The president who ushered in the Defense of Marriage Act, when asked at the Campus Progress National Conference in D.C. whether he supports gay marriage, responds: “Yeah … I personally support people doing what they want to do. I think it’s wrong for someone to stop someone else from doing that [same-sex marriage].” Only in May did Clinton say his views on gay marriage were “evolving.”
This is great news … for anyone with a time machine.
Mr. Clinton’s signature in 1996 prohibited untold tens of thousands of gay Americans from receiving federal health or tax benefits (even though their own states recognized their marriages), helped create the nightmare of trying to get Congress to repeal DOMA, and severely limited President Obama’s measly federal benefits memorandum.
But thanks for giving us a jock nod, Clinton. It’s great to hear you’re on board with equality. But please never try to script your own history claiming you were a civil rights advocate. Because you weren’t.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
RELATED: Clinton is on the record as opposing Prop 8. In February, Clinton crossed a picket line to enter San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt to give a six-figure speech; the hotel’s owner Doug Manchester had donated $125,000 to fund Prop 8.
(Photo: CampusProgress.org)
Cam
Well the headline pretty much says it all. When he was running around 16 points ahead in the polls but signed DOMA into law anyway he didn’t seem as concerned.
HayYall
Politicians are all for gay marriage as soon as they’re not responsible for actually having to make a decision on it.
Jason Moreland
Irrelevant. Who’s President now?
dvlaries
Reminds me of Battle-ax Babs making pro-choice noises after her husband was safely out of office. This is what passes for profiles in courage these days.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
Queerty is pretty good at rewriting history, too.
“ushered in DOMA”? Mary, please!
The bill, introduced not by a Clinton agent but Republican Clinton Hater Bob Barr, was passed by Congress by a vote of 85-14 in the Senate and a vote of 342-67 in the House of Representatives.
His veto would not have changed a thing…save the ability of those who luv to hate him another excuse.
Yes, the Dick Slimeball Morris radio ads touting DOMA should never have run, even if they were quickly stopped.
Further, someone from another planet reading your histrionics would assume that before DOMA gay couples DID have federal benefits.
Bash Clinton all you want…as long as you don’t make shit up.
adugan
he was a great president
check out my Bill Clinton blog
http://adugan-billclintonblog.blogspot.com/
Andrew
DOMA is dog-poop as law. But does that mean that Clinton (or anyone, for that matter) can never change his position on marriage equality (or any other issue)? 13 years have passed. Isn’t possible that, after 13 years passing, he now truly believes marriage equality is right?
adamblast
Bill Clinton was a traitor to gay rights. And during the campaign his wife defended every single betrayal. Now Obama is doing the same thing.
ZERO DOLLARS FOR DEMOCRATS.
andy
yep, I’m not opening my wallet until AFTER I see results this time. They can say goodbye for now to my 2500$ come this election cycle.
Michael W.
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: And if he vetoed DOMA, how many of those Democrats would’ve changed their votes when the priority switched to overriding his veto?
Bill probably sent signals through congress the whole time that he was willing to vote for it. It’s no wonder he had so many in his own party lined up behind it. But how different would the story be if Clinton put up resistance against DOMA and threatened to veto it? Would those margins be as wide? And when it came time for congress to override his veto, would support for DOMA be strong enough? I doubt it.
http://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/override_of_a_veto.htm
“Historically, Congress has overridden fewer than ten percent of all presidential vetoes.”
Those are the questions Clintonistas like you never want to ask. You love to paint this picture of DOMA as inevitable for the sake of his legacy.
Politics aside, if I’m President and legislation that I find despicable were to hit my desk, I will veto it no matter how “inevitable” an override might seem just so history will show that I didn’t stand with the monsters who made it a law.
Cam
@Michael W.:
Amen!
galefan2004
@adamblast: Just give all your money to the Palin party in 2012.
galefan2004
@Michael W.: You are not required to over ride a veto if the measure passed with a veto proof majority in the first place. DOMA already had a veto proof majority, so it was done once it got to the president’s desk no matter what he did.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@Michael W.:
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
“Clintonista”? That simplifies it for you, doesn’t it?
Perhaps if more had resisted the demonization through oversimplification, not to mention the outright lies, about Clinton during the primaries we would not be in the position we’re in now…virtually no more equal than we were on January 19th the day before the Messiah for the Gays was sworn in.
Those of us who remembered the imperfection of the last Messiah for the Gays [that would be Clinton] challenged such untested canonization of Obama but were demonized in turn. That’s right…some of us, while refusing to rewrite history for the good or bad, remembered the difference between promises and personality …. and reality.
That is not to say that Hillary would have been better because there is no way to empirically know that. What I do know is that the walls were full of signs from his outright lying about being responsible for the gay rights bill in Illinois to McClurkingate that Obama wasn’t what he claimed he was. Now HE’s proven us right.
Yes, Clinton remains wrong about “states rights”…just as the CURRENT President does.
But while Clinton, as culpable, disingenuous and self-deluding as he remains in many areas, recorded a message AGAINST Prop H8TE for robocalls to voters, they were drowned out Yes on H8TE robocalls using a recording of Obama preaching that “God is in the mix” at Rick “gay = pedophia” Warren’s megachurch.
It is not Clinton filing an amicus brief defending DOMA to the Supreme Court using the homohating language Barr used to pass it in the first place…PLUS some new homophobic angles like poor straight people should not have to pay for federal benefits to gay couples…but the Department of Justice of Barack Obama and its Civil Division run by his pal Tony West.
walt zipprian
@galefan2004:
We could give it to the Green Party.
Michael W.
@galefan2004: It was veto-proof because not only did Bill Clinton fail to oppose to it, he WANTED it to pass. My question is what would’ve happened if Clinton stuck his neck out for gays rather than fear the backlash from Republicans. Surely the leader of the Democratic party could’ve peeled Democratic votes away and closed the margins in the House and especially the Senate.
DOMA wasn’t inevitable, it passed because Bill DLC Clinton and most other cowardly Democrats were afraid that Republicans could use it against them. But who can blame those Dems who supported it when the Democratic congressional leadership and the President were likely communicating to them that DOMA needed to pass as quickly as possible in order to neutralize a potential campaign roadblock.
Michael W.
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: Yeah, Obama’s turned out to be a real piece of shit on gay rights thus far. You’ll get no argument from me there.
But there are plenty of anti-Obama posts for you to vent your frustrations. It’s not like everything he does or failed to do isn’t documented here daily.
We’re talking about Slick Willie a.k.a. the Great Triangulator right now and attempts by people like you to revise history and make it seem like DOMA was an inevitable train that couldn’t be stopped.
Cam
@galefan2004: You said “@Michael W.: You are not required to over ride a veto if the measure passed with a veto proof majority in the first place. DOMA already had a veto proof majority, so it was done once it got to the president’s desk no matter what he did.”
__________________________________________________
Um, Galefan, although we often disagree it is with politness, so please recheck your facts here 🙂
The first time a bill passes, no matter what the number the presiden can veto it. It then goes back and if it gets the vetoproof majority AGAIN it sails through into law without ever going past the President. But he absolutly CAN veto a bill the first time it comes to him no matter the number.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@Michael W.:
I BELIEVE DOMA was unstoppable. You BELIEVE it wasn’t.
Period.
M Shane
The fact is, of course, that Clinton did sign DOMA into law. Screw who disliked him. he’s the most right wing Democrate we’ve had in office. he is responsible for signing DADT, and what’s worse, NAFTA– betraying labor and giving the Neocons one of the biggest boosts they have had in history. He had such a heavy hand in arranging that with Big Business that the U.S lost 500,000 jobs in the first week after it was enacted.
The fact of his genocidal murder of 1miillion Iraqi children under 10 is no secret, and his partnership with Suharto who he called ‘our kind of guy’ . He murdered so many Indonesians in on sweep that the rivers were impassable for all the bodies, but he was a great trading partner.
I suspect that he’s taking advantage of American naivite’ to convince some liberals that he is really a good guy.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@M Shane:
“He had such a heavy hand in arranging that with Big Business that the U.S lost 500,000 jobs in the first week after it was enacted. The fact of his genocidal murder of 1miillion Iraqi children under 10 is no secret”???
WOW! Thanks for sharing. Before I thought you were just crazy for Obama.
Now I get it’s just plain crazy.
Bill Perdue
Clintons remarks are worthless.
Promoting homohating is a crime. The fury of anti-GLBT sentiment whipped up by the opposition of the Clintons, Obama and the Bushes to same sex marriage and Clinton’s total and direct responsibility for the evils of DADT aren’t going away. He not only championed DOMA he boasted about signing it on rightwing christer radio stations like those owned by Pat Robertson.
To make up for all the union votes he lost promoting pro-big business, anti-unions laws like NAFTA Clinton put out the following campaign ad in 1996 to get reelected:
Bill Clintons rampant bigotry excused in the least because he’s trying to out-maneuver another hustler, Obama, to promote some delusional 2012 comeback dreams of a third right wing christer bigot, Hillary Clinton.
Michael W.
@M Shane: Don’t forget his grand deregulations of the financial industry, which did a great deal to put us in the economic mess we’re in today.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/bank-n01.shtml
He might as well have been a Republican. His tenure as President was very Reaganesque if anything.
M Shane
No. 23 · Michael W. :Thanks for the referance.
Sadly , ‘liberals’ believe that Clnton was some break in the insidious Neo-con (or neo lib) sweep that this country has undergone or, as bad, that economics are unrelated to social policy.
Unfortunately so many gay people are thirsting for the illusion of respectability that they neglect to see that the whole mess interacts that social policy is bound to economics in a variety of ways.
M Shane
Mr. Matlovich:
During the period prior to the enactment of NAFTA it is recorded that while publicly Clinton was promising American workers that he would nix the bill, which would allow Corps to build factories outside the U.S., He was having unannounced meetings with Business Leaders. There are recorded speaches of his glorifying himself for ‘globalizing’ trade and production. As it happened we don’t now produce anything and do buy everything. That’s why you never see ‘Made in America’ anywhere.
When Clinton took office it was just after old Bush had bombed all but one water purification factory in Iraq. Clinton knowingly refused to even supply the many poor Iraq citizens of pills to purify thier water or antibiotics. Before they could restore anything to working order, over I million children, to say nothing of other millions of innocents died.
These are enough to drive anyone bonkers but I am not crazy. These are matters of record.
Joe Mustich, Justice of the Peace
@walt zipprian:
Makes more sense than giving it to the Corporate Dems…
No Homophobama
At least he didn’t say he is against same sex marriage because
“God is in da mix” like funky DJ Obama, remix’ my rights.
SM
Clinton just likes to hear himself talk.
Seriously though, you all don’t even realize how close you are to what you want. If you can win one or two issues like Hate Crimes and ENDA the straight US will get over the “freak out” phase and grow up towards LGBT rights. Growing pains are hard. Celebrate your victories and your Democratic Congress people will get over their issues too. Everyone wants to be on the winning side of history.
Bring Marriage Equality to a couple more states and California will be mad they are not the leader and jump on board.
Iowa has handled it.
InExile
@SM: A LITTLE LEADERSHIP FROM THE TOP WOULD NOT HURT.
InExile
@M Shane: I remember Obama attacking Hillary on NAFTA, all has been quiet on NAFTA sine he was sworn in. Funny how that works huh?
hephaestion
HEROES IN THE SENATE WHO VOTED AGAINST DOMA:
No Republican Senators voted against DOMA. All were Democrats: Akaka (D-HI), Boxer (D-CA), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Inouye (D-HI), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerrey (D-NE), Kerry (D-MA), Moseley-Braun (D-IL), Moynihan (D-NY), Pell (D-RI), Robb (D-VA), Simon (D-IL), Wyden (D-OR).
Illinois, California & Massachusetts were the only states where bith senators voted against it.
Incidentally, Nancy Pelosi was in the minority of congressmen to vote against DOMA.
SM
@InExile:
Do you want me to buy you a ticket to another country. You seem to hate the US so much.
Millions of people voted No On Prop 8 despite 8 years of Bush Agenda shoved down our throats. You are dellusional if you do not think the fight is getting easier to win.
schlukitz
@InExile:
In exile, would you like to borrow my cast iron frying pan to bang some sense into this dumb twat’s cramium with?
Have you ever noticed that the people who have the least invested in an issue…are the one’s who know ALL about it…and have ALL the answers?
Bad enough you had to give up your job, sell your home, sell your car, leave your 82 year old mother behind and eat up your life savings and retirement funds and move to a foreign country in order to remain with your partner of 14 years because this country will not grant you your civil rights afforded to straight citizens, you have to tormented by some str8, unfeeling, uncaring bitch like this who claims to be on our side, but cannot even sink her teeth into the suffering that tens of thousands of us are going through by being separated from our mates?
God forbid, that we should be the slightest bit annoyed or irritated with our leaders, our government and our country when we are being discriminated against by them.
How fucking rude of us!!!
schlukitz
@schlukitz:
Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.
SM, however, appears to have at least a half-dozen of them.
Assholes, that is.
Markie-Mark
@walt zipprian: That’s what I’m doing. I’m not voting for any candidate or party who is against gay marriage.
MM
I voted for Obama, the best representation of “Political Messiah” this country has ever seen, because I was operating with an anti-republican philosophy and also because I was mesmerized by the media’s portrayal of him and his life. Both were foolish reasons. Perhaps he will finish out his term(s) with an integrity and record that is enlightened. Perhaps he will ruin his reputation with policies that run counter to his campaign agenda. More than likely he will become an elder statesman like Dear Bubba, and proclaim in his retirement the degree to which he was on the right side of equality (in it’s purest form).
Marriage is not love, remember. It is an orthodoxy. A system. Ancient in origin and forever tied to economy. Homosexuals would think this the end all and be all of their inclusion, but this is not so. I would venture a prophesy and say that the labels of straight, gay, lesbian will not stand the test of time. The whole of humanity is queer with regard to how they bond to others. This rabid fascination with wanting to uphold a rigid system like marriage in relation to human bonding is unnatural, especially in those individuals who have mastered their identity to be absolutely free and liberal.
I’m rambling. The world seems to move so fast, but it has always generated to the same beat. My mission is to understand that beat, with or without you.
Peace.
schlukitz
@MM:
Like you, I too voted for Obama, and for the same foolish reasons. He was also the lesser of two evils. We didn’t have much of a menu to choose from, to be sure. McCain/Palin were the horror side of the same coin of homophobia and religious rhetoric.
You went on to say,
This rabid fascination with wanting to uphold a rigid system like marriage in relation to human bonding is unnatural, especially in those individuals who have mastered their identity to be absolutely free and liberal.
I could not agree with you more, sir, despite the fact that I am among the many who are campaigning for the right to same-sex marriage and full equality for all people, LGBT and straight alike.
Were it not for the fact that society has inextricably tied my civil-rights to the quaint custom of marriage, vis-a-vis, the ability of people like InExile and myself to be able to sponsor our foreign born partners for citizenship in the US, I could give a rat’s ass less about a “five-thousand year old tradition” that these RRRRR idiots are fighting to the death to defend. They can keep it for all I care.
If relationships can survive for 15-25-35 and even 50 years or more without a piece of paper from the government or the blessings of the Church, then that is proof adequate me that marriage is, as you say, not love.
It is easy to see why the church fights so hard to preserve this so-called tradition which they have claimed to themselves, despite the mistruth of that. As you so rightly stated, it was, is and will be forever tied to the economy.
Taking possession, ownership and stewardship of this system, gives them the power to control the minds of vast numbers of people, however.
By brainwashing them into thinking that the only viable relationship, is one put together and blessed by by God, the Churh keeps these good little suckers coming back every Sunday morning to put “bread” in their collection baskets.
And that, is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Keep the serf’s tilling the land for them while they continue to live in the lap of luxury.
That so many stupid saps fall for it, is positively amazing.
hyhybt
It all depends on whether the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment would have gone through without DOMA… and that, we can never know.
GranDiva
I hesitate to condemn Clinton. Not because I think he’s necessarily a good president or even much of a nice guy. Something that John Edwards (not much of a peach himself) said during some campaign or another recently has stuck in my head: the notion that a person’s personal beliefs should not dictate public policy. That is the kind of philosophy, frankly, that has held a lot of Christianists and many other religious nutbags in check (more or less) thus far. I think of how bad it could be (Margaret Atwood dystopia, anyone?) before I start calling people out on what should be the intersection between the personal and the political.
At the bottom of everything is the notion that we live, for better or worse, in a pluralistic society, and no individual gets to decide everything.
SM
Please send out 202-224-3121 to all your e-mail contacts and ask them to place a phone call to their Senators on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Legislation. If your Senator is for it, they need to hear from you. If your Senator is against it, they need to hear from you TODAY. NOW.
You have 2 Senators so that is 2 phone calls :). I know you have a million e-mail contacts so ask them to do the same.
Dial the switchboard on Capital Hill at 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to one Senator from your state. Hang up, repeat for the other. Vote Yes on The Matthew Shepard Act.
Or you can call them directly.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC
1, 2, 3, Go~
InExile
@SM: I already live in a foreign country thanks to US apartheid laws.
The Bush agenda was shoved down our throats with less of a majority than the democrats now hold. How did Bush do it? LEADERSHIP is how he did it, not all he did was via signing statements and executive orders. He led the Congress and Senate tp pass his agenda.
Obama has serious problems in the leadership department. He is so concerned with being all things to all people which makes him appear weak and floundering. If he does not start leading soon, we will end up with Sarah Palin as our President in 2012.
Philip Wester
@InExile: Sarah Palin will never become president. Even if a majority of Republican voters would vote for her were there an election today, non-Republicans will vote against her en-masse, ensuring her loss.
Obama, however, DOES need to stop being so afraid of commandeering Congress and the Senate, though. Bipartisanship is all good and well, but if it cannot be reached, then screw it and go with partisanship.
However, I believe Obama is afraid he’ll fail because some Democrats will vote down pro-gay legislation. However, a repeal of DADT should be able to pass easily. DOMA is a much tougher cookie, though things are certainly going our way.
Philip Wester
@schlukitz and others:
Stop spreading lies and inaccuracies (even if some of it might be unintentional). Obama/Biden was spouting homophobia and religious rhetoric? Proof, please? Religious rhetoric, really? Obama barely talked about religion.
Also, Obama did not use a homophobic platform. Just because he didn’t support same-sex marriage PERSONALLY (and he emphasized that it was a personal belief that would not stop him from doing his job) does not mean his entire platform was largely homophobic.
And he wasn’t even CLOSE to being as homophobic as McPalin. Did you even READ their platform, their views, their speeches?! They didn’t even support Civil Unions (Obama does), Palin tried to get hate crimes laws that protect gays REPEALED in Alaska, etc., etc., etc. McPalin were openly HOSTILE towards the LGBT community. And McPalin never made it a secret that their religious nutbaggery was going to govern their reign.
It’s not at ALL two sides of the same coin or the “lesser of two evils”. Obama might not be our foremost champion, but McPalin were far, far, far, far, far, far, far, FAR worse.
Philip Wester
@schlukitz continued:
Getting marriage rights is not just about a piece of paper. It’s about RIGHTS. It’s about PROTECTION. It’s about MONEY. Marriage grants you a bazillion things you cannot get by simply moving in together (or getting a Civil Union).
“Roommates” do not qualify for a slew of things, such as hospital visitation rights and spousal insurance benefits. I could care less about the Church. I don’t want marital rights because it’s a religious thing (in fact, I would never have a church wedding).
I want the CIVIL rights inherent to marriage. Incidentally, Sweden (I’m Swedish) signed gay marriage into law earlier this year. So yay us.
Bill Perdue
hyhybt is wrong. Clinton championed DOMA in 1996 to help himself get reelected. That was his one and only consideration. That explains why he pushed hard for its’ passage, strong armed it through Congress, signed it within hours of it’s passage (in a midnight signing with no press) and immediately ran ads on redneck radio stations that boasted about
The Federal Marriage Amendment was first introduced in 2002, six years later by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Sen. Wayne Allard, both Colorado Republicans. FMA had nothing at all to do with DOMA. Rightwing Clintonistas (there are no other kind) who say it did are simply making things up. That’s a measure of their desperation in the face of the facts and the huge and totally legitimate LGBT disgust with the Clintons, Obama, the Bushes and other bigots.
lydiacougar
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Bill Perdue
@Philip Wester: wants proof that Obama and Biden are religious bigots. It appears that Philip was asleep during 2008. He wants answers; Obama/Biden was spouting homophobia and religious rhetoric? Proof, please? Religious rhetoric, really? Obama barely talked about religion.”
Does the fact that Biden the bigot, in his capacity as the Senator from Bank of America, voted for DOMA mean anything to Philip? Apparently he’s willing to forget that DOMA was an example of extreme religious bigotry, the worst in US History, which was championed and signed by Bill Clinton the bigot.
Phillip, who was asleep on Mars during the campaign, simply lies when he says that “Also, Obama did not use a homophobic platform.”
Obama’s Minister of Pandering, Joshua Dubois set up a long series of campaign events with total bigots ranging from ex-gay scum like Donnie McClurkin and anti-LGBT southern baptist bigots like Rick Warren. The same Joshua Dubois set up a nationwide network of religious (read bigoted) support groups for Obama. Dubois has been rewarded with the job of overseeing the federal ‘faith based’ bribery schemes, and idea authored by the team of Hillary Clinton and Rick Santorum, senators from gawd, Inc.
Obama’s main ‘homophobic platform’ was his appearance at Rick Warrens Saddleback southern baptist nest where Obama deliberately torpedoed our chances for same sex marriage in California with the war cry of the bigots: “gawd’s in the mix.”
Remember, Philip was asleep on Mars during 2008. So I guess the Martian news channels didn’t carry that little bit about ‘gawd’s in the mix. Right Philip?
InExile
@Philip Wester: I was just using Palin as and example. With the continued loss of jobs each month and no signs of that stopping along with our unstable economy there are no guarantees that Obama will have a second term. All the republicans need is to find a moderate which obviously is not Palin. Obama needs to show Leadership to get his agenda passed. If health care with a public option does not pass, the guy is doomed to be a one term President.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: Bill, just curious, you do not like Obama, Clinton, Biden, Bush, who do you like? Who is the perfect leader to you and why?
Mark
I like Clinton but his lack of courage and leadership on issues that affected the GLBT community so unfairly is a disgrace. His comments now are dull and anemic. Sad.
Bill Perdue
@InExile: Looking for a perfect leader, especially in parties like the Democrats and Republicans who are owned lock, stock and barrel by the looter class is a search for fool’s gold. It always ends in electing what only seemed to be the lesser of two evils.
Both of those parties, under the impact of a soon to be Depression and a spate of unwinnable wars are politically extinct. They don’t know it yet but the radicalization attendant on economic collapse and unending war is going to politically bury them.
For the GLBT movement picking from their stomach-turning list of Democratic (sic) and Republican warlords, handpuppets of the rich and hustlers is out of the question. As for the GLBT movements and communities the last thing we need is a fuehrer. We need an action program and an elected leadership to implement it.
What we need to create, and events are doing just that, is the base for a massive action coalition, openly and determinedly independent of political hustlers like Obama, McCain, the Bushes and Clintons with a democratic internal life and a mass action program.
That describes the movements that rose up to get Suffrage, win union rights, end the Vietnam war, win reproductive choice, demobilize GI’s in 1945-46 and other fights. It describes the Minutemen of Concord and Lexington and the Committees of Correspondence from 1760 to 1783. And it describes the US government in its last years as a force for progress from 1860 to 1877 (when the last federal troops withdrew from the south, Reconstruction was betrayed and the iron fist of Jim Crow settled on the nation).
Gosh, I hope the fact that I won’t accept HRH HRC as my maximum leader isn’t too sexist for you. Hill ‘n Bill are our enemies just as much as McCain, Obama, Palin, Biden, Reagan, Palin and the rest. They’re all right centrists and all quite worthless. The difference is Democrats lie about driving the bus and Republicans don’t even bother lying any more. They just drive.
InExile
@Bill Perdue: I agree with you, they are all in fact bus drivers. The problem is they are so ingrained into the system, we have no choice but to work with what we have. I do not think our founders intended our government to be run by corporations $$$, insurance companies $$$, and the industrial war complex $$$. I think for our country to go back to a government for the people and by the people, it will have to hit rock bottom. Thus far it looks like we are on our way there with no way to recapture the economy that was lost. A consumer driven economy requires people to have money and with the persistent job losses and lowering of wages combined with no way to reverse the trend, there is only one way to go and it is not up.
InExile
@InExile: Oh, and I am no fan of HRC either.
RomanHans
#2’s got it. Barry Goldwater was against gay marriage until he stopped being vice president. Even fuckin’ DICK CHENEY suddenly became pro-gay marriage when he stopped being vice president. It’s bullshit, and I’m sorry, it doesn’t wash. When an ex-politician discloses that he’s suddenly had a major change of heart, rather than applaud we need to say, “Well, that’s nice, but that means you were one solid, Grade-A asshole to blithely wield your power while you were WRONG.”
schlukitz
@Bill Perdue:
Thanks for addressing Philip’s absurd questions. You did a much finer job of addressing them than I could have. I was just going to let it ride.
Another windbag, with nothing invested in the issues (and nothing to lose, btw), who never heard the question, but has all the answers. ;P
Bill Perdue
@InExile: We do not have to work with what we have.
We have to fight for what we need – peace, jobs, and an end to bigotry outside of and against the twin parties of war, economic looting and bigotry.
As to the economy, you’re right, it quicking sliding towards a depression. Recessions are self-correcting. Depressions are not.
All FDRs men and all FDRs horses didn’t do shit to end the last depression except slap a few band aids on running sores. FDRs work programs and other social program were much much needed stopgap efforts but were were erratic and temporary (oddly, they always seemed to begin and end with election campaings) and had minor economic effects.
The depression ended shortly after 7am on the morning of December 7th, 1941 and not a minute earlier. The man who ended the last American depression was Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Jaroslaw
I neither love nor hate Bill Clinton – but I do want to try to inject some sanity into this discussion.
I strongly suggest people watch some documentaries about DADT and DOMA – listening to various politicians speak, on camera, in the halls of the congress, listening to religious zealots, looking at poll numbers – it gives a very different flavor to the times than reading text here.
My point is that Yeah, Damn right Bill was flouting DOMA – – to head off a Constitutional Amendment! Look at the vote numbers here. DOMA passed overwhelmingly.
Same thing with DADT – if Bill hadn’t pacified the religious right with something, they would have been even more energized.
Cam
@Jaroslaw: You said “My point is that Yeah, Damn right Bill was flouting DOMA – – to head off a Constitutional Amendment! Look at the vote numbers here. DOMA passed overwhelmingly.
Same thing with DADT – if Bill hadn’t pacified the religious right with something, they would have been even more energized.”
_________________________________________________
So he attacked us and sold us out to help us? Hmm, interesting. Funny how Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights legislation even though he said “This will lose the Democrats the South for decades.” He went for the greater good even though it was going to hurt politically. Clinton is just one of the “Everybody like me” people.
As for a constitutional amendmen, With Clinton running around 16 points ahead of Dole in the polls at that time, I have a feeling that a popular presdient who actually gave a shit about the issue could have led the Dems to block any attempt at an amendment. Remember, some GOP members who voted FOR DOMA were opposed to amending the constitution for such an issue, combine that with the Dems Clinton would have swayed and an amendment was extrealy far fetched.
Bill Perdue
@Jaroslaw: What are their titles and where are these documentaries. What statement declaring that if ‘Bill’, as you so familiarly call him instead of that jackass Dixiecrat bigot, hadn’t done us a great favor by signing the worst two laws enshrining anti-GLBT bigotry into law that disaster would have ensued?
What exactly would have been worse than exposing GLBT service members to the fury of codified military bigotry? What would have been worse than the firestorm of hatred and bigotry Clinton unleashed by signing DOMA and boasting about it. Now it’s been passed in most state of the union and he began all that. It’s his fault as much as it’s the fault of Bush and Rove.
Do your sources include material like this 1996 Time Magazine article. “
Jaroslaw
Bill & Cam – I work a full time job and a part time job – I do not have the sources at hand, but I know what I saw. I also know what happened at the time because I lived through it. I’m just saying it is too easy to do armchair quarterbacking 20 years later.
Are most politicians dirt bags? Yes. And while I respect your knowledge, Mr. Perdue, (I won’t call you Bill since that is too familiar)would you have preferred Mr. Clinton’s opponent to win? You make good points about working outside the system, and are very articulate at pointing out the voluminous failings of the USA, but is there a better place? If so, why don’t you move there? If not, talking about what could be done and should be done isn’t much more productive than the things you complain about (and I say this even as I agree with you.)
Jaroslaw
ooops, I started my post with “Bill” & Cam, didn’t mean to.
hyhybt
@lydiacougar: Sorry, I know this is spam and all, but at least it’s *funny* spam. Where are you *less* likely to find men interested in hooking up with older women than on a gay blog?
Bill Perdue
@Jaroslaw: Bullshit. It takes me just a few seconds or a minute or two to document what I say. Google is good. Yahoo is easy. And then there’s Wiki. What you’re really saying is that you’re wrong.
I was here too and I remember it all too vividly. It was, as usual for hustler pols, a betrayal. But DADT and DOMA were the worst of them by far.
It’s imprinted on my mind because it enraged me that that jackass Dixiecrat was doing that the same summer and fall that several of my friends died. I remember it very clearly. It was such a stunning betrayal that even his lapdogs in the HRC felt compelled to yap a bit.
I don’t believe I’ll take your advice about moving. Thanks but no thanks.
I prefer to stay and fight. It’s fun.
Jaroslaw
Perdue – BS? You’re being a jackass now. Yahoo & Google don’t have a list of what is in my memory.
Glad life is so clear and simple for you, only one right answer…..
Bill Perdue
@schlukitz: It was fun. I started to go for my morning walk about 4am so I could be home and escape the heat by 6:30 or so but it was close to 90 degrees (in Las Vegas) when I walked out the door. Even the fact that our humidity was under 5% didn’t help.
90% an hour or so before the sun comes up is just too much.
So I came home and answered Philips questions in AC comfort. These Obots, Clintinistas, Log Cabinites and that sort are so lazy. They just make up shit and rewrite history and expect they can bullshit their way through.
SM
@Bill Perdue:
Meanwhile….the Religious Right makes those calls and gets what they want.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09071505.html
schlukitz
@SM:
How you must suffer as you carry the entire burden of the LGBT movement on your back with no help from anyone!
You’ll get your reward in heaven, for sure.
Probably a bale of hay for being suck a jackass!
Jhon
What does HE know about MARRIAGE???
Mike
I admit it sucks that Clinton signed DOMA into law. But it was a different time, a different Congress, and Bill hadn’t made me any promises on gay marriage rights.
Obama has made promises. He promised to repeal DOMA. And Obama has a friendly Congress. There are no religious Republicans in the way. Democrats control the White House, the House and the Senate overwhelmingly. They don’t need any opposition votes. They could repeal DOMA tomorrow if they wanted to.
If DOMA isn’t repealed, it’s because Obama and the Democrats don’t want to. Plain and simple. And for that, the Dems will lose my vote forever.
Furthermore, Obama doesn’t need Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He can do that from his desk by himself tomorrow by Executive Order. Again, let’s be honest.
Our Messiah we all worked hard for is betraying us. The Democrat party constantly betrays us.
So really, we’re left with two parties (GOP and Dems) that both are abysmal on gay rights. So all things being equal, I’ll vote Republican thank you very much, since they’ll at least lower my taxes.
galefan2004
@Mike: Unfortunately you make the mistake in thinking that only repugs work to deny gays of their rights. That is simply not true. The main goal of politicians is to get re-elected and that means that if you are in a conservative district its doesn’t really matter if you are a democrat or a repug you are more likely to vote conservative on many issues. That being said, when Obama made promises he should have intended to keep them and the time for marriage equality is NOW!
galefan2004
@Mike: If only that were true. Repugs don’t lower the taxes of the working man. They lower the taxes of the absolutely filthy rich. Unless you are one of the absolute filthy rich, in which case you are accurate. Obama has given more tax breaks to the middle class in his budget than GW ever did.
ChristopherH
Bill Clinton will be remembered as the guy who doomed us to eight years of proto-fascist, Republican regime because he couldn’t keep his zipper up.
And even now, he doesn’t REALLY support marriage equality. He has stated that he feels it’s a states’ rights issue! What a copout! Forget about the 1,000+ benefits and responsibilities that accrue from federal recognition of same-gender marriage rights.
Smarten up people!