Sen. Hillary
Clinton went a long way this month toward neutralizing
her one lingering Achilles' heel with LGBT voters
when she shifted her stance on the Defense of
Marriage Act, the 1996 bill signed into law by her
husband that grants state governments the right
not to recognize same-sex marriages or civil
unions performed in other states.
Clinton's
new stance on DOMA may also be an attempt to establish a
separate identity from that of husband Bill
Clinton, whose presidency left somewhat of a
best-of-times, worst-of-times aftertaste in the mouths
of LGBT Americans. While the gay
population's historic role in electing Bill
Clinton launched us on to the national political stage,
his statutory legacies to us were the
military's antigay "don't ask,
don't tell" policy and DOMA.
Senator
Clinton's change on DOMA came to light when her
advisers released the text of her candidate
questionnaire for the Human Rights Campaign.
DOMA contains
two provisions: one that gives states autonomy on
marriage and one that prohibits federal
recognition of same-sex marriages. With the
precision of a neurosurgeon, Clinton cut herself free of
the second plank of the law while continuing to
embrace the first plank, essentially saying that
she would let states decide their own destiny on
marriage but leave the door open for federal
recognition of same-sex unions.
"Senator
Clinton believes that each state should make its own
decisions regarding marriage or civil unions, but
once a state legalizes such relationships, these
relationships should receive full federal recognition
and benefits," Ethan Geto, senior national
adviser to Senator Clinton on LGBT Issues,
explained in an e-mail to The Advocate.
"As several states have legalized gay marriage or
civil unions, Senator Clinton has come to believe
that the restrictions imposed by DOMA on federal
government recognition of same-sex relationships are unfair."
The position
represents a marked departure from her comments to a
group of about 40 LGBT leaders in New York last
October during her Senate reelection campaign,
where she stood firm on the strategic importance of DOMA
in helping to defeat the Federal Marriage
Amendment, which would have constitutionally
denied the right of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.
"One of the
strongest arguments we had against the constitutional
amendment, which kept Democrats and even some
Republicans from voting for it, was
DOMA--that [the FMA] was not necessary; marriage
has always been the province of states,"
Senator Clinton said during that meeting. "I feel
very good about the strategy we took on DOMA,"
she added.
While cynics
may roll their eyes at "strategy," and
many LGBT activists criticized Clinton for not
being more outspoken about gay families during the FMA
debate, Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights
Campaign, has credited Senator Clinton as a
strategic force in defeating the FMA in 2006.
Prior to the
vote, Senator Clinton called Solmonese unsolicited and
suggested HRC conduct polling about the issue,
which ultimately showed that while support for
marriage equality had risen, voters were
"enraged" that Congress would spend
time debating the FMA rather than the Iraq War.
Based on that data, HRC advised Democratic congressional
leaders to argue during the floor debates that the
GOP was ignoring the most pressing issues facing
the nation.
Clinton's
advisers also seem keen to further delineate the
distinction between Hillary and Bill on gay
issues. Her new position on DOMA means that she
now stands opposed to the two most damning pieces of
legislation that are the legacy of her
husband's presidency.
"It is
instructive to know that Hillary Clinton publicly called
for repeal of 'don't ask, don't
tell' in 1999, while President Clinton was still in
office, effectively breaking with him over this
policy," Geto wrote in his e-mail.
"This is a further manifestation of her personal
commitment to equality and fairness as her guiding
principles." (Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate)
