Hillary Clinton Spin on Gay Rights

In an Interview with the Washington Blade Hillary Clinton claims she is more supportive of gay rights than Barack Obama. She reiterates her claims in the HRC/LOGO debate that the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) military policy Bill Clinton signed into law was a "transitional" step, and that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which she still supports in part, stopped the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Gay activist, and former Clinton fundraiser and ally, David Mixner refutes her claims:

Keeping Our History Straight:

"I understand any candidate’s desire to spin the past to cover up mistakes, but our community cannot create a better future by forgetting its past.

First, Clinton’s claim that DOMA was passed so it could help defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) eight years later is absolutely false. As we all know, the FMA wasn’t really a threat until 2002, and the two pieces of legislation had distinctly separate origins. While having DOMA on the books might have been a factor in the FMA’s defeat, it was passed for political reasons in an election year. In fact, after proclaiming to the community how painful it was for him to sign it, President Clinton’s reelection campaign had ads up in the South touting the legislation within two weeks!

Just think about this for a moment – Clinton essentially said that it was good to pass and sign an oppressive and discriminatory law in order to avoid something worse eight years later. I simply cannot accept this version of history or policymaking strategy.

Then, while spinning its genesis, Clinton failed to advocate the overturning of DOMA, as both Edwards and Obama did earlier in the program. She stated that she supports only a partial repeal of the law, a glaring difference which the panel should have honed in on. Additionally, I think the panel could have questioned her position on published reports that her husband advised John Kerry and other candidates to support state and federal amendments banning marriage in 2004.

I have written before about Clinton’s spinning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as a beneficial “transitional step” towards full integration of gays and lesbians in the military. But I hardly think that the 11,000 men and women who have had their military careers ended and their personal lives damaged since 1993 view Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as sympathetically. As I recall, the policy was never discussed as a transitional step. It was hastily produced and passed, by a Democratic President and Congress, to extract the new administration from of a political mess of its own making.

Let’s also remember what this destructive policy requires of LGBT service members today, 14 years later. They must lie about their personal lives to their co-workers and friends and cannot even mention a partner or lover back home. They must hide pictures of shared intimate moments that every couple, straight or gay, cherish so much. They can’t take leave to care for an ill partner. Most troubling, they must live in constant fear of being exposed. And if they slip up and disclose any of these things, they risk expulsion and a dishonorable discharge that may affect their future employment as a private citizen.

This was simply a dreadful policy from the very beginning, and I personally feel that any claim otherwise is just as hurtful as the policy itself.

I appreciate all of the Democratic candidates’ increasingly progressive perceptions of and positions on LGBT equality, including Hillary Clinton. But our LGBT history – how we got to the place where we now stand – is sacred. As a community we cannot forget our past struggles, no matter how easy it might be to do so, because they will guide us through the adversity we face today and in the future."

David Mixner helped get Clinton to promise to sign an executive order to lift the ban on gays in the military and helped raise money from the LGBT community for the Clinton campaign. After Clinton broke his promise and signed the DADT and the DOMA, Mixner was arrested in a protest when he chained himself to the White House gate. He joined former LGBT John Edwards supporters to endorse Barack Obama.

Barack Obama supports a full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, and has been including gays and lesbians in many of his speeches including his MLK speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in which he condemned homophobia in the black community.

While Hillary Clinton seems to be the favored candidate among gays and lesbians, I think LGBT people should look more carefully at the history of Bill and Hillary Clinton on gay rights. They threw us under the bus for their own political gain, just as they did workers with NAFTA and poor women with "welfare reform."