[DoMA] . . . has two key components: One stipulates that no state need recognize a marriage between persons of the same sex, even if the marriage was recognized in another state; the other prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages for any purpose, even if recognized by one of the states. The second provision effectively bars federal benefits from flowing to same-sex couples in state-recognized unions.Before I hash into anything else, let me get to the comment that inspired this post: Derek raised what he represented was the former president's view that DoMA actually did the gays a favor. (I am not yet tech-savvy enough to get the audio clip and link it here, so you'll have to take my word on this and give me your two cents if I'm just spewing nonsense.) According to Derek, Bill Clinton alleges that if he hadn't signed DoMA, the Republicans would've been successful not only in banning same-sex marriage in certain states (through amendments to state constitutions), but also would have made a formidable push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. Derek seemed to believe that bullshit, despite his lack of an explicit endorsement of Clinton's supposed belief on the matter.
And I'm not wrong to take Derek on his word that Bill Clinton actually does believe this idiocy, if only in part. At least as far as DoMA is concerned, Bill Clinton failed miserably on behalf of the gays -- and he went down willingly. In his own words, Bill says that "marriage has always been a matter of state law and religious practice," and that allowing Congress to enact DoMA in 1996 "seemed to be a reasonable compromise in the environment of the time" considering that Republicans were apparently very vocal about a proposed federal ban on gay marriage by way of a constitutional amendment. Keeping the issue with the states, he suggests, was a sure way to quell Republicans' fervor against the gays.
Be the Republican animosity toward gay marriage what it was (and is), the fact of the matter is that Bill Clinton's logic just doesn't hold water. According to his reasoning, DoMA was a calculated decision to leave marriage legislation with the states in order to avoid the apparent success Republicans would have had in enacting a federal amendment. But there are two issues I have with Bill's analysis: first, his evaluation of the Republicans' ability to succeed with a constitutional amendment is not well founded; and second, his cameo on the states-rights stage has caused massive collateral damage since he left office.
If history is an accurate measure, enacting amendments to the U.S. Constitution is not very easy: in Bill Clinton's lifetime, there have been 11 proposed amendments to the Constitution, and only six have passed (among the failures was the 2004 attempt to ban gay marriage). Fine, that wasn't a strong statement about the difficulty of amending the Constitution. Put it this way: Bill's theory assumes the Republicans would have been successful in placing the proposed amendment on the ballot in 1996 (and using history as an indicator again, he is probably correct considering Congress would have likely sponsored such a proposal, as they have for every other proposed amendment in the history of the Constitution); yet this theory fails to discuss the subsequent process of individual, state-by-state ratification. Based on -- let's use Bill's words -- "the environment of the time," whether by endorsement of two-thirds of the states' legislatures, or by vote by way of convention in at least two-thirds of the states, Clinton wrongly assumes that the Democrats' control of 20 state legislatures beginning in 1995 wouldn't have been enough to keep the two-thirds requirement in check. What's more, Clinton ignores the fact that Republican-controlled legislatures accounted for less than 20 states in 1995, and that the remaining 10 or 12 "split" states would not have given the Republicans the necessary 33-state support they would have needed.
Of course, this math is elementary and I am simplifying it by assuming that all Democrat-controlled legislatures would vote against DoMA, which is a flawed argument in itself. But the facts suggest one thing, and it is that a federal amendment to ban gay marriage in 1996 would not have passed any more easily then than its cousin, the Federal Marriage Amendment, fared in 2004. In fact, I am not so sure that in 1996, such an amendment wouldn't have turned out to be better for gays now. After all, much of the anti-gay backlash of the George W. Bush years is a reaction to what conservatives and religious fundamentalists regard as too much "gay in your face." And no, Derek, Bill Clinton was not the first gay president, and he also did not "pave the way" for gays to go "mainstream" รก la [insert your favorite television show here].
Clinton indirectly (maybe even unknowingly suggests) that DoMA fed the 2004 election back to George W. Bush. Here's the YouTube clip linked above where he reacts to Melissa Etheridge's on-point assertion that Clinton "threw the gay[s] . . . under the bus":
His brief reference to George W. Bush's 2004 re-election bid is telling. By asserting that Republicans' attempts to bring the conservatives and Christian fundamentalists to the polls in 2004 by putting same-sex-marriage bans on the state ballots across the country, Clinton contradicts his statement shortly thereafter that DoMA -- keeping the issue with the states -- "seemed to be a reasonable compromise in the environment of the time." Bill Clinton effectively endorsed the federalization of the marriage issue -- which he claims to have sought to avoid -- by addressing it federally. In turn, by endorsing a campaign against equality for all Americans, he created a breeding ground for future state-sponsored bigotry to play out on the national political battlefield We saw the consequences live, as Americans came out to the polls -- no longer able to be appeased by the unformidable Defense of Marriage Atrocity -- to decidedly voice their support behind the federalization of an overt definition of federal marriage.
DoMA was very successful, indeed. Like Clinton's "bridge to the twenty-first century," it was the bridge to the "hearts and minds" that George W. Bush sought to win over.
So to the assertion that Bill Clinton avoided a federal-marriage-amendment fight in 1996, I concede the possibility that this is true. But to the notion that such a delay was "good" in any way for the gay movement, I regard that as just pure politicking for Hillary's once-viable bid for the Oval. Call it what it was: a poor political compromise on the part of someone who is no stranger to public confessions of regret or remorse.
