Endorsement From HRC May Reveal Hillary Clinton's Worst Fears

[W!nston]

How an Early Endorsement From Largest LGBT Group May Reveal Hillary Clinton's Worst Fears
HuffPost | By Michaelangelo Signorile | 01/21/2016 08:23 am ET

This week the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBT group, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It was a bit of a shocker not because HRC endorsed a Democrat -- the group has only endorsed Democratic presidential candidates, as the GOP has always been hostile toward LGBT rights -- but that it occurred before even one vote has been cast in the Democratic primaries and while two hugely gay-supportive candidates are so close in the polls in the first contests.

In 2008, HRC endorsed Barack Obama, but not until June, when it was clear he would be the nominee. (For 2012, the group endorsed the president, who had no major challenger, in May of 2011). In 2004, HRC also endorsed the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, in June, after all the votes in the primaries were in. And it's very first endorsement of a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, came in June of 1992.

Only in 2000 did HRC endorse far earlier in an election in which a Democrat was not up for re-election, backing Vice President Al Gore in February. But that was after the only other major candidate in the race, former New Jersey Democratic senator Bill Bradley, who stirred the pot for that time when he said he backed adding LGBT protections to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had lost the Iowa caucuses (held in January then) in a crushing defeat, and lost the New Hampshire primary on February 1. Looking terrible in the polls of states ahead, it was all but assured Bradley would lose the nomination.

Bradley certainly had an impact on the race and on LGBT rights in the fall prior: Though Gore didn't agree with Bradley on amending the Civil Rights Act (and many in the Democratic establishment came to Gore's defense on that, including openly gay congressman Barney Frank), Gore broke with his president, Bill Clinton, in December of 1999, a month before the Iowa contest, stating that he opposed and would work to eliminate the "don't ask, don't tell" law that Clinton had signed. That came about within days of of an interview I conducted with Frank, in which he called on Gore to make the shift amid Bradley's courting of the gay vote, a competition that was well-noted:

Candidates Bradley and Gore have been competing intensely over recent months for the gay vote. Both have made appeals before gay audiences, visited with gay organizations, and sought financial and volunteer support from gays nationwide. While Bradley supports more sweeping gay rights proposals than does Gore, the vice president has embraced the community while in office, and recently appointed a lesbian rights activist as manager of his presidential campaign.

It was certainly an example of why it's important for a minority group to hold out on an endorsement and let the candidates compete and get better and better on the issues. Had Bradley not come out for amending the Civil Rights Act in September, Gore may not have come out against DADT in December. (And it made sense to back Gore right away when it was clear he would be the nominee.) Similarly, in 2008, as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fought it out in state after state until the very end, they made many promises to LGBT voters, hoping to secure their votes and financial contributions. After Obama became president, activists pressured him and held him to the promises that he made in the thick of that battle.

But here we are less than two weeks from Iowa, and Senator Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, looking like he will take one or both. He has many LGBT donors and supporters, many of whom are HRC contributors who are, judging from Twitter, bewildered and angry. As I wrote last fall, Sanders has a stellar gay rights record, having been one of only a small handful of federal legislators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act (when he was in the House), and he's been out front in this campaign. Last spring Sanders called for amending the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT protections -- 14 years after Bill Bradley did, but several months before Hillary Clinton did -- and he backed open transgender military service before Clinton too. Sanders wasn't always supportive of marriage equality, even when he voted against DOMA -- though he likes to cloud that fact and his own past now -- but he certainly was publicly for marriage equality several years before Clinton.

As I've also written, Hillary Clinton has responded to criticism by some LGBT donors and activists who were frustrated by what they saw as slowness on her part to publicly speak to the issues, and in recent months she released a robust, far-reaching and more detailed plan to foster LGBT equality. That's a great thing. And it's not unfair to suggest that Sanders' presence and his record had some effect.

So why didn't the largest LGBT group keep it going? Why didn't they keep both candidates competing for the LGBT vote and promising more on a range of issues, from fighting to implement the teaching of queer history in schools to taking on issues uniquely affecting LGBT seniors and LGBT people of color? Why not push Sanders more, hoping to get him to speak out more, dangling that endorsement in front of him -- he could, after all, become the Democratic nominee -- and why not do the same with Clinton?

The only answer to that question has to do with access to the White House, and perhaps what the Clinton campaign may have said to HRC, and to Planned Parenthood, the Brady Campaign on Gun Violence and other groups that have endorsed early, about the kind of access they might get -- and what they might not get if they didn't endorse now. (Let's also not forget that Chad Griffin, HRC's president, worked in Bill Clinton's administration, and raised much money as a bundler for Obama's and Clinton's campaigns.) And it is a campaign that needs those endorsements now, calling in its chips, as Bernie Sanders and his insurgency has taken the Clintonites by surprise. What seems like an early burst of enthusiasm from a group that hasn't ever endorsed any seriously contested presidential candidate before any votes took place may actually be an indication of the fear and loathing inside the Clinton campaign.

SOURCE

The last paragraph speaks pages to me:

... The only answer to that question has to do with access to the White House, and perhaps what the Clinton campaign may have said to HRC, and to Planned Parenthood, the Brady Campaign on Gun Violence and other groups that have endorsed early, about the kind of access they might get -- and what they might not get if they didn't endorse now ...

Strong arm tactics used by the Clinton's are rewarded by HRC's cow-towing before them. It's disgraceful for the Clinton's and HRC - IMHO, of course

 

[gb2000ie]

Sad to see gossip masquerading as news here in the News section.

The word 'may' which had to be inserted into the 'hit' because the author has zero evidence of anything makes a mockery of the whole thing.

B.

 

[Stonecold]

The USA will not elect an avowed Socialist to be President, it ain't gonna happen. Right now Sanders is running a candy store for kids proposing programs that are fantasyland. If any of you think that any of his programs will get through Congress, you are tripping on something.
Hillary marched in the NYC gay pride parade in 2000. She's always been passionate about gay rights but she's a pragmatist and, unlike Sanders, has actually done things on a high profile national level. She changed the policies of the State Dept, helped raise money, actively supported organizations like HRC, etc. Sanders was never a figure on the national gay rights scene and Sanders didn't support gay marriage until 2009.
IMHO HRC did the right thing to assure a Democrat will be choosing the next supreme court justices.

 

[waistingmytime]

Oh yes Hillary is just so perfect and without fault......:rofl:

 

[W!nston]

Hillary Clinton’s changing position on same-sex marriage
By Amy Sherman on Wednesday, June 17th, 2015 at 10:42 a.m.

In 2013, Hillary Clinton announced her support for same-sex marriage in a video with the Human Rights Campaign.
On the day that the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to hear oral arguments about same-sex marriage April 28, Hillary Clinton changed her "H" logo to rainbow-colored and tweeted: "Every loving couple & family deserves to be recognized & treated equally under the law across our nation. #LoveMustWin #LoveCantWait."

Clinton came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2013 after more than a decade of opposing it. But her views are particularly in the spotlight now that she is a presidential candidate.

We decided to put Clinton’s statements about same-sex marriage on our Flip-O-Meter, which measures whether a candidate has changed their views without making a value judgment about such flips. We found that as public opinion shifted toward support for same-sex marriage, so did Clinton.

She has had plenty of company among members of her own party to change their stance on same-sex marriage. In 2012, we gave Obama a Full Flop when he announced his support for same-sex marriage.

Currently about three dozen states allow same-sex marriage. The outcome of the decision, expected in June, could mean either that same-sex marriage will become legal in all states or that some states will institute new bans on same-sex marriage. (A spokesman for Clinton’s campaign declined to comment for this Flip-O-Meter item.)

Clinton’s statements during her 2000 Senate race

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that defined federal marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Hillary Clinton would face questions about same-sex marriage starting with her 2000 campaign for Senate. Let’s look at the highlights of her statements between 1999 and 2015 in a timeline:

December 1999: Clinton told a group of gay contributors at a fundraiser that she was against the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy signed by her husband.

The New York Times reported that Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said she supported the Defense of Marriage Act but added that "same-sex unions should be recognized and that same-sex unions should be entitled to all the rights and privileges that every other American gets."

January 2000: At a news conference in White Plains, Clinton said, "Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman. But I also believe that people in committed gay marriages, as they believe them to be, should be given rights under the law that recognize and respect their relationship."

April 2000: Clinton again expressed support for civil unions. "I have supported the kind of rights and responsibilities that are being extended to gay couples in Vermont," she said.

July 2004: Clinton spoke on the Senate floor against a proposed federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage. (The amendment ultimately failed.) Though she opposed it, she said that she believed that marriage was "a sacred bond between a man and a woman."

However, she said she took "umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that exists between a man and a woman."

October 2006: Clinton told a group of gay elected officials that she would support same-sex marriage in New York if a future governor and Legislature chose to enact such a law.

"I support states making the decision," she said.

As a 2008 presidential candidate

In 2007, all the presidential contenders except for longshot candidates -- both Democrats and GOP -- were against same-sex marriage, the New York Times reported. So were the majority of Americans, polls showed.

May 2007: In a questionnaire for the Human Rights Campaign in 2007, Clinton backed away from the Defense of Marriage Act:

"I support repealing the provision of DOMA that may prohibit the federal government from providing benefits to people in states that recognize same-sex marriage."

In response to a question about whether marriage should be made legally available to two committed adults of the same sex, Clinton marked that she was "opposed" though she stated she supported civil unions.

August 2007: In a Democratic primary debate sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign and LOGO Network (a gay-oriented TV station) Clinton was asked "What is at the heart of your opposition to same-sex marriage?"

Clinton replied: "Well, I prefer to think of it as being very positive about civil unions. You know, it’s a personal position. How we get to full equality is the debate we’re having, and I am absolutely in favor of civil unions with full equality of benefits, rights, and privileges."

As a 2016 presidential candidate

As Clinton got ready for her second presidential bid, she again modified her position.

March 2013: After leaving her position as secretary of state, she announced her support for same-sex marriage in a video with the Human Rights Campaign on March 18, 2013.

"LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones. And they are full and equal citizens, and they deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That’s why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, embedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans."

The comments put her in line with other Democrats at the time who were mentioned as potential 2016 presidential contenders, including Vice President Joe Biden, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. Obama had announced his support for same-sex marriage in May 2012.

June 2013: Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton issued a joint statement about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. The congratulatory note didn’t mention that Bill Clinton had signed the law back in 1996: "the Court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union."

June 2014: NPR’s Terry Gross grilled Clinton about her past positions’ on gay marriage in what led to a testy exchange. Gross tried to get Clinton to explain if she had truly changed her stance or if the shifting political landscape made it possible for her to announce her support.

At one point Gross asked, "Would you say your view evolved since the '90s or that the American public evolved, allowing you to state your real view?"

Clinton replied: "I think I'm an American. (Laughing) And I think we have all evolved, and it's been one of the fastest, most sweeping transformations."

April 2015: On the day of the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments about same-sex marriage bans in a handful of states in April, Clinton changed her "H" logo to rainbow-colored and tweeted a message of support: "Every loving couple & family deserves to be recognized & treated equally under the law across our nation. #LoveMustWin #LoveCantWait."

Our conclusion

Clinton opposed same-sex marriage as a candidate for the Senate, while in office as a senator, and while running for president in 2008. She expressed her support for civil unions starting in 2000 and for the rights’ of states to set their own laws in favor of same-sex marriage in 2006.

As polls showed that a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage, Clinton’s views changed, too. She announced her support for same-sex marriage in March 2013.

It’s up to voters to decide how they feel about her changed stance, but on same-sex marriage we give Clinton a Full Flop.

SOURCE

The Clinton's have only recently decided supporting Gay Equality was their position following the polling data that showed support for Gay Equality was growing among Americans.

In fact Bill Clinton signed the DOMA and instituted the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that resulted in the worst 'witch hunt' against gays in the military in history. Hillary stood by her man through those positions and his philandering with Monica whom he swore under oath he 'did not have sex with that woman'.

Oh, yeah. The Clinton's are a wholesome pair who we can trust to follow the polls and say exactly what the polls say we want to hear.

Anyone but Hillary, please

 

[Stonecold]

I don't think Hillary is perfect and she has faults like all the rest of us. The White house is too important to risk losing to one of the jackasses on the right to be nominating him. I will admit that his ideas are more in line with mine but that doesn't mean I can support him.

 

[waistingmytime]

Well if Hillary is elected (and she probably most likely will be) I will stand by her and support her because I am an American and I think we should support the president and hope they will do the right thing......I will not under any cirstances vote for her though ...

 

[Stonecold]

Bernie Sanders Claims He’s a Longtime Champion of Marriage Equality. It’s Just Not True.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders likes to describe himself as a longtime supporter of marriage equality—in sharp contrast to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who’s still striving to convince her base that she’s on board with LGBT rights. In May, Sanders famously told New York Times columnist Gail Collins that “I’m not evolving when it comes to gay rights. I was there!” Liberal outlets consistently describe Sanders as a pioneer for marriage equality. As proof of his pro-LGBT credentials, Sanders frequently touts his opposition in 1996 to the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

But Sanders is not quite the gay rights visionary his defenders would like us to believe. Sanders did oppose DOMA—but purely on states’ rights grounds. And as recently as 2006, Sanders opposed marriage equality for his adopted home state of Vermont. The senator may have evolved earlier than his primary opponents. But the fact remains that, in the critical early days of the modern marriage equality movement, Sanders was neutral at best and hostile at worst.

Like his current Senate colleague Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Sanders deserves credit for opposing DOMA—then a popular measure with bipartisan support—while a member of the House of Representatives in 1996. But Sanders’ efforts to parlay this vote into indisputable proof of his marriage equality bona fides ring hollow in light of his statements at the time. Explaining his vote in 1996, Sanders’ chief of staff declared that it was motivated by a concern for states’ rights, not equality. Explaining that he wasn’t “legislating values,” she noted that Sanders believed DOMA violated the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause by allowing one state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another. “You’re opening up Pandora’s box here,” she said at the time. “You’re saying that any state can refuse to … recognize the laws of another state if they don’t like them.”

Perhaps Sanders’ team used this states’ rights rationale to limit backlash from anti-gay voters. That would be a perfectly acceptable tactic, since his vote—not his explanation of it—is what matters most. Still, if that’s the case, then Sanders should be honest about it. Sanders’ rhetoric leads listeners to believe that the congressman championed gay rights and rebuked Congress’ homophobia during the DOMA debate. But in his statements to the press at the time, Sanders defended states’ rights and made no mention of gay Americans’ dignity. His vote may have been brave. But it was hardly a full-throated cry for equality.

Ten years later, Sanders took a similarly cautious approach to same-sex marriage. In 2006, he took a stand against same-sex marriage in Vermont, stating that he instead endorsed civil unions. Sanders told reporters that he was “comfortable” with civil unions, not full marriage equality. (To justify his stance, Sanders complained that a battle for same-sex marriage would be too “divisive.”) At the time, he also opposed a federal anti-gay-marriage amendment—but so did his Republican opponent for the Senate seat, Richard Tarrant, who also supported civil unions. With a wide lead in the polls and little at stake, Sanders declined to differentiate himself from his opponent by taking the lead on gay rights.

Earlier in his political career, Sanders was even more indifferent toward gay rights: As mayor of Burlington in 1990, Sanders told an interviewer that LGBT rights were not a “major priority” for him. Asked if he would support a bill to protect gays from job discrimination, Sanders responded, “probably not.” That was 25 years ago. Sanders has, no doubt, come a long way since then: The senator endorsed Vermont’s successful Marriage Equality Act in 2009 and has cheered the Supreme Court’s marriage rulings. And he is co-sponsoring the Equality Act, a sweeping federal LGBT rights bill that advocacy groups place high on their post-marriage agenda.
Source

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/10/05/bernie_sanders_on_marriage_equality_he_s_no_longtime_champion.html

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/15931726-bernie-sanders-came-out-against-gay-marriage

 

[gb2000ie]

The corollary to "this article contains no evidence of anything at all and is nothing more than a hit piece entirely depenedent on the weasel-word 'may'" is not "I think Hillary is perfect".

Hillary Clinton is a career politician. Deliberate, measured, and careful not to take positions too far ahead of the main-stream too soon. She is also an intelligent and capable woman with a good grasp on what is possible and what is not. Politics is the art of the possible - dreamers tend to acheive nothing.

B.

 

[ritsuka]

HRC is a deeply deluded organization, to engage in such a meaningless act. Endorsing a corrupt oppurtunist, constantly changing her views depending on how the wind blows, someone who openly attacked and denied gay rights when she actually had the power to do something about it but then said 'ok, fine,' when others did the work. Hillary Clinton is a disgusting corporatist, in bed with walmart, monsanto, phillip morris and wall street. Her right wing, war-hawk politics will murder gay people abroad and deepen economic inequality here at home, which also effects the gay community.

The HRC should be committed to helping homeless LGBT youth, making sure all gay people have health-care, homes, housing, are able to go to college and get good, well-paying jobs with benefits. Bernie Sanders' platform includes this, and his record on economic and gay issues is more consistent and better then HC's, who was once a republican and might as well be today. Bernie is electable, and if he doesn't win the nomination, I'm voting green/independant, as always.

It seems the endorsement definitely wasn't democratic. 'Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Hillary Clinton When Leaders Decide':
http://anonym.to/https://theinterce...s-decide-hillary-clinton-when-leaders-decide/

 

[W!nston]

Thank you ritsuka for that post. The link you included leads to an article that has some interesting facts. I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty of posting that article here.

********** ********** ********** ********** **********​

Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Hillary Clinton When Leaders Decide
TheIntercept | By Zaid Jilani | Jan. 22 2016, 10:44 a.m.

In the war for endorsements in the Democratic presidential primary, there is a clear trend.

Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.

Meanwhile, all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.

It’s perhaps the clearest example yet of Clinton’s powerful appeal to the Democratic Party’s elite, even as support for Sanders explodes among the rank and file.

How Organizations Endorsed:

For example, Clinton got an endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign this week. That decision was made not by a vote of HRC’s membership list but instead by a 32-member executive board that includes Mike Berman, the president of a lobbying firm that works for Pfizer, Comcast, and the health insurance lobby. Northrup Grumman is among its list of major corporate sponsors.

The Sanders campaign blasted the group as “establishment” and said that Sanders has a much stronger record on LGBT equality than Clinton. Outspoken gay activist Michaelangelo Signorile wrote that HRC had clearly traded its early endorsement for “access to the White House” for its leaders.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees endorsed Clinton, but “it was an absolute top-down process,” said Katie Nelson of AFSCME Local Council 28 in Washington state. “If they wanted to claim this was supported by the membership, they should have had a membership vote.”

“For either candidate to get real grassroots support from NEA members, an endorsement ought to be the result of an extended dialogue with members,” said Anthony Cody, an education blogger who was a member of the National Education Association for two decades. “Hillary Clinton has engaged in a few phone calls with NEA leaders, but the membership has been left out. “

At the American Federation of Teachers, where the executive council voted to endorse Clinton, membership polling was done in the summer of 2015 — when many people in the country did not know who Bernie Sanders even was.

“To rush a nomination like that before anyone else in labor — before the AFL-CIO — was unnecessary,” said Jim Miller of AFT Local 1931. “They pretty much ran an inside game with that nomination process. It wasn’t a rank-and-file game by any stretch of the imagination.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers didn’t take a public vote. “I don’t think they reached out to membership and asked their membership who they were willing to support,” complained UFCW Local 791 member Richard Poole. The UFCW’s board and its president then offered a surprising endorsement to Clinton. UFCW’s chief nemesis is Wal-Mart, a corporation on whose board Clinton sat for six years.

The one major labor union that did allow for a vote was the Communications Workers of America. CWA followed a three-month process that included meetings with members, telephone town halls, and an online polling voting process.

“We conducted an online membership poll from mid-September to early December,” said CWA spokesperson Candice Johnson in a statement to The Intercept. “Tens of thousands of members voted in the poll, with Sanders getting a decisive majority.” Johnson noted that CWA did not endorse in 2008 because they followed the same process and the three leading Democratic candidates all received around the same proportion of votes.

“CWA had a really good model for how to do this … certainly better than what [SEIU] did,” said Ed Hunt, who is in SEIU Local 503 in Oregon and objects to his union’s endorsement process, which was based on non-binding membership polling and town halls followed by an executive board vote. “For me an ideal process would have been a process where we talk about the issues and the candidates’ stance on the issues followed by a vote.”

While all four major organizations that held membership votes endorsed Sanders, two that did not hold open membership votes also endorsed him: the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and National Nurses United.

Sanders was endorsed by MoveOn with 78 percent of voters choosing him; in the Democracy for America vote, he won nearly 88 percent; and 87 percent of Working Families Party voters chose Sanders.

Many of the groups that did not hold an outright membership vote were not entirely transparent in disclosing how they endorsed candidates. Several cited membership surveys and focus groups but did not disclose how these other processes were weighted against the decisions of executive boards.

SOURCE

 

[W!nston]

Bernie Sanders’s Real Beef With the LGBT ‘Establishment’
The Daily Beast | By Nico Lang | 01.22.16 12:01 AM ET

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a heated argument about who’s been better on gay rights—but neither has been as forward-thinking as they want you to believe.

Earlier this week, the Human Rights Campaign made a particularly on-brand presidential endorsement, throwing their support behind another HRC: the candidate formerly known as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“All the progress we have made as a nation on LGBT equality—and all the progress we have yet to make—is at stake in November,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “While they fight to take us backwards, Hillary Clinton is fighting to advance LGBT equality across our nation and throughout the world. We are proud to endorse Hillary Clinton for president, and believe that she is the champion we can count on in November—and every day she occupies the Oval Office.”

According to national poll number averages from Real Clear Politics, the endorsement was a safe bet. Although she appears to be losing momentum, Clinton is still beating her Democratic opponents—leading her closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, by 13 points. She remains the frontrunner, buoyed by her status as the mainstream alternative to Sanders’s far-left views.

And in a statement, Sanders argued that the Human Rights Campaign endorsement, while a frustrating choice given his record on LGBT rights, is an indicator of her status as the “establishment” pick. “What we are doing in this campaign, it just blows my mind every day because I see it clearly, we’re taking on not only Wall Street and economic establishment, we’re taking on the political establishment,” Sanders said. “Some of these groups are, in fact, a part of the establishment.”

The statement may have proven controversial on the Internet, but Bernie Sanders is both absolutely right and completely missing the point. The Human Rights Campaign has long been criticized by queer activists as the embodiment of “Big Gay” politics, marginalizing the interests of trans folks and people of color in favor of issues that favor rich, white gay men. But in distancing himself from the politics of Mrs. Clinton and the “establishment” that supports her, he fails to recognize that his own history on the issues is hardly radical.

While the Human Rights Campaign pushed the issues of marriage equality and gays serving openly in the military throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the organization persistently fought the inclusion of trans people in equal-rights legislation. The HRC famously opposed gender identity protections in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. First introduced to Congress by Sen. Gerry Studds (D-MA) back in 1994, the bill sought to prohibit identity-based workplace discrimination—meaning that employers would no longer be able to fire someone (or prevent them from being hired) on the basis of their LGBT status.

But the Human Rights Campaign’s then-executive director, Elizabeth Birch, opposed offering those protections to transgender workers, stating it would happen “over her dead body.” As TransGriot’s Monica Roberts explains, Birch’s opposition was based on an old tactic of gay-rights leaders: By throwing trans people under the bus, they hoped to make bills like ENDA more palatable to the mainstream—in cutting out such “extreme language.” The Gay Liberation Front’s Jim Fouratt used the same exact argument to oppose trans inclusion in a 1971 anti-discrimination measure.

While Chad Griffin, the current president of the Human Rights Campaign, has publicly apologized to the community for the organization’s historically bad record on trans rights, the HRC has still struggled to overcome its own legacy of discrimination. During a 2012 rally in support of same-sex marriage, the group asked attendees not to display a flag representing the trans community. According to Mic’s Maribel Hermosillo, HRC workers told them that “marriage equality isn’t a trans issue.”

In addition to sidelining trans voices in favor of appealing to the mainstream, the Human Rights Campaign’s Workplace Equality Index has long supported companies that work against queer interests. 2015 marked the 12th year in a row that the HRC awarded Goldman Sachs—the Wall Street firm whose subprime mortgage practices were instrumental in crashing the American economy in 2008—with a perfect rating. As queer people (especially trans folks) are disproportionately likely to live under the poverty line, these marginalized groups are uniquely affected by economic crises.

Aside from similar acronyms, Hillary Clinton has much in common with the HRC. Known as “Mrs. Wall Street,” she’s viewed by insiders as the candidate most favorable to corporate interests. This stands in stark contrast to Sanders, who has dedicated his career to taking on the excesses of unregulated capitalism. “Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America,” Sanders urged in a 2012 essay for the Huffington Post.

If those leanings put Clinton at odds with the economic interests of many LGBT people, her queer advocacy has also been the product of establishment thinking. During the 1990s, Hillary Clinton supported both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, a pair of bills that, respectively, barred gays from military service and restricted the legal definition of “marriage” to the union between a man and a woman. Both policies—which were wildly popular at the time—were instituted during her husband’s tenure as president.

During her successful New York Senate run in 2000, Clinton continued to back DOMA—although she would distance herself from the bill during her 2008 campaign for the White House. This was a time when most Americans still opposed full legal recognition for same-sex couples, but as public opinion shifted, so did Hillary Clinton’s opinions on the subject. May 2012 marked the first time in history a majority of U.S. citizens (at 50 percent) supported marriage equality, and just 10 months later, Clinton would announce she, too, had “evolved” on the issue. She finally came out in support of marriage equality in 2013.

In contrast with Clinton’s “wait and see” approach, Sanders has touted himself as ahead of the curve on queer equality. Last May, Sanders explained to The New York Times that he didn’t have to “come around” to the issue. “I’m not evolving when it comes to gay rights,” he said. “I was there!” Leaning on his track record is a familiar argument for the Vermont senator, who also touts his history on civil rights as proof that he stands with the goals of the #BlackLivesMatter campaign.

But whether he likes it or not, he’s been just as much a participant in “establishment” politics as the groups that he’s criticizing. Sanders voiced support for gay rights in an early-1970s open letter and opposed DOMA, and while he was ahead of his time on both counts, neither of these stances showed an explicit concern for LGBT people. Instead, his appeals were based on government overreach and constitutional grounds.

“[T]here are entirely too many laws that regulate human behavior,” he wrote in the letter. “Let us abolish all laws which attempt to impose a particular brand of morality or ‘right’ on people.”

In response to Sanders’s “No” vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, his wife, Jane Sanders, specified that it was not an identity-based decision. Instead, her husband felt that it constituted a violation of the legal jurisdiction granted to individual states to decide marriage laws. “We’re not legislating values,” Mrs. Sanders argued. “We have to follow the Constitution.”

According to the Huffington Post, “[Bernie Sanders’] spokesman Michael Briggs made the case… that Sanders has been way ahead of Clinton—and pretty much everyone—in advocating same-sex marriage.” But that’s simply not true.

In an essay for Slate, Mark Joseph Stern writes, “As mayor of Burlington in 1990, Sanders told an interviewer that LGBT rights were not a ‘major priority’ for him.” He opposed marriage equality throughout the 2000s, calling it a “divisive” issue and maintaining his support for civil unions, before eventually coming around in 2009.

And although Vermont would become the first state to pass civil unions in 2000, his support for that groundbreaking measure wasn’t about making history for same-sex couples but based in the exact same mindset: protecting states’ rights. Sanders finally “evolved” on marriage four years before Hillary Clinton—the length of an entire presidential term—but it’s hardly the light-years-ahead-of-its-time stance his campaign is touting.

Whether or not he likes to admit it, that means the progressive senator has more in common with Clinton and the Human Rights Campaign than he’d like to believe. And when LGBT voters go to help choose the Democratic nominee, they’ll ultimately be faced with a choice between two imperfect champions for equality.

SOURCE

The last sentence stood out to me. I think it sums up the Democratic nominations for Gay men:

And when LGBT voters go to help choose the Democratic nominee, they’ll ultimately be faced with a choice between two imperfect champions for equality.