The honeymoon is over.

By bringing gay and lesbian issues to the fore, President Clinton set the stage on which President Bush now stands--and does not act. ELIZABETH BIRCH warns that if Bush misses this historic opportunity to promote equality, the consequences will be both immediate and enduring

How will history judge President George W. Bush? When I spoke with President Bill Clinton during the years of his administration, a recurring theme of our conversations was that for better or for worse, addressing gay equality was the major social legacy that got delivered up in his moment of history. Presidents have not always welcomed these opportunities. The founding fathers utterly failed Americans of African descent, but Abraham Lincoln corrected the sin. President Harry S. Truman wrestled over the integration of the military, but he got it done. While Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded ably to the Great Depression, he ignored the Holocaust. It is not likely President Lyndon Johnson would have fashioned the 1964 Civil Rights Act of his own volition, but having inherited it from John F. Kennedy, he finished the job.

President Clinton's legacy to gay Americans was an invaluable, profound emotional shift in public attitudes, although the watershed civil rights breakthroughs did not come during the Clinton years. During the election of 2000, many of us truly believed that we were on the verge of major public policy achievements for gay Americans and that Al Gore's victory could assure those breakthroughs. If Clinton prepared the soil and we as a GLBT community planted the seeds (on issues as varied as immigration, hate crimes, employment, adoption, taxation, pension rights, inheritance, Social Security and civil unions), Gore would deliver the harvest. Many of us who knew the vice president well knew that his convictions regarding gay and lesbian people ran deep. The Human Rights Campaign endorsed his candidacy for these reasons.

The historic opportunity to address the issue of whether equality will be delivered to America's gay sons and daughters has not passed. These next four years are George W.'s in which to act with wisdom and embrace the challenge or to let the moment pass him by. However the GLBT community may ultimately judge George W. Bush's presidency, this much is clear: With 39 states allowing employers to fire people for being gay, the domestic and worldwide AIDS pandemic mushrooming, and gay people still contending with hatred and violence, standing on the sidelines is very decidedly the same thing as retreating on the field. If President Bush fails to act on these issues, it will be all the more tragic because he will have wasted a historic opportunity.

Kevin Ivers of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group that endorsed Bush and continues to support his presidency, took a different view when he recently told The Advocate, "I haven't seen anything come across my desk that would indicate gay people are angry that gay rights is a low priority in the White House." No one should mistake our community's respectful patience for complacency, much less satisfaction. Every president, even one who emerges out of a bitterly contested election, is owed a period of time in which citizens watch and wait to see in what direction the chief executive will set the course of the nation. But six months into the Bush presidency, it is time for us to take stock and the Administration to take action. If gay rights remains a nonpriority--if the days and months drift by with no public policy program for GLBT people or a clear, bold plan to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS domestically and globally--our community must rise to that challenge. Whether that means even more forcefully taking to the airwaves, the ballot box, or the streets, there is too much at stake for our children and for our lives not to vigorously engage in shaping the future.

Some in our community are content that until recently Bush had not openly declared war on us as he had on the environment and on a woman's right to choose. Bush did not overturn Clinton's executive order forbidding antigay discrimination in the federal workforce. He appointed one openly gay man to his administration, heading the Office of National AIDS Policy. Yet Bush has sidestepped nearly every gay issue since his inauguration, and at this critical and historic juncture, this falls woefully short of what is required.

Further, the Bush policy of disengagement was de railed this summer by the Salvation Army, which apparently reached a backroom deal with the White House to support Bush's faith-based initiative in Congress in exchange for a provision to exempt religious institutions from all nondiscrimination laws, particularly those forbidding antigay discrimination in employment. White House officials beat a hasty retreat just nine hours after the deal was reported in the press--saying they rejected such an approach--and then lobbied to preserve in the legislation the very provision they purported to repudiate in the Salvation Army deal.

That incident is probably the best indicator of how the White House appears to operate when it is forced to confront gay issues: avoid them when possible but mow us over if we stand in the way of a major policy objective.

Bush's apparent willingness to steamroll over gay rights when pressed is perhaps not as dangerous as his more typical inaction on the issues that so deeply affect our lives. It is his failure to declare open war on domestic AIDS, hatred, and discrimination that will set the tone for his administration. The American people expect a president to lead--to be well ahead of the people, to have the wisdom at a critical juncture of history to take risks to ensure basic equity for citizens who face bias or prejudice. At other historic junctures for the cause of equality, presidents led despite what the polls said. In 1964, for example, President Johnson did not take the easy road of simply saying that discrimination was wrong. He signed the Civil Rights Act.

Bush should be held to at least that standard. He could start with fundamental issues like employment discrimination, hate crimes, and allocating adequate time and resources to fight AIDS. But at a minimum, if Bush cannot find the courage to lead on issues of gay equality, he should at least follow. By almost every measure, the American people are ahead of where Bush now stands. HRC polling as of July shows that Americans continue to support federal action on hospital visitation (90%), equal employment (85%), partner inheritance rights (66%), an expanded hate-crimes law (64%), an extended employment law (63%), school-based programs to reduce harassment (59%), open military service (58%), and Social Security benefits for partners (55%).

Bush will find those attitudes reflected in the U.S. Senate, which is likely to be receptive to any overtures he makes to act on GLBT issues. On June 6 at 9 A.M.--the very date and time the Senate shifted to Democratic hands--the new majority leader, Tom Daschle, and 20 other Democratic senators could have been anywhere, but they chose to be with a small group of civil rights leaders, including HRC, to set legislative priorities. It was a gathering of the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. In response to my comments, Senator Daschle said, "Now we can get on with the business of America--a patients' bill of rights, minimum wage, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the hate-crimes bill."

If President Bush is unwilling to act even with the support of the American people and the U.S. Senate, he should at least follow the segment of society his administration claims to most admire: corporate America, one of the unlikely heroes in the cause of equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Today, more than half of the Fortune 500 have antidiscrimination policies, and thousands more companies have instituted equal-benefits policies. The Bush administration should follow suit.

No doubt there are other areas in which Bush is obligated to lead. But regardless of which issue is your particular priority, none of us should accept the idea that the Bush record on GLBT issues is acceptable simply because it is not as antagonistic as we expected at the outset. As time goes by, more instances of explicit harm like the Salvation Army episode are apt to emerge, and the consequences of the White House's inaction on a broad range of issues will grow to create even more hurtful consequences.

As Congress reconvenes and Bush returns from his monthlong vacation, we should view this time as ideal to issue a grand wake-up call to our community and our allies. We must fight every instinct to turn inward or turn away. We have enormous cumulative strength, and we must continue these battles on the national stage of American life. Whether in the U.S. Congress or in legislatures from Maryland to Oregon, it is imperative that we engage with lawmakers as never before. During this time, our safety, our health, our families, and the very self-esteem of young GLBT Americans will be at stake--not just in our neighborhoods but in our entire nation.

Somewhere tonight a young man will wonder whether it is safe to walk home. Somewhere tomorrow a young lesbian teen will question her self-worth. Later this week a brand-new baby boy or girl will be born to two moms or dads. And for tragically wasted days and months and years, untold lives will be claimed by AIDS--not just here but around the globe.

All these moments--and each of these lives--will be affected by whether George W. Bush chooses to lead. Either way, we abandon our sacred quest for basic equality at our peril, and George W. Bush ignores it at the risk of his political future and historical standing. However we come to judge George W., history will be much harsher.

Birch is executive director of the Human Rights Campaign.