There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law

[portlander23]

There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law
Talking to people about the Defense of Marriage Act today — in a political climate that is much more supportive of LGBT rights — is very different than examining what those people actually wrote and discussed in 1996.
Chris Geidner
BuzzFeed News

“We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress,” Bill Clinton told an audience in 2009, “to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states.” Four former senators — including Tom Daschle, who made the claim in 2011 — raised the idea in a Supreme Court brief in 2013. Clinton later cited that brief when, in a Washington Post op-ed, he called for the law he signed to be struck down by the court. Hillary Clinton just last week called her husband’s decision to sign DOMA “a defensive action.”

There is no contemporaneous evidence, however, to support the claim that the Clinton White House considered a possible federal constitutional amendment to be a concern, based on a BuzzFeed News review of the thousands of documents released earlier this year by the Clinton Presidential Library about same-sex couples’ marriage rights and the Defense of Marriage Act. In the documents, which include correspondence from a wide array of White House and Justice Department officials, no one even hints that Bill Clinton’s thinking or actions regarding DOMA were animated by the threat of a federal constitutional amendment.

The claim has faced renewed scrutiny in recent days after Hillary Clinton made an extended argument in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that DOMA was a “line to be drawn” to prevent further action.

By Monday afternoon, Hillary Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon had pulled back a bit, telling the Huffington Post, “Whatever the context that led to the passage of DOMA nearly two decades ago, Hillary Clinton believes the law was discriminatory and both she and president Clinton urged that it be overturned.”

He did not, however, say whether Clinton stood by her comments — and her version of history.

Related:

Hillary needs to stop with her bul**hit about DOMA

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Defense of Marriage Act, explained

[peacebird]

1. Color me surprised... Not. "We came, we saw, he died" misremembers history again?

Only to have it backfire. The interwebs, they can be so ... Inconvenient.

[marym625]

2. Never doubted it.

I remember all of this very well. I was blown away by both DOMA and DADT. Bill Clinton ran on ending the ban on gays in the military. Then instead, we got DADT.

[Senator Tankerbell]

3. I don't even understand the argument Hillary was trying to make.

It doesn't make logical sense. How would signing DOMA into law prevent Republicans from pursuing a constitutional amendment? Seems to me that they wanted both and DOMA was just the first step. If Clinton had vetoed DOMA, how would that make a constitutional amendment be any more likely? Is she saying they made some kind of a deal where Republicans would back off if Bill signed DOMA? I'm really confused by this.

I'm also confused by the fact the 1996 Clinton campaign ran radio ads promoting DOMA as a good thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/15/us/ad-touts-clinton-s-opposing-gay-marriage.html

If Clinton only signed DOMA as a defensive measure, why would his campaign run ads promoting it?

[struggle4progress]

7. It makes perfectly good logical sense

[frylock]

4. Why do people get so hung up on "evidence" or "facts"?

Why can't you just take her word for it?

[Doctor_J]

5. yeah, that was a really stupid lie. she shouldn't be desperate. she might be a chronic liar like

GWB. whenever he got in a tough spot he would lie.

[struggle4progress]

6. Hillary Clinton's account is entirely accurate

Her husband had many good ideas when he came to office in 93 but encountered immediate obstructive organizing from the rightwing; and two years later, Gingrich had control of the House

We spent much of that era putting out stupid fires in a very noisy environment: The White House had Vince Foster assassinated! Hillary is trying to take away your right to choose your own doctor! Whitewater! Whitewater! Whitewater!

There's no question President Clinton intended to eliminate all military discrimination against gays. Rather less was doable at the time, and we only actually got DADT

The threat of a federal constitutional amendment on marriage was a concern; and the number of states, subsequently amending their own constitutions, suggests that concern was well-founded. Nobody ever liked DOMA, but at the federal level, it did reduce rightwing activism somewhat

It's fine with me if folk don't like the Clintons, but looking back I find they did good work in quite difficult times

[portlander23]

9. Not a question of whether or not you like someone

Nor is it to give the impression that Bill Clinton was bad for LGBT in general. Their account is simply not factual.

[struggle4progress]

10. Bill Clinton is a man of enormous political talent and enjoyed excellent legal training, in addition

having good professional legal aides during his White House tenure

He didn't wake up two years ago to a sudden realization that DOMA conflicted with the full-faith-and-credit clause of the US Constitution, as he finally argued in public when indicating his view that the Supreme Court should overturn the Act

There was no question whatsoever, at the time of passage, that DOMA, or something worse, would emerge from the halls of Congress; and there equally no question that portions of the Act would be found unconstitutional at some future date

[struggle4progress]

11. Mikulski rallies behind Clinton on DOMA history

October 27, 2015 at 5:22 pm EST | by Chris Johnson

... Mikulski offered an account of the Senate vote in 1996 that squares with Clinton’s narrative.

“.. I believe .. it was an ugly time, we took an action that was limited and had a lot of problems with it, but it did stop a constitutional amendment,” Mikulski said ...

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/10/27/mikulski-rallies-behind-clinton-on-doma-history/

[portlander23]

12. This is what they're saying now

There's nothing we can cite from the actual time that reflects this. The bill was written by the GOP. They got exactly what they wanted. There was no federal amendment. There wasn't even a need- DOMA passed with wide support. The story is just not factual.

Furthermore, accounts of Clinton advisors make it very clear that the bill was a political calculus, and Clinton even ran ads touting the signing of DOMA. It's just not true to say DOMA was to protect LGBT people.

This isn't even to condemn Bill Clinton. The calculus was opposing DOMA would have hurt his reelection and as crappy as signing DOMA was without a veto, you can probably make a decent case that LGBT people were better off with Clinton reelected.

But this story is simply not factual and it's insulting to everyone who worked so hard to get the bill repealed.

[Scuba]

8. It's not just Republicans ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027307998