Bill Clinton's broken promise: August 24, 1993. (From the Advocate Archives).

Throughout his 1992 campaign and the first days of his presidency, Bill Clinton pledged to end the ban on gays in the military. Facing vehement congressional opposition, he shifted his position in July 1993, when he announced "don't ask, don't tell."

Advocate reporter Chris Bull noted that Clinton's policy "sparked protests in cities throughout the country, and gay legal groups vowed to quickly prepare lawsuits to challenge it." Torie Osborn, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director at the time, called it "a repackaging of discrimination."

Openly gay U.S. representative Gerry Studds suggested that Clinton's acquiescence exposed the weaknesses of gay activism. "At this point we don't have the political strength, the numbers, to win a campaign like this," he said.

New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard warned that legal challenges to the policy probably wouldn't work. "The courts have almost always bowed to the expertise of professional military leaders," he said. "I don't see any real sign of that changing."