January 31, 2008

The gay case for Hillary, con't

Posted by: Chris

UPDATE: At the end of this post.

The New York Blade endorsed Hillary Clinton last week, and like most of those making the case for her within the gay rights movement, the differences with Barack Obama were papered over or, in the case of whether to repeal half (Hillary) or all (Obama) of the Defense of Marriage Act, not even acknowledged. The Blade did acknowledge the failures of Bill Clinton's administration, on DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell -- although I would add the failure to pass workplace or hate crime protections -- but nonetheless concludes:

We question whether Obama can muster the aggression needed to force change. His talk of bringing people together reminds us of current Democratic Congressional leaders’ talk of bipartisanship. In an effort to avoid confrontations with Republicans, Dems have gotten us nowhere in 2007: no hate crimes, no ENDA, no impeachment—Harry Reid can’t even get White House staff to testify about the attorney general scandal (Bush officials simply ignored Reid’s subpoenas and suffered no consequence).

This would not be the case if Hillary were running the show.

I couldn't agree more that likely follow-through and willingness to fight for passage of our civil rights laws is a central question that gay voters should consider. But I couldn't disagree more than it is more likely under a second Clinton administration than under Obama.

Hillary is at least as conservative about picking her political battles than was her husband and has never even criticized him for agreeing to Don't Ask, Don't Tell or signing DOMA. To the contrary, she has defended him for doing so by rewriting the reasons why -- similar to Bill Clinton's own revisionism. I see no evidence that she will be more courageous on civil rights once in office than he was, in fact I believe our agenda will be very low on her agenda.

Barack Obama spoke with conviction about gay rights issues during the HRC-Logo debate in a way than Hillary could not, drawing the comparisons to the black CIvil Rights Movement than the Clintons and establishment Democrats are mortally afraid to make.

It's a judgment call between the two, ultimately, if you set aside the important DOMA policy difference. But we do have history here to guide us.

UPDATE: Interestingly, New York City's other gay paper, Gay City News, has endorsed Barack Obama -- again basing their judgment on non-gay issues, which is not uncommon for that publication. (I have had a bit of a running debate with the GCN's passionate editors about whether it makes sense for a gay publication to devote so much space to Iraq War coverage, etc.)

For GCN, Clinton disqualified herself with the nasty campaigning by her surrogates, especially her husband the ex-president. On that issue, as any regular reader of this blog knows, I can certainly sympathize.

Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton