Remember When Hillary Clton Was Agast Gay Marriage?

Contents:

• REMEMBER WHEN HILLARY CLTON WAS AGAST GAY MARRIAGE?
• HILLARY CLTON'S GAY-MARRIAGE PROBLEM
• HILLARY CLTON'S VIEWS EVOLVE ON GAY MARRIAGE, JT TIME FOR PRINTIAL MPAIGN
• HILLARY CLTON PRAIS GAY MARRIAGE DECISN AND HOUNDS GOP
• HILLARY CLTON HAD THE CHANCE TO MAKE GAY RIGHTS HISTORY. SHE REFED.
• HILLARY CLTON ANNOUNC HER SUPPORT OF GAY MARRIAGE
• HILLARY CLTON’S GAY RIGHTS EVOLUTN
• HILLARY CLTON ANNOUNC HER SUPPORT FOR GAY MARRIAGE
• HOW HILLARY CLTON EVOLVED ON GAY MARRIAGE

REMEMBER WHEN HILLARY CLTON WAS AGAST GAY MARRIAGE?

”A prr, she stood by her hband as he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, a piece of legislatn that dified gay Ameri’s send-class stat.

So ’s fair to say that Hillary Clton has had a longstandg opposn to gay marriage—eher that, or she was too aaid to speak tthfully about her nvictns for polil reasons, which is really jt as bad. December 1999: Clton told a group of gay ntributors at a fundraiser that she was agast the "don't ask, don't tell" ary policy signed by her hband. But I also believe that people mted gay marriag, as they believe them to be, should be given rights unr the law that regnize and rpect their relatnship.

HILLARY CLTON'S GAY-MARRIAGE PROBLEM

October 2006: Clton told a group of gay elected officials that she would support same-sex marriage New York if a future ernor and Legislature chose to enact such a law.

Augt 2007: In a Democratic primary bate sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign and LOGO Network (a gay-oriented TV statn) Clton was asked "What is at the heart of your opposn to same-sex marriage?

Hillary Clton didn't rea om supportg same-sex marriage for polil reasons—before last year, she earntly believed that marriage equaly should be nied to gays and lbians.

HILLARY CLTON'S VIEWS EVOLVE ON GAY MARRIAGE, JT TIME FOR PRINTIAL MPAIGN

* The d tensn stemmed om persistent qutng as Clton obfted on an issue that uld damage her chanc a 2016 primary but is relatively unlikely to hurt her a ntt agast a Republin, given that her aln is so much stronger on gay rights than the opposn.

Most famoly, the Silin Valley left forced the oter of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for a 2008 donatn he ma to an anti-gay-marriage ballot iative. If she is to be believed, she also opposed gay marriage as recently as 2013, long after a majory of Amerins already held a more gay-iendly posn. Would the subset of Democrats who thought 2008 opposn to gay marriage should prevent a man om beg CEO 2013 really support the 2015 printial mpaign of a woman who openly opposed gay marriage until last year?

Dog so would seem to show nsistency, yet there's a strong argument to be ma that Clton's anti-gay-marriage past shouldn't drive cisns to support or oppose her. No one doubts she will be a strong supporter of gay equaly if elected print, now that all the polil centiv to take that posn are aligned. There is, however, a vol segment of the left that is vted likeng people who opposed gay marriage to racists who opposed terracial marriage.

HILLARY CLTON PRAIS GAY MARRIAGE DECISN AND HOUNDS GOP

There is also rentment om gays who feel that the Cltons wronged them the Sullivan's perspective is stctive:She was the send most powerful person an admistratn a cril era for gay rights. Clton also left gay service-members the lurch, doublg the rate of their discharg om the ary, and signed DOMA, the high watermark of anti-gay legislatn Amerin history.

I was edor of TNR for five years of the Cltons, aggrsively wrg and publishg articl favor of marriage equaly and ary service, and saw the Cltons’ irratn wh and hostily to gay activists up close.

But I thk of her posn as the same as the eponymo gay rights anizatn the Cltons ntrolled the 1990s, the Human Rights Campaign. Fally, there is wispread amnia among Democrats more broadly, who reflexively assume that Hillary Clton has of urse supported gay marriage her heart of hearts for years. "So what's like when you're office and you have to do all the polil lculatns to not be able to support somethg like gay marriage that you actually believe ?

HILLARY CLTON HAD THE CHANCE TO MAKE GAY RIGHTS HISTORY. SHE REFED.

" The NPR host is seemgly unable to nceive of the fact than an inic Democrat like Clton uld have really, tly opposed gay equaly all those years. In liberal circl, now seems impossible to have red eply about human rights, to have red about gay rights, and to have objected to gay marriage, even though that was the exact posn of almost all liberals very recently. The Supreme Court stck down parts of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevented the feral ernment om regnizg gay marriage.

Those who only joed the ph for gay marriage 2013 after spendg years fendg DOMA were, que obvly, "ls mted" to gay equaly than those who spent years or s urgg marriage equaly.

GROSS: You know, I'm sayg, I'm sorry, I jt want to clarify what I was sayg, I was sayg that you maybe really believed this all along, you know, believed gay marriage all along, but felt for polil reasons Ameri wasn't ready yet and you uldn't say . This was an credibly new and important ia that people on the ont l of the gay rights movement began to talk about and slowly but surely nvced others of the rightns of that posn.

HILLARY CLTON ANNOUNC HER SUPPORT OF GAY MARRIAGE

So aga, acrdg to Clton, she did not favor gay marriage her heart prr to 2013 and reaed om sayg so bee Amerins weren't yet ready for that posn. Her rhetoric is perfect for assuagg the disfort of general-electn voters who started supportg gay marriage relatively late the game.

In 2011, when the state of New York legalized same-sex marriage, Clton (then servg as secretary of state) spoke to the crowd at a gay-pri celebratn and hailed the “historic vote New York [that] giv such visibily and credibily to everythg that so many of you have done over so many years. Polil science profsor Pl Kengor noted at the time that Hillary Clton had fally "endorsed gay marriage, " statg that he believed she had unrgone "an hont shift":. [Her posn] changed this week, when the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group wh which Clton has personal ti, posted a vio where Clton me out favor of gay marriage.

HILLARY CLTON’S GAY RIGHTS EVOLUTN

Some will charge that Clton has embraced gay marriage out of polil opportunism, that she se the directn her party is movg on this issue, and therefore lookg ahead to the 2016 printial race, there's no way she would oppose gay marriage.

HILLARY CLTON ANNOUNC HER SUPPORT FOR GAY MARRIAGE

GROSS: “You know I’m jt sayg, I’m sorry — I jt want to clarify what I was sayg — no, I was sayg that you maybe really believed this all along, but, you know believed gay marriage all along, but felt for polil reasons Ameri wasn’t ready yet and you uldn’t say . Like tens of lns of other Amerins, Hillary Clton ed to oppose the ia of civil marriage rights for gay and lbian upl and now favors them.

The ia of same-sex marriage was very unpopular at the time, but the prevailg legal amework of 1996 raised the prospect of marriage equaly advot wng one state, leadg gay upl om around the untry to flood to get married then mandg regnn their home state unr the "full fah and cred" clse of the Constutn. His prs secretary scribed the marriage panic as "gay bag, pure and simple, " and Clton himself snorted that the issue was "hardly a problem that is sweepg the untry. The ntext was that, Soris's words, Clton "was the first ndidate for natnal office to seek and receive support om an anized gay polil muny, which was self new to printial polics.

" He had posned himself as the gay-iendly ndidate 1992 and tend to do so aga 1996, and throughout his princy he advoted for many measur — rangg om employment discrimatn laws to the appotment of openly gay people to posns of thory the ernment — that were important to the anized gay muny. In the same op-ed, he ma reference to an amic brief filed the DOMA legislatn that argued that "many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that s passage 'would fe a movement to enact a nstutnal amendment banng gay marriage, which would have end the bate for a generatn or more.

HOW HILLARY CLTON EVOLVED ON GAY MARRIAGE

And 2009, Bill Clton straightforwardly reunted, "We were attemptg at the time, a very reactnary Congrs, to head off an attempt to send a nstutnal amendment banng gay marriage to the stat. Sam Ste and Jennifer Benry approached this om a human angle and asked the people who led gay rights groups the 1990s, who said the nstutnal amendment angle never me up.