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Loading ...Vanasco: Clinton says that DADT is the fault of the gays
At the Netroots conference, activist and blogger Lane Hudson interrupted a speech by former President Bill Clinton to ask if he would call for a repeal, right then, of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act.
“I hated what happened,” Clinton said about DADT. “This policy should be changed.” But he said that gays and lesbians didn’t deliver the Congressional support his administration needed to allow gays and lesbians to openly serve. The compromise as first proposed, he said, would have allowed gays and lesbians to attend Pride Parades and political events without consequence.As for DOMA, Clinton said it was necessary to head off the possibility of Congress passing a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage.
The video is at Good As You.
At HuffPo, Lane Hudson explains in his own words.
Here’s the transcript, via Pam’s House Blend (who got it from Rex Wockner):
Lane Hudson (screaming from the audience): Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell right now? Please.
Bill Clinton: … You want to talk about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the Congress. Now that’s the truth.
Secondly — it’s true! You know, you may have noticed that presidents aren’t dictators. They voted — they were about to vote for the old policy by margins exceeding 80 percent in the House and exceeding 70 percent in the Senate. The gave test votes out there to send me a message that they were going to reverse any attempt I made by executive order to force them to accept gays in the military. And let me remind you that the public opinion now is more strongly in our favor than it was 16 years ago, and I have continued supporting it. That John Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under me, was against Don’t Ask — was against letting gays serve — is now in favor of it. This is a different world. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
Let me also say something that never got sufficient publicity at the time: When General Colin Powell came up with this Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it was defined while he was chairman much differently than it was implemented. He said: ‘If you will accept this, here’s what we’ll do. We will not pursue anyone. Any military members out of uniform will be free to march in gay rights parades, go to gay bars, go to political meetings. Whatever mailings they get, whatever they do in their private lives, none of this will be a basis for dismissal.’ It all turned out to be a fraud because of the enormous reaction against it among the middle-level officers and down after it was promulgated and Colin was gone. So nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do. But the Congress also put that into law by a veto-proof majority, and many of your friends voted for that, believing the explanation about how it would be eliminated. So, I hated what happened. I regret it. But I didn’t have, I didn’t think at the time, any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all. Look, I think it’s ridiculous. Can you believe they spent — whatever they spent — $150,000 to get rid of a valued Arabic speaker recently?
And, you know, the thing that changed me forever on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the first Gulf War, and all their commanders knew they were gay; they let them go out there and risk their lives because they needed them, and then as soon as the first Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That’s all I needed to know, that’s all anybody needs to know, to know that this policy should be changed.
Now, while we’re at it, let me just say one thing about DOMA, since you — the reason I signed DOMA was — and I said when I signed it — that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to. We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the 11 referenda much later — in 2004, in the election — which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it’s obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that. The President doesn’t even get to veto that. The Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states. I didn’t like signing DOMA and I certainly didn’t like the constraints that were put on benefits, and I’ve done everything I could — and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees. …
But, actually, all these things illustrate the point I’m trying to make. America has rapidly moved to a different place on a lot of these issues, and so what we have to decide is what we are going to do about it. Right now, the Republicans are sitting around rooting for the president to fail, as nearly as I can see.
In an earlier post, I defended Bill Clinton … and I stand by what I said. But many people do not remember what the country was like back then. First of all, the Democtrats were in control of Congress – the Republicans didn’t take control until 1994 and part of the reason for that was (1) healthcare, and (2) gays in the military. The whole thing started when someone asked him at a campaign rally if he would lift the ban. At the time, there was no “legal” ban, just military rules. He said yes, he would sign an executive order allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military upon taking office. Now … not only did this give the conservatives time to plan (we’re talking the original Blue Dog Democrats like Sam Nunn here), but it also caught gays and lesbians off guard. Until that time, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military was not a top priority for our movement. That being said, for the time and the mood on our country at the time, DADT was the best we could hope for. The fact that it was not implemented the way it had been intended to be is a moot point at this time. If you are truly for repealing DADT, and DOMA for that matter, instead of complaining about what Bill Clinton did and what Barack Obama has not done, how about picking up the phone and calling your Senator or Representative? And I don’t care where you live – blue state/red state – the more we call the more we will be heard!
I watched the news every day all those years ago. And though I hate DADT and DOMA…he’s right. It was rather like doing what you can, knowing that you can’t possibly succeed 100% in the circumstances provided to you. While I think it may not be a wise idea to say that LGBT people didn’t lobby their Congressmen enough, I do rather agree that Clinton was faced with impossible circumstances and, in this case, chose the lesser of evils he could.
……History can be so sucky when it comes to LGBT rights.
Firstly, Vanasco… the headline is very miss leading. Clinton never blamed the LGBT community. Get your facts straight.
What Bill Clinton said is SPOT ON. To this day the LGBT community is not lobbying congress and is instead aiming at the president who can only sign what is sent to him. The bigot GOP congress at the time was intent on amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And some of these Republican bigots are still intent on it to this day. Had Clinton not signed DOMA we would have no same-sex marriage in the any states today. Had DADT not been implemented the outright witch hunts would have continued.
This is all in the pass and we must look to the future by continually lobbying congress to repeal these pieces of legislation.
It is true that we need to be more active in pressing legislators to deliver the results we want. This is how the religious right operates– a sophisticated campaign to press for the results they want. We must not be complacent or apathetic.
Having said that, I believe these remarks show why Bill Clinton was the second worst President in the history of the United States. While living the luxurious and indulgent lifestyle of an 18th century aristocrat, he failed to use the power of his office to achieve real change to benefit real people.
Bill Clinton worked miricles to get what he got for the gay community back then.
Remember Regan and Bush sr?
That was the act he had to follow.
I was in California just berfore the Prop 8 vote …… the gay activist presence in San Francisco was almost non existant and look what happened!
It is time that our community relearn how to fight for our rights and stop expecting the general public to hand it over to us.
WE must Fight for our rights and to KEEP our rights.
I remember it all vividly. Sam Nunn and other pseudo Democrats were on TV each night interviewing military members on how they would feel showering with gay men. It was a deplorable stunt…
And they were going to pass a constitutional amendment against us serving in the military, and it would have passed back then. Clinton headed that amendment off by negotiating DADT. And remember, it hasn’t been implemented the way it was supposed to….
In any event, I will never blame Clinton for DADT. I will blame Sam Nunn and Colin Powell. I detest both of them to this day..
Clinton tried..
And I would also add that he did things no president before him did. He gave presidential speeches before gay groups that offered us some legitimacy as a constituent group. But it was also a sitting president speaking to us and acknowledging our struggles. At the time, that was a radical thing for a sitting president. It had never happened before.
Attacking Clinton is wrong. It demonstrates ingratitude, and it makes me embarrassed..
Robertin Westbury…. thank you for the history lesson…. it jogged my memory of those interviews and other events.
I still think that Clinton could have taken action that would not have resulted in any legislation of any kind, particularly on the question of DADT.
DOMA was tricky, since there was nervousness in the country about the possibility of marriage equality spreading throughout the land. Did he try to prevent it, or did he just compromise on the legislation ? I don’t know. Either way, if he was true to the principles that he espouses today, I thikn he could have done marginally better.
What I remember most was when CBS Evening News sent a crew to ask high school kids what they thought of gays serving openly in the military. They went to Nashville, to Hillwood High School. Every kid they talked to reacted with venom, disdain, and/or disgust.
Now, as it happens, that was my high school, the one I graduated from in 1985. So there it was, 1993 or whatever, and I’m watching all this crap at my old school. Did I blame Bill Clinton? No, because if you lived in the Bible Belt or in a small town in the early ’90s, you remember all too well what was bubbling up. At the same time that the American people did love Clinton, they were being brainwashed by the GOP propaganda machine. DADT was used to whip up cultural prejudice by people who’d learned from the likes of Lee Atwater and Richard Viguerie and Karl Rove. Remember that in the early 90s, HIV meds were still pretty damn primitive, so you still had homos dropping like panties in a “Girls Gone Wild” video. Remember that gay=AIDS was a filthy lie still being disseminated. Remember there was no web compared to today. Remember that the US was taking a hard, hard right turn in public policy. Clinton’s own Dems were part of that rightward march, and also remember that the Southern Dems who were being elected were very often social conservatives (at least publicly).
I remember my combination of disgust at DADT (and then DOMA), and my real concern about all these wingnuts taking over my country. I remember how every–EVERY–mainstream media outlet allowed the new Fox News to reshape everything into hard-right partisan points as the baseline, but none of them would question Roger Ailes’ combination of non-partisan partisan media combined with rocketing audience share.
Back on the farm, do I blame Clinton? No. There was enough other shit–VERY scary shit–starting up then, that there’s no way he would’ve gotten a second term if he’d stuck to his guns. Those of you who were old enough to vote back in ‘92, you tell me–you think if he’d gone to the last end for the gays in ‘96 that he woulda been re-elected. I’m gonna tell you right now that’s a HELL NO. He was boxed in and he knew it. Later, please recall that all the higher functions of our Federal government–most powerful in the world–were frozen for over a year because of a blowjob and a cigar. Even IRAN was puzzled by this. So no, I don’t blame Bill, and I think he did right to present this account. Do I think he’s always directly honest? No. Do I think the lies he clearly told–about getting a blowjob–really mattered as a barometer of his integrity? NO. It was a different time; if you were old enough to remember it, and you still insist on imposing today’s realities on a very different past, you need to reconsider.
The question posed was will he come out forcefully for gay rights NOW.
Classic Bill Clinton to make it about himself.
Classy, Classic, Clinton!
Bill Clinton is the man the USA sends into North Koreato extricate two bimbo reporters who entered a hostile country illegally. Clinton’s ability to garner respect and trust from current world leaders long after his terms in the White House is a testiment to his ongoing living legacy of Statesman Extrordinaire.
WE have no right to demand he say or do anything… that is the kind of action spoilt two year olds produce!
GROW UP
I’d like to know the age of some of the Clinton “haters.” Anyone who was old enough to vote, and follow the news will remember that this was a different country back then. We had had eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush Sr., Rush Limbaugh was the hottest thing on radio, and I had co-workers and friends and Fox News was beating out CNN. Gays in the military came out of left field for the gay community, it hadn’t been a priority until Bill Clinton brought it up.
Bill Clinton was a breath of fresh air for the LGBT community – he acknowledged that we existed! Did he make some mistakes, sure. Was DADT and DOMA mistakes, at the time – NO!
Unfair biased title. Bill is one of our strongest supporters politically right now and this is how we treat him, by twisting his words?
This site should be ashamed.
Drewski, Yes I do remember. I only graduated from High School one year after you did. I remember the times intimately.
There would never have been a constitutional amendment. Everyone knew that and there was basically no talk of such. The entire talk was of what Clinton was trying to “do” to the military. In essence, he was trying to do nothing. It was simple pandering to the gay voters. It was simply attempting to utilize the money of the gay community and follow through with nothing.
It’s funny that people are able glamorize the past. I’m always amazed that people are able to glamorize the Reagan years and talk about what a “great President” he was. I know certainly that anyone saying Reagan was a great President simply does not remember the Administration.
I think the headline on this article is misleading and a bit offensive. President Clinton showed a moment of frustration and humility, and you’ve spun it in a way to further attack someone who is truly our partner in the fight for civil rights.
Why don’t we let go of the past and focus on the present agenda? Stop publishing misleading headlines about things that happened over a decade ago. Clinton’s right–the times have changed, and now’s the time to work as a team and make the final push to full equality.