Bill Clinton's Complicated History with LGBT Rights Continues

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to nearly 2,000 bloggers and activists at Netroots Nation last night, in an address that mixed reflections from his presidency with thoughts on why progressives need to come together to do something about health care reform and climate change now.  But his most vigorous moment may have been responding to audience member Lane Hudson, who challenged Clinton over his administration's support for the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And that confirms that yet again, LGBT rights supporters still view this president with a degree of skepticism and anger over policies that many see as too compromising in the arena of equal rights.

Halfway through Clinton's talk, Hudson was moved to ask the President whether he would use his speech at Netroots Nation to call for a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."  Clinton responded, but it certainly wasn't with a call for a repeal. It was with a bit of frustration over the fact that, for Clinton, he gets a lot of flak for these two laws without much credit for the efforts he did take during his administration to improve the lives of LGBT Americans.

Specifically, Clinton said that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the farthest he could move military leaders and Congress, and that instead of going after me, LGBT rights activists should do some soul searching over how they didn't lobby their legislators on this issue.  And while he regrets how it was implemented, he said at the time "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was supposed to allow gay and lesbian soldiers to have a private life where they could be (at least somewhat) open about their sexuality.

You want to talk about "Don't Ask Don't Tell," I'll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn't deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the Congress. Now that's the truth.

Secondly -- it's true! You know, you may have noticed that presidents aren't dictators. They voted -- they were about to vote for the old policy by margins exceeding 80 percent in the House and exceeding 70 percent in the Senate. They gave test votes out there to send me a message that they were going to reverse any attempt I made by executive order to force them to accept gays in the military. And let me remind you that the public opinion now is more strongly in our favor than it was 16 years ago, and I have continued supporting it...

Let me also say something that never got sufficient publicity at the time: When General Colin Powell came up with this Don't Ask Don't Tell, it was defined while he was chairman much differently than it was implemented. He said: 'If you will accept this, here's what we'll do. We will not pursue anyone. Any military members out of uniform will be free to march in gay rights parades, go to gay bars, go to political meetings. Whatever mailings they get, whatever they do in their private lives, none of this will be a basis for dismissal.' It all turned out to be a fraud because of the enormous reaction against it among the middle-level officers and down after it was promulgated and Colin was gone. So nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do. But the Congress also put that into law by a veto-proof majority, and many of your friends voted for that, believing the explanation about how it would be eliminated. So, I hated what happened. I regret it. But I didn't have, I didn't think at the time, any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all.

In other words, the question definitely fired up the former President, and fired up some LGBT activists who look at "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as one of the worst ideas to come out of the Clinton era.  Same with the Defense of Marriage Act.  On DOMA, Clinton said that at the time, DOMA was an effort to stall and block any possible momentum for releasing a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage.  While he suggested that DOMA was bad policy, Clinton firmly held to the fact that it prevented something worse from happening.

he reason I signed DOMA was -- and I said when I signed it -- that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to. We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the 11 referenda much later -- in 2004, in the election -- which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it's obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that. The President doesn't even get to veto that. The Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states. I didn't like signing DOMA and I certainly didn't like the constraints that were put on benefits...

Clinton circled back around after making these two points on DOMA and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to thank bloggers for helping change the minds and hearts of people, especially on these two issues.  Clinton noted that American culture is heading toward a very communitarian worldview - one that recognizes that we're only as good as our neighbor, and that we succeed or sink together.

But the incident certainly renewed the debate over Bill Clinton and his legacy among LGBT activists.  Was he the President that promised change but delivered more of the same discriminatory policy that had impacted the LGBT population for decades?  Or was he a President that did everything he could to make sure that the right-wing in this country couldn't push for a full-on assault of LGBT rights?

Perhaps that's up to each of us to decide as we reflect back on who this President and what his legacy, given the context of a right-wing reactionary Congress for six years of his term, says.

For more on why Lane Hudson decided to interrupt President Clinton's talk with some questions on DOMA and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," check out his confessional on HuffPost. I think he sums it up pretty well when he says, "As I sat in the audience thinking about how Netroots Nation is about celebrating the most open forum of discussion ever to exist, it occurred to me that we were nothing more than a captive audience being talked to. One way communication was NOT what we were there to celebrate and advance."  Kudos to President Clinton, too, for engaging Hudson (and all of us) with some answers.