opinion

Sanders is right, don’t trust Clinton on gay rights

I never thought I’d say this: I agree with Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate is rightly challenging Hillary Clinton’s credibility and consistency as an advocate of LGBT equality, and because of his sharp criticism, Clinton’s unflattering record on gay rights is finally receiving the scrutiny it deserves.

Log Cabin Republicans has long stated that voters look closely at Hillary Clinton’s spotty past on issues related to LGBT equality, but it took a self-avowed socialist surging in the primary to finally get the left to break out the magnifying glass.

Consider that a majority of Democratic voters (51 percent) supported marriage equality in 2004. In June of the same year, Clinton made an assertive speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate defending the “fundamental bedrock principle” of marriage as “a sacred bond between a man and a woman.”

It took Clinton nearly a decade to catch up with the rest of her own party: Her 2013 declaration of personal support for marriage equality came after a majority of Americans had already indicated their approval—and even then she qualified that she supported it as “a matter left to the states” to decide.

The reaction from the gay left was an exasperated deep-dive to find proof that Clinton has privately long-supported LGBT rights even if her professional resume indicates otherwise.

The U.S. State Department in July, for example, released emails in which Clinton expressed concern for gross human rights violations abroad, including the sexually-based violence committed against gay men in Iraq, incidents she called “sad and terrible.”

Headlines in liberal media outlets seized the exchange as “Proof Hillary Clinton Is (and Has Been) Pro-LGBT.” But an empathetic response to egregious abuse is proportionate and appropriate, not exceptional.

Clinton was, by contrast, much less concerned when her Clinton Health Initiative, an affiliate of her Foundation, received millions of dollars from a Baptist Church in Cameroon that equates gay people with “devils.”

Supporters of Clinton frequently rebuke efforts to call attention to that red flag—and many others—that plague her record on equality. They argue that the strength of Clinton’s pro-gay positions in the present negates an occasionally anti-gay past.

But this line of defense was dismantled when Clinton recently suggested—with a straight face—that passing a federal ban on marriage equality was somehow a political favor to gay and lesbian Americans.

During an interview on Oct. 23, Clinton defended the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by her husband. She told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that his decision was a “defensive action” to stave off growing momentum for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Only in the topsy-turvy world of Clintonland can passing a federal ban on marriage equality be spun as a good thing for the LGBT community—and go unchallenged by arguably the most high-profile lesbian media personality today.

Sanders didn’t buy it. Accusing Clinton of historical revision, Sanders said the “evidence is very, very clear that that legislation was anti-gay legislation, it was playing off fears of a lot of Americans.”

Rewriting the narrative of the Defense of Marriage Act, a period in national history with enormous political and cultural value, is reductive and condescending. Doing so is insulting to the gay and lesbian men and women who suffered under the discriminatory policy.

Clinton supporters have long argued that on equality, the candidate’s inconsistent past has no bearing on the present. But this latest episode of revision makes clear that Clinton’s positions on gay rights are determined by pride, politics, and polling—not principle.

On this point (and this point alone), I agree with Bernie Sanders.

Gregory T. Angelo is the President of Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s organization representing LGBT conservatives and allies.