Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Thousands united Nov. 12 in front of a Mormon temple in Midtown and marched to Columbus Circle to protest Proposition Hate, er…Proposition 8.
A new generation of activists unites via the Internet. Log on and Join the Impact.
A multimedia SAGE campaign makes LGBT elders more visible—even on New York’s subways and buses.
How will his departure affect LGBT issues in Albany?
Industry leaders powwow to raise questions about the persecution of clubland.
Anti-gay hate crimes are on the rise across the U.S.—homophobic incidents have even surfaced at a local production of play “Judy and Me.”
Spurred by a gay marriage ban in California, simultaneous protests were
held Nov. 14 across the nation. In Manhattan, 4,000 rallied at City Hall.
Next up: A Dec. 10 event called A Day Without a Gay.
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By Kerry Eleveld
Friday, February 24, 2006
A leaked memo from the Empire State Pride Agenda that made disparaging remarks
about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s support for LGBT issues quickly became a
political hot potato in New York last week. The Pride Agenda wouldn’t
answer questions about the confidential memo. Sen. Clinton’s office declined
to comment. And City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a co-chair for a Clinton
fundraiser March 10, did not return phone calls.
The New York Observer reported that, in an e-mail to Pride Agenda board members,
executive director Alan Van Capelle described Sen. Clinton as a “a complete
disappointment” on same-sex marriage and suggested that the LGBT community
should stop giving money to her campaign. “Supporting an LGBT fundraiser
for Hillary Clinton will actually hurt our community,” wrote Van Capelle.
“We have become a community that throws money at politicians and we demand
nothing in return.”
Ethan Geto, who is co-chairing the March fundraiser for Sen. Clinton, says
he respectfully disagrees with Van Capelle. “I would say the smartest
thing the LGBT community could do is to strengthen and advance a Hillary Clinton,
” Geto said. “She is a national political figure, and that’s
good for us. She is one of a handful of people who might end up as President
of the United States,” he said, adding that she is light years ahead of
someone like John McCain from Arizona when it comes to LGBT support.
Geto, who has been a gay activist for more than 30 years, is a strong supporter
of both Pride Agenda and Sen. Clinton. From his one-on-one conversations with
the Senator, Geto characterizes her as very supportive of gay and lesbian relationships.
“She says that LGBT people in committed relationships should have full
equality of economic benefits — that means access to a partner’s
health insurance, life insurance, tax benefits,” said Geto, adding that
he understood her to support that at the city, state, and federal levels.
Geto says Sen. Clinton has also told him that gay and lesbian relationships
should have all the “rights and protections” of any spousal relationship.
“So everything that I’ve heard from her in my personal, private
conversations and in her public statements has been, she supports gay relationships
economically and in terms of legal rights,”Geto said.
The one thing Sen. Clinton hasn’t expressed her support for is gay marriage.
Instead she takes the more moderate civil union tact. Common wisdom is that
Clinton’s 2006 Senatorial campaign is really setting the stage for her
2008 White House bid, and she can’t possibly afford to get too far out
in front of the mainstream on gay-rights issues.
“As she gears up to run for President, it’s a broader stage, and
these issues matter in a way that perhaps they don’t when she’s
in the Senate,” said Jeff Soref, co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force. But he thinks some democratic strategists have misread the polling
data on gay marriage and are saying that if democrats ‘duck’ gay
issues, somehow that’s going to help the party. “That’s bad
strategic analysis that is being passed around as common knowledge, and I think
it’s false thinking,” said Soref.
Days after the 2004 presidential election, former President Bill Clinton famously
asserted in a speech at New York’s Hamilton College that John Kerry lost
because of gay marriage. Soref points out that John Kerry got 48 percent of
the vote, and most of the people that voted for him thought he was in favor
of gay marriage. “We lost by a handful of votes in one state, Ohio. Then
in states like Oregon and Michigan, where there were anti-gay initiatives, the
democrats actually won those states,” said Soref.
When people are polled about LGBT relationships in terms of moral values,
Soref said, marriage is way way down on the list. “It ranks like 12th
or 13th – way behind choice, way behind pornography, way behind violence
in films and TV,” he said.
Soref said that Sen. Clinton has done everything the LGBT community has asked
in terms of her votes in the Senate. Notably, she voted against the 2004 Federal
Marriage Amendment that would have put a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
But in her pre-vote Senate floor speech, Clinton asserted, “I believe
marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman.”
Geto is willing to cut her a little slack on that statement as well as “anything
that anybody said on the democratic/liberal side to justify a ‘No’
vote on that amendment.” Geto remembers how “nervous” the
LGBT national political leadership was about losing the vote. “We had
to pick up some Republican and a few conservative votes, which we did.”
Geto chalks up Sen. Clinton’s speech to political maneuvering. The bill
ended up getting 48 votes, well shy of the 67-majority vote needed. Sen. Bill
Frist is promising to reintroduce Federal Marriage Amendment for a vote this
June. Few strategists believe it will pass.
“I know she’s not for gay marriage,” Geto said. “But
what she says now and what she’s said for a while in terms of LGBT relationships
is pretty damn good, and much better than almost any other national political
figure.”
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