Letter: Wisconsin Gazette presents revisionist history of the Clintons' record on LGBT issues

In the 5 November 2015 editorial “In Defense of the Clintons’ record on LGBT issues,” the staff of the Gazette has presented fact-free, wishful thinking, revisionist history regarding the Clinton White House and its support for DOMA and DADT.

The editorial made the following statement: “Clinton signed DOMA with the hope of appeasing anti-gay activists and avoiding Republican threats of a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality. And he succeeded.”

That is a patently false assertion without a shred of contemporary evidence to support it. Not a single document from the Clinton Justice Department, the Clinton White House staff, or documents marked with the reverse Clinton check mark indicating President Clinton reviewed the page backs up the false narrative that Clinton was trying to head off a constitutional ban on gay marriages when signing DOMA into law. None. I challenge the staff of the Wisconsin Gazette to either produce documentation or apologize for lying to Wisconsin’s progressive community.

Your credibility is on the line. The history you are reporting belongs in fact-free Texas tea party textbooks, not a credible progressive news publication.

And, pray tell, what about the Clinton White House was progressive exactly?  The five major pieces of legislation Bill Clinton signed into law were uniformly conservative:

1) NAFTA was a jobs killing free trade treaty supported by corporate Republicans.

2) Welfare reform was a conservative Republican idea Clinton stole from Republicans and made his own.

3) The federal Religious Freedom Act Bill Clinton signed into law was pointed to by Indiana Governor Mike Pence earlier this year to justify his version of the Indiana bill to over ride civil rights protections for the LGBT community in the name of "religious freedom."

4) was the Defense of Marriage Act, and

5) was 'don’t ask, don’t tell.' Not a single progressive idea is present in any of the five major legislative Acts signed into law during the Clinton White House years.

Progressive policies rely on science and facts, not revisionist history and celebrity star gazing.  

James Wall, Madison

See also Sanders has also been an uneven ally on gay rights.