I watched the Sanders-Clinton debate Thursday night on PBS from Wisconsin, and let me say first off that I think the Democrats have two really outstanding candidates. I sense that the contest between the two is mainly one of idealism (Sanders) vs. practicality (Clinton), and that difference came through vividly in Thursday's debate.
However, I sense that a lot of gay people, and white Democrats in general, seem to prefer the new face (Sanders) to the old one (Clinton). In doing so, we gay people, in particular, are doing Hillary an injustice. During last night's debate, Hillary was the only candidate to mention gay people and gay rights. She said that we have much work to do in this country, including addressing racial injustice, unequal pay for women, and doing something about a country where "LGBT people can get married on Sunday and fired for it on Monday."
Mrs. Clinton has a long track record of support for the LGBT community and has been endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign.
Don't get me wrong. I really like Bernie, and if he were to be the nominee, I'd enthusiastically support him in November. I love his courage in backing a single-payer healthcare system. However, let's be realistic. Single-payer ain't happening during a Sanders term of office, regardless, nor at any time in the near future. The country doesn't have the political courage to support it, and if it were seriously proposed, the Republican Party and the nation's healthcare industry would come down against it with a ferocity we have rarely seen in American politics. It would make the gun debate look like a minor disagreement.
I like Bernie's ideas, and if I were younger, I'm sure I'd be all in behind him. But I'm older and have a longer memory. Hillary Clinton has been a longtime friend of the LGBT community, going back decades. We don't have to wonder if she has our back. She's proved it.
Anyway the point of this, folks, isn't to convince anyone not to support Sanders. Go for it. He's a good guy and a good candidate. However, don't forget that the Democrats have TWO GOOD CANDIDATES, and should Bernie fall short, I would hope that his supporters, especially gay ones, have the good sense and foresight to happily support a good friend of the LGBT community come November. This doesn't need to be a divisive campaign. It's a win-win situation.
HRC President Chad Griffin said in announcing HRC's endorsement:
“All the progress we have made as a nation on LGBT equality -- and all the progress we have yet to make -- is at stake in November. In most states, LGBT people are still at risk of being fired, evicted or denied services simply because of who they are. Today, 63 percent of LGBT Americans report having experienced such discrimination, and we are seeing other troubling trends, from the onslaught of state and local anti-LGBT measures to the national scourge of anti-transgender violence to backsliding on HIV/AIDS prevention and youth homelessness. Against this backdrop, we’ve heard the leading Republican presidential candidates repeatedly threaten to block our progress, and to revoke, repeal, and overturn the gains we’ve made during President Obama’s two terms.
“While they fight to take us backwards, Hillary Clinton is fighting to advance LGBT equality across our nation and throughout the world. We are proud to endorse Hillary Clinton for president, and believe that she is the champion we can count on in November -- and every day she occupies the Oval Office.”
BTW, a constitutional amendment wasn't formally proposed back in those days as it was after the MA court ruling, but believe me, there was *plenty* of talk about what to do to stop gay people from being allowed to marry. We came close before MA, though MA was first to go all the way.
The general public may not have been that aware of the marriage issue until the MA court ruling, but it was percolating for years before that, and the religious right was very aware of what was going on.
If you don't like Hillary, that's fine. A lot of people don't. But except for splitting hairs, I think it's pretty hard to honestly make the case that Bernie is *more* pro gay than Hillary. But obviously that won't stop Bernie's supporters from trying :)
BTW, Rachel is obviously a Bernie supporter and she wasn't being totally honest on the threat of a constitutional amendment. I was alive then, not a baby like her and you. It was. It came up again during the Bush administration, but it wasn't the first time. Now, I'm not going to make the case that DOMA by itself stopped an amendment. That wouldn't be true. But the fact is that a lot of conservative Republicans accepted it as a compromise measure and were placated by it. They felt that DOMA made an amendment unnecessary.
Bill Clinton took office and one of the very first things he tried to do was allow gay people to openly serve in the military. That met with incredibly fierce opposition, and DADT was a compromise measure that came from that. At the time, we thought it was an improvement. As it turned out, the military's application of DADT made it worse than nothing, but that wasn't what was thought at the time. DOMA grew out of that fight. Let's just say that the GOP was up in arms about gay rights at the time and DADT and DOMA helped settle things down.
And BTW, I don't make the case that Bill Clinton is a gay hero, either. There's abundant evidence he wasn't. That reflects on Hillary to a degree, but you can't stick her with *everything* her husband did, any more than Republicans can stick Jeb with everything George W. did.
I really don't see the point of arguing about what happened on gay rights 20 years ago. Does it really matter that much now? As noted, we have two good candidates. Why is it that liberals (again) feel a need to attack Hillary on what is no more than an historical footnote?
Reasons why this argument doesn't hold water:
A. You're cherry-picking from an almost 50-year public career. Notice the same people who cite DOMA and DADT neglect to ever mention any of Hillary's positive achievements on gay rights.
B. It isn't really fair to tie Hillary 100 percent to Bill's record. She wasn't president nor a lawmaker when DOMA and DADT were passed. I don't think it's any real secret that Bill has a very so-so record on gay rights and has even been quoted as just using gay rights when it's politically expedient. Hillary's record and his just don't compare. RJZIP also lays out a good reminder about how DOMA was a product of its times. You guys may not recall that the threat of a man-woman only marriage amendment to the Constitution was very real then. If that had passed, we wouldn't have same-sex marriage today. DOMA doesn't get full credit for heading that off, but it was part of the process.
C. If you look at Hillary's record since she was elected to the Senate in 2000, you'll find her pro-gay record as good as all but a very few politicians. A number of things she's done don't show up in congressional votes. For example, she was one of the very first major politicians to march in gay pride parades, which she did repeatedly in NYC. At the time, gay people regarded that as very symbolically important. She also gave this incredibly historic gay rights speech to the United Nations, for those of you who are too young or who choose not to remember.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIqynW5EbIQ
Hillary isn't well liked by some in the gay community, as she isn't among voters at large. But let's don't just cherry-pick her mainly pro-gay record for the few negatives. That's distorting history, and though politicians do that, we as gay people shouldn't.
Listen to her U.N. speech if you think she has an anti-gay record. There's no reason to lie about the candidates in this race. Hillary has been endorsed by HRC for a reason. And as I noted earlier, we have two good candidates. Neither needs to be disparaged.
"The bill moved through Congress on a legislative fast track and met with overwhelming approval in both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress. On July 12, 1996, with only 65 Democrats and then Rep. Bernie Sanders (Independent - Vermont) and Rep. Steve Gunderson (Republican - Wisconsin), in opposition, 342 members of the U.S. House of Representatives—224 Republicans and 118 Democrats—voted to pass DOMA.[21][22] Then, on September 10, 1996, 84 Senators—a majority of the Democratic Senators and all of the Republicans—voted in favor of DOMA.[23][24] Democratic Senators voted for the bill 32 to 14 (with Pryor of Arkansas absent), and Democratic Representatives voted for it 118 to 65, with 15 not participating. All Republicans in both houses voted for the bill with the sole exception of the one openly gay Republican Congressman, Rep. Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin.
"Though his official political position, like most politicians at the time, was against same-sex marriage, Clinton criticized DOMA as "unnecessary and divisive", while his press-secretary called it "gay baiting, plain and simple". However, after Congress had passed the bill with enough votes to override a presidential veto, Clinton signed DOMA all the while complaining that he did so reluctantly in view of the veto-proof majority, both to avoid associating himself politically with the then-unpopular cause of same-sex marriage, and to defuse momentum for a proposed Federal Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage. Clinton, who was traveling when Congress acted, signed it into law promptly upon returning to Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1996; he refused to hold a signing ceremony for DOMA and did not allow photographs to be taken of him signing it into law. The White House released a statement in which Clinton said "that the enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation".
THAT was about as good as it got back in those days. NO politicians had "the courage of their convictions" back then. It took some evolving. Most Republicans have yet to evolve even a little on issues of gay rights.
Notice also that Bernie Sanders was one of the 67 who voted against it and that only one Republican did so.
Look how big a battle Obamacare (the ACA) has been, and it's only an incremental change!