An honest look at the Clinton administration’s support for the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, from former head of the Human Rights Campaign Elizabeth Birch:
…in the middle of my testimony before Congress on the constitutionality of this horrible law, the Clinton Justice Department, then headed by Janet Reno, had a letter delivered to the committee stating that, in the opinion of the Justice Department, DOMA was constitutional. (I was cut off mid-sentence as one of the more extreme house members read it aloud into the room with glee.)
…beyond signing the bill into law, the 1996 Clinton campaign decided to run ads on Christian radio bragging that DOMA had become the law of the land. …it was the president himself who wanted to run them and asked in anger whether he had any say in the matter.
President Clinton took DOMA out of play by announcing quickly he would support it and signed it into law near midnight on Sept. 21, 1996. … The Clinton campaign went on to use the LGBT community like a cash machine for reelection.
It’s all politics. And all politics is by its nature corrupt.
19 Comments for “Clinton and DOMA”
posted by Houndentenor on
I won’t go into why he did what he did then or now. We really don’t know. I do know what he did, though, and it was a crappy thing to do to the gay community. In that same year the Dole campaign played Log Cabin by taking an endorsement and campaign contribution and then denouncing them and returning the check. Both Clinton and Dole were douchebags on gay rights. It’s true that Clinton in many ways was better on gay rights than any president before him. His policy was nondiscrimination within the administration and he even appointed openly gay people (including one that Jesse Helms called a “damned Lesbian”, but two strongly anti-gay bills , DOMA and DADT are really the only federal anti-gay legislation to pass. They both even had the votes to override a veto. That’s how far we’ve come since then.
I note Clinton’s record and compare it to Dole not to excuse Clinton but to provide some context for those too young to remember 1996 well. I haven’t forgive either of the Clintons for DOMA or DADT. I’m willing to, but I’ve yet to hear a sincere apology for either. I’ve heard excuses, some of which have some merit, but the reality is that Clinton, a former Constitutional Law professor, signed DOMA knowing full well that it was unconstitutional and would eventually be found so by the Supreme Court (hopefully this spring). And then he bragged about doing it. A bigger apology than his usual slick willie routine is going to be required for some of us to forgive and forget. And that baggage attaches to his wife unless she distances herself from DOMA, which she hasn’t so far. Clinton should be ashamed of himself both that he’s taken so long to do the right thing and that he hasn’t really owned up to what he did and how destructive it was for gay rights. I’m open to hearing a real apology. Any time, Bill. Go ahead.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
DOMA was a disaster. The law was discriminatory in and of itself, but Clinton’s endorsement of the law was worse, because it stamped the seal of the Presidency on marriage discrimination.
President Clinton’s defense of his actions — boiling down to “it was necessary to forestall the FMA” — might have some substance (after all, Senator Dole’s campaign found it politically necessary in 1996 to return a $1,000 campaign contribution that Dole personally accepted from the Log Cabin Federation, setting off a firestorm from both sides that made Dole look like an idiot) — but Clinton’s hawking DOMA on the campaign trail went well beyond what might have been necessary to forestall the FMA.
He could have fought DOMA, and made it clear that he didn’t agree with it when he signed it, and was doing so only to stop the FMA, for example, and that would have deprived the anti-gay forces legitimacy.
In my view, by legitimizing anti-marriage discrimination, Clinton sanitized and emboldened the anti-gay forces that were finalizing the process of taking over the Republican Party during that period, and contributed to the anti-marriage amendments that were put in place around the country in subsequent years.
Elizabeth Birch is not alone in her views about President Clinton’s statement, and its inadequacy. A lot of people who were involved in LGBT advocacy at the time are speaking out, and none are patting Clinton on the back. He shouldn’t be patted on the back, and that’s a fact. His actions did a great deal of harm.
Steve Kornacki has an interesting take on the question of whether President Clinton should be forgiven at this point. My view is that his most recent statement is a continuation of the past rationalizations, and I’d like to hear “I’m sorry.”
posted by Jorge on
President Clinton’s defense of his actions — boiling down to “it was necessary to forestall the FMA” — might have some substance… but Clinton’s hawking DOMA on the campaign trail went well beyond what might have been necessary to forestall the FMA.
I find myself not agreeing with this, even today.
However, it is a fact that both President Clinton and Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage at that time, as did a majority of the nation. I think the argument that DOMA was necessary to forestall the FMA is a very strong one. The “damage” people say DOMA did (and I have no problem with DOMA although I keep forgetting what Section 3 does) is nothing compared to the “damage” a constitutional amendment would have done.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
… and I have no problem with DOMA although I keep forgetting what Section 3 does …
Section 3 of DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that are valid under state law:
The practical effects of Section 3 are far-reaching. The GAO identified about 1,200 federal benefits, rights, and privileges that are contingent on marital status or in which marital status is a factor.
Among the areas affected by the law are Social Security, housing, and food stamps, veteran’s benefits, copyright law, federal government employee disclosure requirements, income taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes and taxes relating to the sale of homes, ERISA (Section 3 effectively prevents most private sector employers from providing health care, pension, and disability benefits to same-sex spouses on an equal footing with traditionally-married spouses) and other retirement rules and regulations, education loans, farm subsidies, federal employees benefits (both civilian and military), and immigration and residency requirements.
The list goes on and on. Section 3 negatively impacts individuals, obviously, but also has a real and quantifiable negative effect on state and local government because the federal government requires states to administer many federal programs, and states in which marriage equality is a fact cannot administer the programs in accordance with state law regarding marriage.
I’m glad you don’t have a problem with DOMA, Jorge. But you would if you were married or lived and/or paid taxes in a state in which marriage equality is a fact. Then DOMA would impact you.
Here’s a small example of how Section 3 of DOMA works in the real world. Adam and Steve are married in in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, and live there. It is income tax time. Under state law, Adam and Steve are required to file as “married filing jointly” or “married filing separately”. Under federal law, Adam and Steve must file as “single”.
IRS rules require individuals to use the same filing status for both state and federal filings. That is obviously impossible when the state requires that the individuals file as “married” and federal law requires that the individuals file as “single”. So what to do?
The most recent advice I’ve heard is to file both as “married” and as “single” at both federal and state levels, submitting the returns with an explanatory letters and paying whatever tax works out to be the highest in each case. DOMA should be renamed “The Lawyer and Accountant Retirement Surety Act”.
posted by Mike in Houston on
DOMA was a bitter betrayal by Clinton and theDemocratic establishment – one that certain Clinton apologists still refuse to completely disavow.
That said, let’s compare and contrast what happened next within the respective parties… To whit:
LGBT people came out and stepped up to take places of leadership within the Democratic Party structure – relentlessly pushing the party position to a point where not being supportive of LGBT equality is a deal-breaker if you want to get elected. We also regrouped to build core strengths around electing LGBT people locally – see Annise Parker, Houston. At the same time working the larger cultural landscape (including the workplace -see HRC’s Corporate Equality Index) to move the conversation forward.
LGBT people in the GOP (mostly closeted)…
posted by Doug on
Well said, Mike. Stephen just can’t accept the fact that the GOP is largely homophobic and he and others have done little to change that so he has to lash out at Democrats to cover his own shortcomings.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Exactly right, Mike.
And the best thing about it is that our work and the results we obtained weren’t confined to the “blue” states.
The “red” states are right there with the rest of the party — the Texas Democratic Party, for example, adopted a strong marriage equality platform plank last year, as did 26 other state parties.
All of this before President Obama completed his “evolution”.
Within the Democratic Party, ours has been a ground-up fight fought by individuals who worked hard starting at the county level and working upward.
Folks like Stephen, who have no experience with intra-party politics, don’t understand the process or the model — the political model for them is the outside lobbying model, the model set by groups like HRC, LCR and GOProud, which are essentially fund-raising operations who try to “influence” events.
Those of us involved with Democratic intra-party politics over the years know that groups like HRC made no real difference in terms of turning the Democratic Party, although the groups have done other things that were important (like the Corporate Equality Index).
The LCR or GOProud won’t bring change to the Republican Party unless and until they get off the lobbying model and start working at intra-party politics.
posted by Jorge on
In other word, they pushed the party from the center-right to the far-left.
posted by Mike in Houston on
As if civil rights is something that is “far left”… Please.
Lincoln was such the radical leftist, what with that whole Emancipation Proclamation and 14th amendment stuff…
posted by Tom Scharbach on
In other word[s], they pushed the party from the center-right to the far-left.
No, Jorge.
Gays and lesbians (individual gays and lesbians who came out to their family, friends and neighbors, LGBT advocacy groups working on a variety of fronts, and LGBT political activists within the Democratic Party) worked in different political, business, legal and cultural arenas to move the center of America to understand and embrace the idea of equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians.
That’s why a majority of Americans now favor marriage equality, and almost all (75% or better) of Americans favor workplace equality, military service equality and so on. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last thirty-odd years, and that’s a fact.
What pro-equality Democrats working within the party did was to move the party along somewhat ahead of the country’s center. What pro-equality Republicans did was sit on their hands and do nothing, letting the social conservatives take control of the party unchallenged.
The results show. The Democratic Party is with the majority of Americans on equality, while the Republican Party is, for the most part, still fighting equality tooth and nail.
Equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians isn’t “far-left” at this point. It is “mainstream”, both within the country as a whole and within the Democratic Party.
posted by Houndentenor on
I thought the point of this blog is that gay rights is not a left-right issue. Obviously the author has failed to convince even his fellow homocons of that.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I thought the point of this blog is that gay rights is not a left-right issue. Obviously the author has failed to convince even his fellow homocons of that.
I suspect Jorge’s characterization of “equal means equal” as “far left” speaks more to the success of social conservatives in recasting “conservatism” as meaning “anti-equality” than it it does to a failure of Stephen’s efforts (or Jon Rauch’s or any of the others’ efforts) to insist (correctly) that equality is an authentically conservative issue.
The “conservative” movement, after all, has heard few voices to the contrary since Pat Buchanan’s “Culture Wars” tantrum in 1992, and little has been done by pro-equality voices within the Republican Party since then counteract the “conservative means anti-equality” position since then.
Buchanan’s “Culture Wars” speech signaled a fierce battle then ongoing between economic conservatives (the “Country Club Republicans”), constitutional conservatives (the Goldwater/Reagan wing) and social conservatives to control of the Republican Party.
The social conservatives won the war hands down by careful organizing at county, state and federal levels, focusing on primaries within the party. Since then, the pro-equality voices within the Republican Party have either been silent (choosing to set aside principle for power) or silenced (leaving the party, shouted down or cowed). The “conservative” megaphone is firmly in the hands of the social conservatives.
The Republican Party could have forked in either direction during the 1990’s. It didn’t have to be this way. That’s the tragedy.
posted by Jorge on
It only becomes an issue that transcends right and left when ownership transcends political boundaries as well.
posted by Don on
Although there is a lot of talk about conservatives should do the dirty work of grass roots organizing, there is a relatively simple block on that theory. There isn’t a plausible way to effectuate this.
Social conservatives believe the Bible literally and unbendingly. Metaphorical interpretation of scriptures doesn’t happen in any sphere much less the gay one. Secondly, social conservatives are incredibly well organized even before they enter the political arena. They have centuries-old institutions and methods of proselithyzing. So, it’s not gonna be easy to take on God’s army even outside the political realm.
Next, there is little motivation to drop them. That’s A LOT of votes to ask to leave the process. The deal has been lower taxes/regulation for laws against abortion and gays. You scratch my back, i’ll scratch yours. Neither side agrees with the other, generally. But they both hold their noses to get what they really want.
How do you grass roots your way over millions and millions of evangelicals? How do you convince them the unerring Bible in its literal form shouldn’t be taken literally as the word of God?
I just don’t see how more grass roots organizing by gay republicans is going to trigger the philosophical collapse of millions of people.
Heck, we can’t even get all gay people to buy this. GOProud? Ex-gay evangelicals (no, I don’t believe any one is such a thing, but that’s what they call themselves). They have tremendous motivation to be for equal rights for gays and yet they can’t even agree if gay is even okay. How are we supposed to bring down the evangelical juggernaut?
Only way out I see is to exhaust them away from the public sphere. Hammering away at the Left’s strong sense of fairness is how it was done with Democrats. Conservatives do not see the world as fair. And don’t believe it should be artificially buttressed as such. Adversity builds character, not an opportunity to level the playing field. Just utter the words “level playing field” at a conservative organizing event and they will call you a communist and ignore you for the rest of your life. Grow up. Get a job. Quit blaming everybody else. That’s what they’ll tell you.
So how do you grass roots your way out of that one?
I’m open to what you guys think. Despite some snarkiness on my part from time to time, i do really enjoy the debates here.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
That’s A LOT of votes to ask to leave the process. The deal has been lower taxes/regulation for laws against abortion and gays. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Neither side agrees with the other, generally. But they both hold their noses to get what they really want.
How do you grass roots your way over millions and millions of evangelicals? How do you convince them the unerring Bible in its literal form shouldn’t be taken literally as the word of God?
The point of doing the kind of ground-up, intra-party work I’ve been talking about on IGF for the last couple of years is neither to (a) change the religious beliefs of social conservatives, nor (b) eliminate social conservatives, and hence their votes, from the party.
The point is to reduce the social conservatives’ current stranglehold on the party’s primary process so that social moderates can, in socially moderate districts, win Republican primaries.
At present, it is almost impossible for any Republican who does not profess to be a hard-core social conservative to make it through the Republican primary process.
The reason is social conservatives have been hard at work organizing within the party from the ground up for at least thirty years, and have been successful in their efforts. At this point, there is no counterbalance. Social conservatives control the party, and get their so-called “values voters” to the polls in primaries.
As a result, the composition of Republican primary voters is significantly more socially conservative (by about 10-15 points) than the composition of Republican general election voters and the views of self-identified Republicans as expressed in polling.
Polls don’t mean much in politics. What counts is who actually votes. At present, social conservatives vote in Republican primaries in very high percentages relative to the percentage of social conservatives in the party as a whole.
The way to change this, and the only way I see to change this, is for socially moderate conservatives (and, in particular pro-equality conservatives) to counter-organize so that the composition of Republican primary voters more closely reflects the composition of Republican voters generally.
With hard work and organization (the only point of which is to get your voters to the polls in higher numbers than their voters), social conservatives will no longer have a stranglehold on the Republican primary process, and socially moderate Republicans will have a chance to emerge and move the party closer to positions of Republican voters.
I don’t believe that the Republican Party will ever be “left/liberal”, nor should it be. But the Republican Party is currently out of sync with itself.
On equality issues, Republican politicians vote far to the right of the views of self-identified Republican voters. Take the DADT repeal vote. The December 2010 Gallup poll showed that Republicans were evenly split on DADT repeal, and other polls showed a slight majority of Republicans in favor of DADT repeal. So how did Republican politicians vote? Not 50-50. Republican politicians in Congress voted 90-10 (roughly — somebody can look up the numbers) against DADT repeal.
That’s a serious disconnect. It should be changed, and it can be changed.
And, as I see things on the ground in rural Wisconsin, it is getting worse rather than better.
My county’s Republican party was completely taken over the social conservatives and Tea Party wing nuts in 2010, and the county party organization doesn’t have a moderate still standing.
It is so bad that at the county fair this summer, when Tommy Thompson had a few minutes to kill before the fair opened, he walked over and talked to me at the Democratic Party booth. He had a non-political reason for coming over (my brother died the December before, and he and Tommy were high school friends, so Tommy came over to express his condolences) but he stayed until it was time to go. I asked him why he didn’t go over the county’s Republican booth, and he just rolled his eyes.
I had lunch at Culver’s yesterday with Ed L, the former chair of the Republican Party in the next county over. Ed and I have been friends for years. The hard-core Tea Party types rousted the entire county party leadership earlier this year in a takeover coup, and in Ed’s county, as in mine, no moderates were left standing. The new chair is a man who is so far gone that he buries guns in the back yard, according to Ed, because he’s convinced that President Obama is going to send in the black helicopters.
The story is similar in each of the other surrounding counties.
If what is happening around here is a microcosm of what is happening around the country, the Republican Party is in real trouble going forward.
posted by Don on
I hear you. But I don’t see how gay republicans would overcome this juggernaut. If country club republicans can’t seem to pull it off, then how are a tiny minority within a tiny minority supposed to pull it off?
I see the shift happening only after things get worse. My evangelical aunt is stepping back because of evolution. She was a teacher. She is horrified by home schooling. My brother is stepping back because he wants lower taxes and less regulation, but its all about guns and gays.
I don’t think it’s just about a takeover by paranoid evangelicals with a tenuous grasp on reality and a racist fervor. (that is the prime motivator in my part of the south) Its that moderate Republicans are leaving the discussion due to disgust and exhaustion. I don’t think it will get better any time soon.
Still, I see gay conservative organizing as a suicide mission for the near future. Its probably more productive to bury their guns in the backyard for now. The time would be better spent.
posted by Houndentenor on
I have been warning my “country club Republican friends” (not the term I would have chosen but it’s rather accurate) for 20 years now that the religious right had taken over their party. They laughed. They dangled things like a human life amendment and a marriage amendment in front of that crowd knowing they’d do nothing about it after the election. They did it for a long time. (To be fair Democrats have been guilty of similar things with constituents in the past too.) But they always thought they would use that bible thumping crowd for as long as it was advantageous and then toss them aside like the whore of Babylon once they didn’t need them any more. While they were busy drinking G&Ts, the religious right took over their party. They might not be able to get one of their own at the top of the ticket in a presidential race, but they have governorships and state legislatures in a couple dozen states and they dictate the agenda. They aren’t backing down or going away. Ronald Reagan started this by going to the Evangelical pastors and proclaiming “You can’t endorse me but I endorse YOU!” And here we are. This element always existed in our country but both parties at various times were mostly able to hide this crowd (remember the Dixiecrats?) in the back and keep them away from the microphone most of the time. but we don’t live in an era with such limited media access. Everything you say in public winds up on youtube and the bloggers link to it and BOOM everyone is talking about “legitimate rape”. There’s no way to control the theocrats in the GOP and they are going to be a bigger and bigger negative on the party. It’s a huge mess and I really don’t see how they get out of it without splitting the party in two. It’s basically what Johnson had to do to the Democrats and while the party was able to keep majorities in Congress until 1980 (Senate) and 1994 (the whole enchilada) they had trouble winning the white house after him until very recently.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
The situation described in rural Wisconsin is eerily similar to the situation in rural Minnesota (and much of North Dakota and South Dakota, from what I hear).
Minnesota Republicans (before my time) actually use to call themselves ‘Independent-Republicans’, but now you pretty much have to be a lunatic (or talk like one) to get far within the MN.
I am not a young Republican, but I know quite a few young gay Republicans who been kicked out (or told to ‘take a walk’) when they tried push for a pro-equality position.
Again, I totally agree with the argument that gay Republicans have to do more — at the local and county level — and in terms of primary voters.
However, how much leeway is actually going to be allowed for Republicans who “disagree” with the party platform on gay rights?
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
From what I have read, major party presidential candidate and elected presidents tended to totally ignore gay rights issues (within a national policy context), until the late 1970s.
Candidate/President Carter expressed some lukewarm support for some gay rights issues, but knew it would not play well with the more moderate and socially conservative voters.
Candidate/President Reagan had a certain level of personal tolerance/don’t ask-don’t tell for gay people (I hear the same thing about Bush sr), but opposed gay rights and pandered to the socially conservative voters for money and power.
Candidate/President Clinton basically expressed support for lifting the ban on gays in the military, equal opportunity in employment, equal opportunity in hate crime prevention and AIDS/HIV funding.
What happened? The ban was not lifted, and instead we got the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. (I talked with gay vets and some say it was worse, some say about the same). The ENDA failed by one vote and the hate crime bill failed as well. He did better on equal opportunity in civilian, federal employment and AIDS/HIV funding. The Supreme Court was a wee bit more friendly to gay rights issues (thanks in part to Clinton appointments) Again, Clinton had always opposed same-sex marriage and a federal law is probably easier to fix then a constitutional amendment.
Was it perfect? No. Do gay people have reason to be upset? Yes, but we should also put it into proper context, namely who were the other ‘actors’ involved in shaping gay rights policy at the time, what were the public opinions and attitudes, etc.
As more ‘moderate’ straight voters become more comfortable with gay people and as the younger generation is generally less and less viciously anti-gay, we seen some progress within the last three presidential election cycles.
The problem is that its largely been progress within the Democratic Party — both its centrist and progressive wings. Heck, even ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats have evolved a wee bit.
It’s become virtually impossible to support gay rights issues (that have wide, bi-partisan support) and be a viable Republican candidate for President. It is not much better in Congressional and State races (with some notable exceptions — the State, city or town or district leans ‘blue’).
I have said that — one solution — would be to get more openly LGBT Republicans running for office, but that may be not possible (if sanity on gay rights is not being tolerated by the fanatics).
I suspect that means that they may have to run as Independent or third party candidates and the idea of gay rights will (eventually) get adopted by the GOP.