Secy. Clinton: N.Y. Marriage Is "Progress"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday's landmark marriage equality victory in New York is a sign of "progress."

In a Monday morning address to the State Department group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies in recognition of national LGBT pride month, Clinton said the win in New York "gives such visibility and credibility to everything that so many of you have done over so many years," Politicoreports.

"I look out at this audience, and I see a lot of familiar faces, of people who have been on the front lines for many years and have worked so diligently and smartly for the progress that we are seeing," Clinton said.

Last year, borrowing from her 1995 speech on women's rights at a United Nations conference in Beijing, Clinton said of LGBT rights at a State Department pride event, "This is a human rights issue. ... Just as I was very proud to say the obvious more than 15 years ago in Beijing -- that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights -- well, let me say today that human rights are gay rights, and gay rights are human rights, once and for all."