The quiet crusader: Stephen Herbits has worked for every Republican president since Richard Nixon. Now the openly gay Defense Department insider—who opposes "don't ask, don't tell"—is fighting for gay rights in Florida's Miami-Dade County - People

Herbits took a keen interest in the 2000 presidential election. Though he won't divulge how he voted, contribution records show that he donated $17,000 to Democratic candidates. "Let's just say, by that point I'd become a single-issue voter, and there were not a lot of alternatives," he says with a laugh.

He was furious about the way in which a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court decided the outcome of the Florida recount. "What concerned me wasn't that Bush was eventually going to be elected," he says. "The problem was the Supreme Court's political intrusion into the state's business. As a lawyer, it really disturbed me that the court had risked a constitutional crisis by stepping in."

Despite his misgivings about the election, when Rumsfeld called, he agreed to what he thought would be one final tour of Washington duty. A liberal on social issues, Herbits is far to the right of most gay leaders on military matters. "I really believe in a strong national defense to defend liberty and democracy," he says. "When it comes to an issue like Iraq, I feel that we have to have the military might and willingness to use it to stop the potential for the use of weapons of mass destruction."

But even this hawkishness hasn't spared him from set-tos with conservatives. Even as he was under public attack by antigay forces outside the Pentagon, Herbits was jousting with Senate minority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) behind the scenes. Senators customarily push political cronies on federal agencies, and it was Herbits's job to weed out unqualified recommendations.

"Lott had a candidate for a job," he explains. "I interviewed the candidate and found that he was not qualified. I told the candidate something to that effect. It was clear that the candidate was applying only to protect one of the shipyards in Lott's state. That's not the kind of appointment I can recommend; it's contrary to good government. Lott called the secretary and told him he was offended by my conduct. The secretary called me in and told me that while he supported me, he wondered whether I couldn't have found a more diplomatic way of expressing my concern."

Herbits says Lott retaliated by bringing the Pentagon confirmation process to a standstill. "To me it was just a staggering abuse of power," he says, still fuming more than a year later. "Lott was wrong and corrupt and was willing to jeopardize national security for personal political gain."

Herbits concedes, however, that his reaction to Lott's lobbying is influenced by the senator's well-known contempt for issues of concern to gay men and lesbians. "Certainly it's hard to have an objective view of someone who thinks I should not exist," Herbits says. "I couldn't change the low opinion I have of the man. I made the right decision, but I probably didn't handle it in the most elegant manner."

Herbits hopes the outpouring of support from unexpected sources in his battle with Lott and when he was targeted by antigay activists in 2001 augurs well for the vote in Miami-Dade County, a gay rights battleground since Anita Bryant's crusade a quarter century ago. This year's balloting will take place on September 10, but Herbits characteristically vows not to make political hay out of the one-year anniversary of September 11. While other gay activists have cited [the terrorist attacks] as a seminal moment in unifying Americans with differing views, Herbits insists, "We are assiduously avoiding being opportunistic on something very sensitive." The anniversary, he says, "is not relevant to the discrimination issue, which is the only issue. The only way we will win this referendum is if voters want to make a statement about not discriminating against anyone, about fairness, and about equal treatment."