There have been a number of diaries here recently on the issue of gay rights and the top three Democratic candidates' respective stances on that issue. (Obama has probably gotten more of the attention in the diaries, though both of the other two get plenty in the comments.)
One of the refrains I've seen over and over in these diaries is that Obama is allegedly head and shoulders above the rest. I've been told that, as a gay man, I should vote for Obama because he's done more than any other Democrat in the field for gays and lesbians, he's the most liberal/progressive on the issue, and because he'll do far more than either Clinton or Edwards will.
Sadly, those assertions are not borne out by the facts of the matter. Follow me below the fold for an explanation of why all three of the frontrunners are more or less equally bad when it comes to gay rights.
I've said numerous times that none of the top three candidates has what I'd call an outstanding position on the core group of issues that usually gets lumped together under the heading of "gay rights." None of the candidates supports full marriage equality, for example. All of their positions on the issues are more or less identical. All three of them receive more or less the same score from the major gay-rights organizations. All of them showed up to debate on the LOGO channel this past summer, and all of them have marched in gay pride parades. Edwards and Obama both have LGBT issues pages featured on their campaign websites (though you have to hunt to find Obama's). Clinton does not, or at least not that I could find. Clinton does, however, have openly gay and lesbian people on her campaign staff--and has a history of hiring LGBT folk that goes all the way back to her days in Arkansas.
Both Clinton and Obama have campaign staffers or associates (not necessarily paid staff) or have been associated with persons whose positions could reasonably be described as homophobic. It was the announcement by the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell earlier this week that he would be "campaigning" for Obama that started the recent flurry of gay-rights diaries here and around Left Blogistan--though the Obama campaign has been contacted by a number of people (including John Aravosis at Americablog; thanks to Elise for that link) and has vehemently denied that Caldwell will be making any appearances on Obama's behalf. For her part, Clinton is saddled with Harold Mayberry and Darrell Jackson. To the best of my knowledge, Edwards and his campaign staff are free of notorious homophobes.
Donnie McClurkin
For Obama, of course, there's also the infamous McClurkin flap: Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin was invited by the Obama campaign to headline one of three October 2007 gospel concerts arranged by the campaign in South Carolina, part of their outreach to black evangelical voters. Given McClurkin's status as an allegedly "cured" homosexual who has called sexual orientation a matter of personal choice and said that he wanted to go to war with the "curse" of homosexuality, this decision did not go over very well with many in the gay community. (See, e.g., here and here.)
This was pointed out to Obama, but he refused to back down or to ask McClurkin not to appear on his behalf. Instead, he invited an openly gay black minister (who subsequently turned out not to be black) to offer an opening prayer at the event. Although Obama expressed strong disagreement with McClurkin's views on homosexuality, he didn't turn down the money raised at the McClurkin event. And while he offered an explanation of how McClurkin came to be asked to appear on his behalf, Obama has yet to offer any kind of an actual apology for the slap in the face to his LGBT supporters that McClurkin's appearance represented. To his credit, Obama and his campaign's reaction to the attempt by Caldwell to associate himself with the campaign suggests that they have, finally, learned something from the atrocious mess they created for themselves by letting the McClurkin thing drag on for so long.
Barack Obama's Illinois legislative record
One thing that a lot of Obama supporters mention very frequently is his supposedly great history from his days in the Illinois legislature. Unfortunately, the facts don't seem to bear out the interpretation that they want to project. Let's take a closer look at his gay-rights history in the state legislature.
Obama was elected in 1996 and took office in 1997 as a member of the 90th General Assembly. Insofar as I can tell from the archaic printouts available at the General Assembly's archival section, Obama neither introduced nor co-sponsored any legislation pertinent to gay rights during either of his first two terms in office (1997-2000, 90th and 91st General Assemblies). In the 92nd General Assembly (2001-2002), he signed on to a House bill (HB101) in April 2001. That bill died in committee and expired when the legislature adjourned sine die on January 7, 2003.
On January 21, 2005, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law Senate Bill 3186 which, according to the bill's synopsis on the General Assembly's page:
Amends the Illinois Human Rights Act. Provides that nothing in the Act shall be construed as requiring any employer, employment agency, or labor organization to give preferential treatment or special rights or implement affirmative action policies or programs based on sexual orientation. Provides that discrimination against a person because of his or her sexual orientation constitutes unlawful discrimination under the Act.
Also according to the General Assembly's bill summary page for SB3186, Barack Obama did not introduce, sponsor, or co-sponsor this bill, despite having been a co-sponsor on two previous draft bills (SB101 and SB2597) in the very same session of the GA that appear to be virtually identical to the one that actually passed. SB101 was introduced by State Sen. Carol Ronen on January 29, 2003 and died in the Rules Committee that summer. The bill expired when the Senate adjourned at the end of the session on January 11, 2005. SB2597 was introduced, also by Sen. Ronen, on February 4, 2004, and referred that same day to the Rules Committee, where it likewise died. That bill also expired on January 11, 2005. SB3186 was introduced in the Senate on February 6, 2004, two days after the bill that Obama eventually signed onto as a co-sponsor. Obama did not resign from the General Assembly until November 2004 when he won election to the U.S. Senate. For the whole of his final term in the General Assembly, the Democrats were in control of both houses of the legislature, after trouncing the Republicans in the 2002 elections (largely due to the disgrace of indicted and now convicted former Republican Governor George Ryan on influence peddling and campaign finance charges).
I can't understand why, after sponsoring two virtually identical bills, Obama wouldn't want to get on board with the third one introduced in the 93rd General Assembly, the one that actually wound up getting passed. Digging around in the bill history some more, the most plausible hypothesis is that there were some personalities involved.
The two bills in the 93rd GA that Obama signed onto as co-sponsor were both introduced by Carol Ronen. The one he didn't sign onto and that did get passed was introduced by Jim DeLeo, the assistant majority leader. Ronen eventually signed on as a co-sponsor, but that was in November 2004 and may have been after Obama left the General Assembly. It's possible there was a substantive difference in the two bills at the outset that was later smoothed out in the legislative process, but since I can't seem to find the original draft to compare with the final engrossed version, I can't be sure. But it does seem odd that Obama would sponsor one bill and then totally ignore another one, apparently virtually identical to the first, that was introduced just two days later: especially given that the one he did co-sponsor was referred to the Rules Committee (the graveyard of the last two bills on the subject that he'd sponsored) on the same day it was introduced.
Obama didn't apparently sign on as a co-sponsor of SB2597 until March 4, 2004--a month after the bill had been introduced, and about as long after the one that eventually passed had also been introduced. Maybe there was a feud between him and one or more of the sponsors of the other one. It is perhaps telling that Emil Jones, the Senate president also signed on as a co-sponsor of SB2597, but not of SB3186. In fact, comparing the sponsor list of the two bills, 3186 had considerably more support (12 Senate sponsors, including Louis Viverito, the chair of the Rules Committee) than 2597, though 2597 had five co-sponsors in common with 3186 (Carol Ronen, Don Harmon, Iris Martinez, John Cullerton, and Jeffrey Schoenberg).
In other words, in four terms in the Illinois Senate, Obama co-sponsored (but did not introduce) three bills that would have added sexual orientation as a protected category under the Illinois Human Rights Act. None of those bills passed, all of them dying in committee and then expiring when the session adjourned. From what I can tell online, Obama's involvement with the bills seems to have been minimal. He does not appear to have argued for their passage, urged their consideration, or done anything other than to put his name onto someone else's bill. Moreover, the language of the bill he supported, like the one that eventually passed without his involvement or support, while it did extend protection on the grounds of sexual orientation, also made it quite clear that there was to be no "preferential treatment" or "special rights" for homosexuals under the bill. That's what I'd call a left-handed compliment--or a backhand to the chops. What the bill gave with one hand, it took away with the other--and appealed to decidedly right-wing framing and language to do it.
At this point, I'd love to ask Obama himself about what the deal was. The more I look into this, the more tangled the skein becomes. But what does seem indubitable is that Obama really can't reasonably claim much credit for getting the Illinois law making sexual orientation a protected category passed, given that he sponsored three previous versions that all died in committee, and had nothing to do with the version that actually got passed.
Hillary Clinton and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"/DOMA
One thing that frequently comes up in discussions is whether Hillary Clinton can reasonably be assigned any of the blame for Bill Clinton's acquiescence in the enactment of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise and the "Defense of Marriage Act." The usual refrain here is that since Hillary is trying to campaign on the basis of her vicarious experience gained from being married to Bill for all those years, she also has to accept some measure of the blame for the bad things that happened vis-à-vis gay rights on Bill's watch.
Me, I don't buy that line of reasoning. First, because I reject Hillary's premise that having been married to Bill gives her any kind of relevant experience at all. And as long as that's off the table, so is her having to take any responsibility for what Bill did, unless it can be proven that she influenced him to do it or was somehow associated with it--and so far, nobody has been able to meet that level of proof with respect to either DADT or DOMA.
But more to the point, I don't agree that it's entirely fair to lay all the blame for either DOMA or DADT at Bill Clinton's feet. Yes, I was pissed at him when he signed off on both. I fired off long letters to the White House on both occasions. But, as Boris Godunov commented in a diary this morning, the world looked a hell of a lot different in 1993 and 1996 from the way it looks now. Both DADT and DOMA were more or less forced on Bill Clinton, with the connivance of a Democratic Congress. Here are Boris's own words from the linked comment:
DADT ended up being bad policy, but it was one that resulted from a good-faith effort by Clinton to honor his commitment to gays to end discrimination in the military. I firmly believe the LGBT leadership deserves equal blame for the problem, since they were the ones who aggressively pushed Clinton to tackle the issue so soon, before he'd had the opportunity to build up political capital in Washington. And, unfortunately, reactionary forces in Congress on both sides weren't willing to consider it (Big FU to Sam Nunn). In the end, Clinton went with a compromise that he hoped would at least mitigate the problem. It didn't, of course, but I can't blame him for his efforts. He's acknowledged it was one of the biggest failings of his presidency. It certainly cost him a great deal politically in his first term.
DOMA was much more naked political pandering on Clinton's part, that's for sure. He felt he needed to neutralize the issue for the 1996 election, and he succeeded. If the alternative would have been him refusing to sign it, losing the election and having a GOP President sign it anyway along with enacting all those other things we know the GOP likes to do, I'd have to swallow the bitter pill of Clinton signing it and surviving. Now, would his refusal to sign it have cost him the election? I don't know, but again, 1995 was a much different environment regarding tolerance for gay issues, particularly gay marriage.
(And I wholeheartedly second his "big fuck you" to Sam Nunn, who was back in the news recently at that god-awful "Unity08" yawner in Oklahoma. I hope Unity08, Sam Nunn, and DADT all fade away into the obscurity they so richly deserve in very short order.)
I think Manny's comment in that same diary is also worth quoting:
DADT was a compromise with the Democrats in congress (led by Sam Nunn) who were ready to throw Clinton under the bus for his support of gay rights.
I served in the military from 1982-1987, before DADT, when the government could discharge gay people without question, and often did. I spent those 5 years constantly looking over my shoulder wondering when the purge would come. DADT at least gave a measure of protection against that, and cost Bill Clinton great political clout. I wish that younger people of today could actually live 1990 to get a better representation of where gay rights were at in this country.
So who's best?
In 2006, Barack Obama got a score of 89 from the Human Rights Campaign in its 2006 congressional scorecard (PDF link). That was the same score received by both Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. John Edwards got a 66 from HRC in its 2004 scorecard (PDF link), largely because he didn't vote on the "Marriage Protection Amendment" that came up that year. An 89 is not a bad score by any means. But there were 11 other senators in 2006 who received perfect scores of 100--including Lincoln Chafee, at that time a Republican. I'll be the first to admit that such legislative scorecards are not perfect indicators. But they do at least offer a consistent metric by which to judge different people on the same set of issues. And by that admittedly less-than-perfect metric, there's considerable room for improvement where all three of our Democratic front-runners are concerned on the question of gay rights.
And that, I think, is where all the heat and passion come from. Every Democrat is sick to death at the crap the Bush administration has pulled during its first seven years in office, and we're all dreading what they may yet do during the current and final year of their term. We're anxious, eager, and passionate to kick the bums out and replace them with good people who will do the right thing because it's the right thing. I'll be the first to admit that Barack Obama is a gifted orator. He makes fine speeches, and usually says all the right things. But I can't help noticing (along with pico) that, when it comes to gay rights, he almost never seems to make those speeches anywhere that might hurt him politically. And he doesn't seem particularly eager to back up those pretty words with concrete actions. When he talks about gay rights at all, it's on the LOGO channel (barely reaching 10% of households with cable television, if I remember correctly, and almost exclusively watched by gay and lesbian viewers, since it's the "gay channel") or in the pages of one of the magazines that cater to the gay community. To find the LGBT issues page on Obama's campaign website, you have to know to click on the "People" tab at the top. On Edwards's website, it's right there on the "Issues" tab, though you do have to scroll down a bit. Clinton doesn't seem to have an LGBT page at all--or if she does, it's not linked to from the front page of her campaign site.
Regrettably, none of the three front-runners in the Democratic race is all that good on gay rights from where I stand: they're all more or less squarely at the same spot in the middle of the road. All of them get more or less the same ratings from the national gay-rights organizations and all of them are campaigning on more or less the same positions. I can't see that any one of them has any significant advantage over the other. Obama's rhetoric is perhaps more promising, but that is coupled with a distinct lack of any real or noticeable effort to put that pretty rhetoric into concrete action. Sure, Obama stood up in the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday and made a fine speech from Martin Luther King's home pulpit:
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.
But those words ring more than a little hollow when compared to his own actions in the McClurkin affair. Obama seemed perfectly willing to profit from exactly those divisions across races and regions when he thought it would win him some more votes in South Carolina--and to hell with the gay and lesbian Democrats (and independents, and Republicans) that he dismissed when it was expedient to do so. I'm afraid that the Democratic field, when it comes to gay rights, is still pretty much where it was 14 years ago when Bill Clinton was running for the White House--and that none of the front-runners really has much of an edge over any of the others.