The Once and Future Clintons

This New York Post op-ed on gays and the Clintons is a few weeks old, but it’s solid:

As author and academic Nathaniel Frank explains, “Clinton will go down in history as the only president who signed … federal laws mandating discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans.” Yet this Saturday in Washington, DC, the same Bill Clinton will be welcomed as keynote speaker at the 18th annual national dinner of the Human Rights Campaign—America’s largest LGBT rights group.

Calling him a “transformational leader for our nation and the world,” HRC president Chad Griffin has said he’s “thrilled” Clinton will once again appear at the sold-out black-tie event.

Griffin and HRC take hackery to new levels. And please, spare us all the “yeah, well Republicans are worse” meme that some commenters think is just oh so clever, as if that were an all-purpose redemption card for vile Democrats.

27 Comments for “The Once and Future Clintons”

  1. posted by Mike in Houston on

    Redemption Card? Yes – when you actually change your position and act on it like Secretary Clinton has – and like Senator Rob Portman has.

    Versus what you keep harping on…

    • posted by Tom Jefferson III on

      1. I am pretty sure that President Ike” Eisenhower (a Republican) signed a law or executive order that mandated that the government get rid of gays and other ‘subversive’ and ‘un-American’ civilian employees. I can think of a few other examples….

      Prior to 1990 — largely thanks to efforts by Barney Frank — U.S. immigration law generally excluded gay people. Starting in like, 1917 and maintained by subsequent laws throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

      Another example: Prior to the Carter administration — from what I hear — it had been very difficult for gay rights groups to get nonprofit status, because the issue of homosexuality was taboo.

      2. President Clinton was probably the first major party candidate for president who expressed ANY public support for gay rights, albeit it was a pretty modest level of support, namely AIDS/HIV funding, ENDA, Hate Crimes Prevention Act, some fair minded judges and a (failed) effort to address anti-gay discrimination in the military.

      Remember that the Congress was generally still leery (at best) or even hostile to even these gay rights issues (with the exemption of a few liberal Democrats and Rockerfeller-hippie. Republicans) .

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Clinton changed his position on marriage equality. So did most Democrats.

    Republicans are beginning to change their positions, too. Senator Portman, Senator Kirk, Senator Murkowski, Congressman Dent, Congressman Hanna, Congressman Jolly, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen … The list is growing, little by slowly, but it is growing.

    How about you, Stephen? Have you changed or are you ready to change? Are you ready to fight the social conservatives in your own party, or are you going to continue to trash Democrats and do nothing more?

  3. posted by Aubrey Haltom on

    I note that Clinton has changed his official position re: equality. Conveniently, after the majority of the Dem Party did the same.
    But he has never apologized for DOMA – instead offering us the completely unfounded justification that they were trying to avoid a constitutional amendment against equality.
    So he has never expressed any apology or remorse for what he did to people’s lives in this community. And he lied about the reasons behind his actions.
    I think Clinton is an amazing politician. With not much of a moral rudder to follow.
    That said – what’s wrong, Stephen, with acknowledging the fact that Republicans are far away a greater threat at this point in time to our equality than Clinton is.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      Um, when it was up before the Supreme Court he totally came out and said it was wrong to have signed it and should be overturned. You can debate the sincerity of it, but google “Clinton apologize DOMA” and you’ll find plenty of articles about it.

      • posted by Aubrey Haltom on

        He wrote an op-ed against DOMA, acknowledging that it was discriminatory. He also tried to hide behind the “we did this to stop a constitutional amendment”. An excuse that his own staff of the time (when DOMA was signed) have admitted was not true.
        And I have read transcripts from some of the meetings in the White House as they considered DOMA. Nary a mention was made of a constitutional amendment. This was politics – and we were the tactically expendable.
        I found the WaPo op-ed to be nothing but a politician trying to salvage his reputation. Yes, it’s great that Clinton got on board.
        But where you find an apology in that is difficult for me to see.
        PS – I remember reading the Advocate interview with Clinton that was published almost immediately after he left office. It was a long interview – and I recall how impressive his command of policy and politic was.
        Yet his excuses for DOMA (and DADT – not only its implementation, but the manner in which the policy was carried out by the Pentagon to the detriment of gay and lesbian members) were disingenuous at best.

        • posted by JohnInCA on

          He said it was discriminatory, wrong, unconstitutional and that he shouldn’t have signed it.

          That you don’t think he was sincere doesn’t change the fact that he did it anyway.

          • posted by Aubrey Haltom on

            @JohnInCA – not that it’s really an issue now, but just to verify my first reading, I re-visited Clinton’s op-ed in WaPo prior to the DOMA ruling.
            First, he never actually says “he shouldn’t have signed it”.
            In fact, he spends a considerable amount of time (in a very short op-ed) to note why he did sign it. He even opens the op-ed with an explanation that he’s just like the Democratic Senators who also want us to believe they did DOMA to save us. To protect the lgbt community, you know.
            And then he added that caveat when he signed DOMA – you remember, the one where he asks that people not be mean to this community. As he signs away any future legal rights and protections to any legal relationships we might have.
            You see, when he signed DOMA he wasn’t being discriminatory. Not him.
            Oh, but now he sees that DOMA is discriminatory.
            So, please SCOTUS, overturn it.
            I get where you find that pretzel movement to be a statement that “he shouldn’t have signed it”.
            And I’m glad he decided to play on this side of the fence for a while.
            But Clinton proved more than once that this community is tactically expendable to some very established figures in the Democratic Party.
            And rather than admit any wrong on his part, I find it to be more self-serving (we did it to protect you) than honest. And never does he mention any ‘regret’. Just that suddenly, with no reason, he thinks DOMA is discriminatory. And, somehow, not protecting us like it was a few years ago…

  4. posted by Jorge on

    This is not a “Republicans are worse” situation. It’s a “Democrats are better” situation.

    When you look at their politics on their own terms, both Clintons pass my “pro-gay” test quite easily.

    Calling the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy “disastrous” overlooks the fact that it legally permitted gays in the military for the first time. It was a reasonable compromise at the time.

    As for marriage, I frankly do not share the view by some on this board that Democrats’ opposition to same-sex marriage reflected political calculation and cowardice, certainly not in the Clintons’ case. I think I’m forgetting my point. Both Clintons stood for a platform that was explicitly pro-gay rights. When you take that commitment, one, it is possible that you will place the interests of the country above the interests of gays, and that’s a good thing. Two, the longer you hold to such a commitment, the more likely it is you will come to learn new lessons and see things differently. This is even true of the gay community.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Calling the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy “disastrous” overlooks the fact that it legally permitted gays in the military for the first time. It was a reasonable compromise at the time.

      The two are not necessarily logical opposites.

      DADT did allow gays and lesbians to serve legally, and that was a major advance over the days when I served, in which my act of serving in the military was a criminal offense. It is also true that DADT was the only possible path to allowing gays and lesbians to serve legally that was possible during that period.

      But that is not the end of the story. DADT was something of a “bait and switch”, because the net effect was to increase the number of annual discharges of gays and lesbians from service. In that sense, DADT was “disastrous”.

      I think that President Clinton’s legacy with respect to DADT is a case of a “glass half full”. Stephen looks at the glass and sees only “anti-gay legislation”. Jorge looks at the glass and sees a “reasonable compromise”.

      I look at the glass and remember that DADT was the end result — “disastrous” or not — of President Clinton’s efforts to fulfill a 1992 campaign promise to seek an end to the long-standing ban on gays and lesbians in the military, a goal that was not realized. But President Clinton kept his word to those of us who served, and tried. That is what I remember.

      When you take that commitment, one, it is possible that you will place the interests of the country above the interests of gays, and that’s a good thing. Two, the longer you hold to such a commitment, the more likely it is you will come to learn new lessons and see things differently.

      With respect DOMA, let me make an observation about change over time:

      DOMA passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins. In the Senate, DOMA passed 85-14, and in the House 342-67.

      In the Senate, only three still-sitting Senators [(Boxer (D-CA), Feinstein (D-CA), Wyden (D-OR)] voted against DOMA.

      Of the 13 still-sitting Senators who voted for DOMA, five are now on record in support of marriage equality (indicated in bold):

      Coats (R-IN)
      Cochran (R-MS)
      Grassley (R-IA)
      Harkin (D-IA)
      Hatch (R-UT)
      Inhofe (R-OK)
      McCain (R-AZ)
      McConnell (R-KY)
      Mikulski (D-MD)
      Murray (D-WA)
      Reid (D-NV)
      Rockefeller (D-WV)
      Shelby (R-AL)

      • posted by Jorge on

        The two are not necessarily logical opposites.

        That was much of my point. How are you going to argue that someone isn’t gay-supportive with an example that shows the opposite when you take context and intent into account? So many policies turn out to not work. Is anyone arguing the Clintons didn’t realize it?

        But that is not the end of the story. DADT was something of a “bait and switch”, because the net effect was to increase the number of annual discharges of gays and lesbians from service. In that sense, DADT was “disastrous”.

        I think you’re going to have a misleading result if you look only at discharges. Steve Yuhas, for one, used to allege that most such discharges were of people who outed themselves. Better to try to measure discrimination and harassment, especially those “investigations” that went into facebook and personal correspondence and such. I think over time these stories got worse. I’ve long been unimpressed at how the Don’t Ask part of the policy was not enforced. But now that DADT was found unconstitutional and repealed, I don’t want to argue too strongly a case for keeping it and making it better.

        With respect DOMA, let me make an observation about change over time

        You’re making this observation awfully quietly. Observe: the guys with the D after their names are for marriage equality (which I assume means they support laws having the government recognize gay marriages). The guys with R after their name aren’t, or we don’t know they are.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          You’re making this observation awfully quietly. Observe: the guys with the D after their names are for marriage equality (which I assume means they support laws having the government recognize gay marriages). The guys with R after their name aren’t, or we don’t know they are.

          I made the observation without drawing a conclusion because the data points to several possible conclusions.

          My takeaway is that change is possible within a political party if the gays and lesbians aligned with that party work for it. But that is a complex conclusion an draws upon other assumptions, data and/or conclusions. My bottom line is that political parties change in rough proportion to the commitment of gays and lesbians in the party to work for change, and the effectiveness with which they work. I think that’s the primary reason why the Democratic Party has moved toward equality swiftly and decisively, and the Republican Party hasn’t changed much.

          Another observation, if I may: If the DOMA vote was held today, and only the 16 still-serving Senators could vote on it, the vote would be 8-8, and DOMA would fail to pass. The actual composition of the current Senate is 57-42 in favor of marriage equality. Even after this election cycle, the Senate should, in the next session, maintain a slight (52-48) majority in favor of marriage equality. I think that DOMA (or a DOMA-equivalent like the State Marriage Defense Act of 2014 proposed by Senator Cruz) will probably fail despite the anti-equality gains made in this election cycle.

      • posted by Aubrey Haltom on

        @ Tom – what troubled me the most at the time (immediately following Clinton’s election and his follow-through on the promise to lgbt veterans) was how Clinton was played by the Right. And how quickly he was willing to surrender rather than fight.

        I recall the nomination of Lani Guinier – and the distortion and lies about her thrown by Republicans. Concurrent with the military foray (though ‘resolved’ much earlier) – we got to see how Clinton would ‘compromise’ when confronted with any controversy. It became a template for much of his administration.

        There’s no doubt that DADT was, at face value, a step in some direction past the ‘no gays allowed’ Pentagon policy.

        But I’d offer that Clinton’s handwashing of the whole issue as he gave up rather than fight (and I do agree it was a fight) – was evidence enough for the Pentagon to use DADT as an excuse to kick out gays as they wanted. BC had no desire to carry the fight any further.

        And, within 2 years, we would have DOMA and AIDS travel bans.

        And Tom – isn’t it curious that the greatest number of military personnel expelled due to DADT happened during the years 1997-2001. Post-DOMA. Pre-Bush. (Though the numbers under Bush matched the numbers under Clinton’s first term.)

        I’m not sure what to make of that fact. If anything…

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          And Tom – isn’t it curious that the greatest number of military personnel expelled due to DADT happened during the years 1997-2001. Post-DOMA. Pre-Bush. (Though the numbers under Bush matched the numbers under Clinton’s first term.)

          I’m not sure why, but I know that discharge numbers went up after DADT was enacted. A retired LTC spoke about that several years ago — 2008 or so — and said that she thought that after DADT (when the discharge shifted from dishonorable to general and criminal penalties were removed) it made it a lot easier (and more tempting) for the services to discharge gays and lesbians. I don’t know, myself.

  5. posted by Jorge on

    Also, though the reasons are probably hypocritical, I would like to point out that holding Democrats accountable has never been incompatible in the GLBT community with speaking to them out of love.

  6. posted by Houndentenor on

    The criticism of the Clintons is spot on. My two reasons for not voting for Clinton in the 2008 primary were her vote for the war and the ease with which she and her husband had in throwing gays under the bus while he was president. Neither of those has changed which is why I am open to other candidates for the 2016, but even with that baggage it’s hard to imagine a Republican getting the nomination that would have a better record on gay rights. Stephen is right that the A-list gays are too quick to ignore the Clintons’ shortcomings, which is no different from Log Cabin Republicans endorsing candidates like Rick Scott with even worse records. We can and should do better. All of us.

    • posted by Jorge on

      You make a passionate case, Houndentenor.

      I worry both about its implications reaching too far and falling short.

  7. posted by Don on

    I am on the cusp, myself, of not needing to worry about a politician’s position as to gay rights. We are about to get marriage equality, Florida is close to getting bipartisan support of a statewide ENDA, and the handful of remaining equality issues we have left are marginal. Hillary Clinton’s position on gay rights will soon be a nothingburger for more than half the country.

    I seriously doubt that HRC really wants to pass ENDA nationwide. I think they prefer raising money, instead. And I have to wonder if there won’t be a line of cases coming out over the next 20 years of couples in the Deep South suing for discrimination on the basis of marital status (don’t think that’s on anyone’s radar yet) where being married to someone of the same sex is marital discrimination.

    I don’t think I will see the end of fundamentalists’ shrieking about how horrible gay people are in my lifetime. Any more than black people and Hispanics will see an end to racism in their lifetime (no matter how old they are right now).

    Having said all of that, the rump’s insistence that we be marginalized and stigmatized may not be much of an issue with bite for much longer. Oh, they’ll insist on it, but it will be a legal mine field.

    A good friend said recently “The NGLTFs of the world will go the way of the NAACP. They will be here, but basically arguing against the human urge to marginalize ‘others’ indefinitely.”

    I’m not so sure I’m right about this. But it seems that we’re getting really close to “as far as we can go” legally and it’s all going to be hearts and minds from here.

  8. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    If I may be permitted to digress from the Clinton saga for a moment, we’ve had two positive developments on the marriage equality front in recent days:

    (1) Kansas – The Supreme Court (with Scalia and Thomas dissenting) lifted the temporary stay in Kansas, and marriages will proceed quickly, I suspect.

    Kansas is in the 10th Circuit, which mandated marriage equality and was one of the Circuits which was subject to the Supreme Court’s cert denial last month. In most 10th Circuit states, that was the end of the matter, but Kansas state officials sought a stay because the Kansas case, in their view, involved abstention issues not present in the 10th Circuit decisions. The 10th Circuit denied the stay, and Kansas sought a stay from the Supreme Court. Justice Sotomayer issued a temporary stay pending briefing, and the full Court, having been briefed, lifted the stay this afternoon.

    South Carolina – District Judge Richard Gergel ruled in favor of marriage equality earlier today, but stayed the order until November 20 to give the state a chance to appeal the decision. South Carolina officials have indicated that the decision will be appealed, and that the officials will seek a stay from the 4th Circuit and/or the Supreme Court. South Carolina officials are arguing that the situation in South Carolina is distinct from the other 4th Circuit cases previously decided and denied cert because of the abstention issues argued by Kansas. It will take a while to sort out, but I think that it is clear enough where this is headed.

  9. posted by Doug on

    Even assuming the Supreme Court upholds same sex marriage, that will not be the end of the matter. Should a Republican become president in 2016 it’s almost certain there will be a Supreme Court vacancy and if it’s one of the 5 that upheld same sex marriage the issue will be brought up again and Roberts will be only too happy to overturn same sex marriage. Mark my words, the LGBT community will be living under the Sword of Damocles for a long time to come.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      I’m pretty skeptical of this.

      As a thought experiment, let’s postulate that within the next two years the SCOTUS hands down a verdict that mandates marriage equality nationwide. At that point the appeals are run out, the cases close down. Then the supreme court gets changed down the road.

      For your “Sword of Damocles” to come into play, there has to be a new case. For there to be a case, there has to be harm. Do you really think anyone is going to come up with a better case for “I was harmed by marriage equality” then they’ve already found? The right-wing talking heads have been trying, desperately trying, to find that harm for over a decade now. In the last few years the search has intensified. I don’t think it exists.

      Once the SCOTUS errs on the side of equality, it’s over. If they err on the side of discrimination, then while it’ll be a stop-gap, gay couples will continue to have strong arguments for harm on which to base cases.

      So no… I don’t believe in your Sword of Damocles in this situation.

      • posted by Doug on

        This Supreme has shown little hesitation in overturning ‘settled’ law and has little or no regard for precedent, it is ideologically driven and I have zero faith or trust in the Supreme Court at this point.

        • posted by Jim Michaud on

          Jeez Doug, if you want to go through life sleeping with one eye open, that’s your right. You’re doing just what the soc cons WANT you to do. You don’t provide any links to the cases that SCOTUS overturned “settled law”. What were the circumstances that brought the cases back to SCOTUS? Post-50 state Marriage Equality, what will be the grounds for going back to court and undoing thousands of marriages, thus creating legal chaos? If overturning “settled law” was that easy, we would have sodomy laws once again and Roe v Wade would be overturned. Stop being a Debbie Downer and lighten up.

  10. posted by Jim on

    Nixon eliminated federal sodomy laws; Reagan opposed the anti-gay Briggs amendment and saved the gay rights movement. Does anybody honor these men as heroes of the cause? Nope. But a sleazy, amoral, two-faced, lying wretch name Bill Clinton who threw us gays under the bus so he could have a second term in the Oval office molesting interns gets lionized by America’s largest LGBT rights group. Like hell it is. HRC is a nest of parasites feeding off the LGBT body politic. It’s times for a political delousing to rid ourselves of them once and for all.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Nixon eliminated federal sodomy laws …

      This is not a hostile question, but one born of lack of knowledge.

      As far as I know, the federal government never had a law criminalizing sodomy. Bans on sodomy were a matter of state law.

      Congress did pass a sodomy law in the District of Columbia in 1948, but President Nixon had nothing to do with eliminating it. In 1981, after the District of Columbia regained home rule from Congress, the District repealed the sodomy law. The repeal was vetoed by the House, 281-119. In 1993, the District again repealed the sodomy law, and this time the House did not veto the repeal.

      The Uniform Code of Military Justice banned sodomy in 1921, but again President Nixon had nothing to do with its repeal. The UCMJ ban was narrowed somewhat by the courts after Lawrence, but the ban remained in place until the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 repealed the ban.

      So I am not at all sure what you are talking about, and would like more detail.

    • posted by Tom Jefferson III on

      –Nixon eliminated federal sodomy laws;

      President Nixon (who would probably be seen as too liberal for the current GOP) didn’t eliminate “federal” sodomy laws. Not sure how many federal criminal laws existed against gays during this administration, but the military UCMJ still applied (as did the restriction on immigrates) and the only other thing that springs to mind (in terms of federal criminal laws) would be DC. Washington DC had the anti-gay criminal law on the books until 1993. An effort to repeal the law in 1981 was blocked by the Congress.

      Reagan opposed the anti-gay Briggs amendment and saved the gay rights movement.

      Yes, Reagan did come out in opposition to the California amendment (mostly on First Amendment grounds and the prospect of students making false accusations) before then- President Carter expressed public opposition. I doubt that this saved the entire gay rights movement, but it does suggest the need for gay Democrats and Republicans to be a part of the process.

      —Does anybody honor these men as heroes of the cause?

      Well, gay Republicans may honor Reagan (in fact many gay Republicans and straight Republican allies have done so). …I am not sure we are allowed to debate what President Reagan actually did or said about gay rights.

      Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (later it did include an anti-harassment/hate crimes provisions) was probably all that could be passed by the Congress, given the (mostly) conservative opposition was much better financed and organized at framing the issue and stirring up fear.

      DOMA came at a time (in 1996) when no major party candidate for President backed marriage equality, because any candidate that did, would not be a serious candidate.

      If you expressed support for ANY legal equity for gay couples, even limited domestic partnerships you were tagged as being uber-liberal and that is why it was simply going on the table, policy wise. Their were certain gay rights issues that had a shot of being advanced at the federal level, and some that (at the time) had no chance.

  11. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    Interestingly enough….this does sort of help illustrated how minor or third political parties can be at the vanguard of new ideas (which later get opted by two main parties).

    I suspect that if someone dug into the history, some of the early political support for marriage equality (or indeed most gay rights issues) in America came from say, the libertarian or the green party.

    Later on, as public opinion shifts, more and more major party candidates and elected officials back the idea (in this case marriage equality). This is not unique to gay rights.

    The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and many health and safety based protections often started out as something that only ‘crazy’ people tied to ‘fringe’ political parties or groups supported.

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