2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]markpkessinger
(8,401 posts)But my support for Bernie over Hillary has less to do with Bill's signing of DOMA than with Hillary's own long-standing ties to Wall Street and her recent dishonesty regarding her past support of the TPP,
That said, it is important to remember what really happened surrounding DOMA. At the time, Republicans were threatening to introduce a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. And there was some concern at the time that such an amendment might actually pass. By agreeing to sign DOMA, the Clinton administration got Republicans to back away from their threat of introducing a constitutional amendment. Had such an amendment been introduced and passed, we would not have attained marriage equality when we did, because at that point, it would have required passing another amendment to repeal the one defining marriage -- a far bigger hurdle than winning at the Supreme Court! Even though everybody hated it at the time, it was the best among a set of bad options and, in the long run, enabled us to achieve marriage equality more quickly than we otherwise would have been able to achieve it.
There are many issues on which the Clinton administration is fully deserving of our scorn, but DOMA isn't really one of them.