol for State Department nominees, Hormel has refrained from making on-the-record remarks, putting him in the unfamiliar position of letting others speak on his behalf. "Things are being said about our personal lives that have no basis in fact," says Timothy Wu, Hormel's partner of three years. "It can be very painful because the public may now believe things about Jim that just are not accurate. It's frustrating to lose control over your own reputation. It's frustrating that he cannot respond. But ultimately, we try to remember that what isn't true can't really hurt you."

Indeed, Hormel's nomination has been a uniquely personal ordeal. Hormel's entire life--from his former marriage to his current relationship with Wu--has been opened up to public dissection, all for a largely honorary position in a country that many Americans could not place on a map. Some gay activists worry that gay men and lesbians may shy away from subjecting themselves to such a grueling experience in the future. The process seems to have grown more difficult in the five years since Roberta Achtenberg, a lesbian activist and former San Francisco city supervisor, was nominated to serve as assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although Achtenberg was labeled a "damn lesbian" by Sen. Jesse Helms, attacks on her were mild compared to those on Hormel.

"To a certain extent nominations are Russian roulette, and Jim happened to be the one the right wing decided to pick on this time," says David Mixner, a veteran gay activist who has served as an unofficial adviser to the Clinton administration. "But they picked on the wrong person. Throughout this battle Jim has looked like the diplomat he was nominated to become, while his opponents have just looked mean-spirited and narrow-minded." In fact, aside from a handful of conservative politicians and their allies, Hormel's nomination has won support from across the ideological spectrum. Even such conservative stalwarts as George Schultz--Ronald Reagan's secretary of state--and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah have backed Hormel.

The long fight over the nomination may finally be drawing to a close. On July 19 Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) confirmed that he will probably not schedule a vote this year, leaving the nomination in limbo. However, if the Senate does not vote, President Clinton could make a "recess" appointment, allowing Hormel to serve for up to a year without being formally confirmed by the Senate. Clinton has exercised that authority 45 times since taking office.

Hormers supporters took new hope from the 252-176 defeat of an antigay amendment in the House on August 5. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), would have overturned Clinton's executive order extending job protections to gay and lesbian federal workers. Hormel flew to Washington the following day for another round of meetings with senators.

Whatever the outcome of the battle, Hormel's nomination has broken new ground. Americans are now more familiar with Hormel than perhaps any other gay political figure. And Hormel is a gay activist's dream, a gentlemanly multimillionaire, scion of the wealthy meatpacking family, who gives more than one quarter of his annual income to charity. NBC's Today show recently taped a segment that focused on a nonprofit school for autistic children in Charlottesville, Va., to which Hormel donates money and which is run by his daughter, Alison Hormel Webb. Three of his 13 grandchildren are autistic.

Reached at the San Francisco office of Equity Disbursement and Expansion (Equidex), which handles his business and philanthropic concerns, Hormel declined, at the request of the State Department, to go on record with any comments. The tension surrounding the nomination runs so high that several of his friends and colleagues sought his permission before speaking to The Advocate.

That tension has resulted from attacks on Hormel's character that are harsh even by Washington's standards. Andrea Sheldon, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative organization, said, "President Clinton should surround himself with a better kind of people." A coalition of religious right groups, led by the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, charged that some of Hormel's $500,000 donation to the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library was used to obtain material from NAMBLA, a group widely condemned by gay activists as supporting pedophilia. (Hormel has said he has no control over the library collection and has denounced NAMBLA.)

Critics also have lambasted Hormel's contribution to It's Elementary, a documentary film about explaining homosexuality to grade-school students. After learning of the contribution, three conservative senators--Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Bob Smith (R-N.H.)--used an arcane parliamentary maneuver late last year to block the nomination, which a majority of senators have pledged to support.

The charge that most rankles Hormel is that he is anti-Catholic, Wu said. The allegation arises from a videotape of the 1996 gay pride parade in San Francisco. The video, distributed by FRC to members of Congress, purports to show Hormel laughing at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group whose members don nun drag to satirize conservative elements in the Catholic Church. On close examination of the tape, however, it is difficult to discern whether Hormel is laughing at the troupe or at jokes made by two television reporters interviewing him from the sidelines of the parade.

"Jim can take almost anything, but the religious bigotry charge really hurts," Wu says. "Jim has dedicated his life [to fighting] against prejudice in various forms. Jim's mother was a French Catholic. The fact that the accusations are made by people who don't even know him makes the situation even worse. It's not like you can sit down with them and talk about it." Some Hormel supporters, however, suspect the underlying motivation for all of the charges against Hormel has less to do with his credentials or ideology than with his sexual orientation.

Hormel and his allies have launched a counteroffensive, but it may have come too late to save the nomination. In a June 23 letter to Hutchinson, Hormel wrote, "To the extent that the group in question (with which I have no connection or association), or any other group, ridicules and disdains organized religion in general or the Roman Catholic Church in particular, I find such conduct not only offensive but out of step with the important values we hold dear as Americans."

Hormel has a long history of activism. He was born in 1933 in Austin, Minn., the youngest of three sons of Jay Hormel and grandson of George A. Hormel, the founder of the Hormel Meat Packing Co. After graduating from Swarthmore College, he married and moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago Law School, where he would eventually become dean. Hormel and his wife, Alice, had five children, whom they raised in the Chicago area. He briefly considered running for public office (as a Republican) but changed his mind after reading Advise and Consent, Allen Drury's novel about a closeted gay politician who commits suicide before his opponents out him.

After his divorce in the 1966, Hormel moved to San Francisco, where he became active in gay politics, eventually becoming one of the founders of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, now the largest gay rights group in the country (and which has since dropped the Fund from its name). But friends say that at the onset of the AIDS epidemic, Hormel became particularly passionate, directing about one quarter of his annual giving to AIDS-related causes. "The toll that AIDS has taken on the San Francisco gay community was hard on him," says Terry Bean, a friend of Hormel's who serves on the Human Rights Campaign board. "He was very upset that people would try to use AIDS as a political weapon against his friends and community. It made him really mad." Hormel has also given to institutions ranging from the San Francisco Symphony to the Holocaust Museum and has endowed a chair at Swarthmore.

Hormel's large family has been drawn into the nomination battle. "The frustrating thing for me is that in reality we are much closer than most families," says James Hormel Jr., vice president of Equidex. "Yet my father is being labeled anti-family." And Alice Turner, Hormers former wife who has since remarried, insists it was she who demanded the divorce. "They have tried to say that Jim abandoned me and the family," she says. "Nothing could be further from the truth. Jim married because the social milieu at the time told him that it was something that he had to do. His Presbyterian minister told him that marriage would cure him of his homosexuality. Well, of course it didn't, and I knew there was something missing from the marriage. Jim believed so strongly in family that he insisted that we stay married, but I knew he needed to lead his own life." The pair, Turner says, remain close.

In some ways Hormers nomination has come to symbolize the Clinton administration's inability to deliver on its promises to gay and lesbian voters, especially when facing a Congress controlled by Republicans reluctant to grant gays any opportunities. A major donor to the Democratic Party and Clinton-Gore campaigns, Hormel was initially tapped early in Clinton's first term to be ambassador to Fiji, a small republic in the South Pacific, only to withdraw from consideration when he learned the country outlaws sodomy. Hormel also was mentioned as a possible candidate for ambassador to Nor way, which recognizes same-sex partnerships, but Clinton settled on Luxembourg, a country smaller than Rhode Island that is 97% Catholic.

Today, Hormel, 65, and Wu, 35, live together in a rambling San Francisco mansion. Wu, director of development for the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, says the two share a passion for civic life. "Jim is on five nonprofit boards, and I'm on four," Wu says. "We try to share our philanthropic commitments as much as possible, showing up at the same dinners and meetings." On weekends the two spend time with their families at a country home north of the city and indulge in their favorite hobby, tennis.

Wu says he and Hormel have agreed to make concessions to political reality. In an attempt to mollify critics, Hormel pledged not to bring Wu to Luxembourg as his spouse. Opponents of the nomination feared that the same-sex couple would represent the country in official capacities. "I have a full-time career in San Francisco, so it would be hard for me to leave anyway," Wu says. "We are not happy to be treated differently than a married couple but were willing to make sacrifices so Jim would get a position he deserves." It remains unclear, however, whether even such personal sacrifices will persuade Hormers critics to allow a vote on his nomination.