Clinton “evolution” points to Obama hypocrisy

Former Bill Clinton – the man who gave us the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) back in 1996 – now supports marriage equality for same-sex couples.

This is a stunning reversal for Clinton. DOMA, after all, blocks the federal government from recognizing legally wed same-sex couples in states where it is permitted. The legislation also allows a state not to recognize a legal same-sex marriage performed in another state, a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s full-faith-and-credit clause.

Clinton made the declaration in response to a question at the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, D.C. on July 8, and reported by The Nation magazine’s website.

“I think all these states that [legalize same-sex marriage], should do it,” Clinton said, according to The Nation. When asked about his personal feelings on the subject, he said, “I personally support people doing what they want to do. I think it’s wrong for someone to stop someone else from doing that.”

This comes after he told an audience at Toronto’s Convention Centre this past spring that his position on same-sex marriage was “evolving.”

Evolving, indeed.

Of course, it’s somewhat safe for Clinton to say all this now, nine years removed from office. Clinton won’t suffer any of the political consequences he faced back when he was in the Oval Office.

At the same time, however, same-sex marriage was merely an idea then – not the reality that began in 2004 in Massachusetts. So it was much easier in the ‘90s to oppose marriage equality – and the tide continues to turn.

In fact, a recent Gallup poll showed that a majority of Democrats favor equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Which brings us to Barack Obama.

The current president not only opposes same-sex marriage (opting for separate-but-not-really-equal civil unions), but his Justice Department filed a vile brief in support of DOMA despite once promising to repeal the legislation. (See FredBlog entry “Obama the marriage-equality hypocrite,” June 18, 2009.)

Other high profile Democrats have recently come down on the side of marriage equality, including Howard Dean, who signed the nation’s first civil unions law back in 2000 as governor of Vermont.

Interestingly, Vermont’s new law allowing same-sex couples to marry goes into effect on Sept. 1. Other states joining the marriage equality club this year are Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa.

That’s a lot of evolving. President Obama, the ball is now in your court.

Obama the marriage-equality hypocrite

Many gay and lesbian Americans feel double-crossed by President Barack Obama – and rightly so. After all, it was Obama’s clear stance against the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that led many to side with him over Democratic primary rival Hillary Clinton.

Let’s travel back to the summer of 2007, a time when no one was expecting the battle royale to come between Clinton and Obama. In fact, Clinton was all but assumed to be the next president.

Logo, the gay cable network, held a gay-focused presidential primary debate along with the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay civil rights organization. Inevitably, the issue of marriage for same-sex couples came up.

While both Obama and Clinton agreed on separate-but-equal civil unions over full marriage equality, they differed on DOMA. That legislation, infamously signed into the law under dark of night by then-President Bill Clinton, does two critical things:

1.   It says the federal government does not have to recognize a legally wed same-sex couple, even if they are legally wed in their home state.

2.   It says that other states don’t have to recognize a couple legally wed in their home state. (This is clearly unconstitutional because of the U.S. Constitution’s full faith and credit clause, which means – among other things – that if a straight couple elopes to Vegas, when they go home to Idaho, their Nevada marriage must be recognized.)

At the Logo debate, Clinton – ever the pragmatist – said that as president, she would advocate repealing part of DOMA, but not the portion dealing with full faith and credit. She explained that it would not be politically feasible to repeal DOMA fully over the next presidential term.

Obama, however, went all in. He not only called for the full repeal of DOMA, but also noted that this has been his position since he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

After that exchange, many LGBT Americans took a second look at the race – and while many still sided with Clinton, more and more jumped to Obama.

DOMA, therefore, was a decisive issue for a large number of gays and lesbians looking at the presidential race.

It’s no wonder so many are angry with Obama right now.

Not only is he dragging his heels on high-priority LGBT issues such as repealing DOMA and the military’s anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (which he promised to overturn), but his administration’s recent defense of DOMA is nothing but despicable.

In a brief submitted in the case of Smelt v. U.S. challenging the constitutionality of DOMA and California’s anti-gay Proposition 8, the Obama administration argues that DOMA is a “cautious policy of federal neutrality.” What!?!?! During the campaign, Obama called DOMA “abhorrent.”

As pointed out by the New York Times in a June 16 editorial, this “neutrality” argument is “an odd assertion since the law clearly discriminates against gay couples. Under the act, same-sex married couples who pay their taxes are ineligible for the sort of federal benefits – such as Social Security survivors’ payments and joint tax returns – that heterosexual married couples receive.”

Then there’s the brief’s comparison of same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia. As the Times put it, “The brief insists it is reasonable for states to favor heterosexual marriages because they are the ‘traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.’ In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution’s ‘full faith and credit’ clause, the Justice Department cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece.”

And to top it all off, the brief argues that DOMA does not discriminate against gays; it merely limits federal benefits to those in opposite-sex marriages. So the Obama administration is saying that a gay man isn’t being discriminated by DOMA because he could go off and marry a woman to get the benefits!

This is twisted and shows ignorance and the kind of wedge-issue politics that Obama spoke out so strongly against during the campaign.

Then after all this odious offense, Obama has the nerve to throw crumbs in the form of partner benefits for federal employees only.

This is hypocrisy and anti-gay demagoguery worthy of George W. Bush. Is this really the change we can believe in that a majority of Americans voted for?