Friday June 8, 2007 SGN.org |
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Volume 35 Issue 23 |
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Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
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| Raising the bar on 'Gay friendly' |
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The seven Democrats running for president have come out for full federal benefits for Gay couples, though the devil is in the details. by Chris Crain - SGN Contributing Writer The bar has officially been raised for what constitutes "Gay friendly" in politics. Last week, all seven serious contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination unanimously agreed to pretty much everything but marriage, to shorthand the Human Rights Campaign's lengthy candidate questionnaire. The real advances came in how Gay relationships would be recognized by the federal government. After months (some would say years) of vague rhetoric about "equal rights" for Gay couples, HRC succeeded in nailing down some serious specifics for the first time. We already knew that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and the other four candidates supported civil unions, but we didn't know that they supported repealing the provision in the Defense of Marriage Act that blocks federal recognition of Gay married couples. All seven candidates also agreed to equal tax treatment, Social Security survivor benefits, and some 1,000-plus other federal benefits for Gay couples who have entered into state-recognized civil unions and domestic partnerships. They also supported extending federal recognition and benefits to Gay couples in "red states" that don't have civil unions or domestic partnerships, even if there's a Gay marriage ban on the books. So long as they can prove their commitment by meeting yet-to-be-defined federal standards, Gay couples nationwide would be treated virtually equal by the federal government. For me and thousands of other Gay Americans in relationships with non-Americans, all seven candidates - including, for the first time, Clinton, Obama and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden - promised support for the Uniting American Families Act, which allows us to sponsor our partners for citizenship, just as straight Americans can. These commitments represent substantial progress toward equality and a real achievement for the Human Rights Campaign, which I've been quick to criticize in the past for often putting partisan political interests above those of the Gay rights movement. Just four years ago, HRC endorsed the Democratic nominee for president even though he had not publicly committed to federal recognition of Gay couples, married or otherwise. In fact, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry lent his support to a constitutional amendment in his home state that would ban Gays from marrying in the one place in the U.S. where we can. What a difference a few years makes. Even though only Dennis Kucinich among the seven Democrats backs marriage equality, Hillary Clinton has said she will not speak out against a Gay marriage bill introduced by her home state governor, Elliot Spitzer. The devil remains in the details for these Democrats, to be sure. Andrew Sullivan and other have accused HRC of rigging its candidate "report card" for "the other HRC" - Hillary Rodham Clinton. The way the HRC questionnaire frames the issues does mask some important differences in ways that benefit Hillary the most. Obama gets no credit for being the only candidate (besides Kucinich) who opposed DOMA since it was first proposed a decade ago. He's also the only one (besides Kucinich) who now favors its full repeal - including the provision that allows states to refuse recognition of other state's Gay marriages. Clinton, Edwards and the rest still support that half of DOMA. Still, Obama's principled opposition wasn't truly tested with a vote in Congress in the heat of the Gay marriage debate in 1996, just as his principled stand against the Iraq War wasn't tested in the Senate in 2002. On "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Hillary is rated the same as the rest for favoring repeal, even though as recently as this week's New Hampshire candidate debate she still defended her husband's support for the 1996 "compromise" on Gays in the military as "an important first step." HRC shows Clinton and Obama as supporting Gay immigration rights even though both hedged in their questionnaire answers, saying UAFA should be toughened to address fraud concerns. HRC didn't even ask the candidates where they stood on ending the ban on immigration by people with HIV. The report card doesn't try to tally leadership, and the biggest deficiency of Democrats at the federal level has been their inability to translate pro-Gay rhetoric into law. Of the seven candidates, only Bill Richardson of New Mexico has shown leadership in actually enacting Gay rights, having managed workplace protections, a hate crime law and employee D.P. benefits in his first term as governor of a "red state." He even called his legislature into special session this year to try for statewide domestic partnership, although the measure failed. You wouldn't know any of that from reading the HRC report card, which added up checkmarks in a way that makes all seven Democrats look equally good on Gay and HIV issues, a blurring of the lines that did benefit Hillary the most. My own guess is that HRC set things up not only to favor "the other HRC" but Democrats generally, since the party's most likely nominees are not as strong on Gay rights as those in the second and third tier, especially Richardson, Kucinich and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd. It's still a huge achievement to have all these candidates on record backing full federal recognition for Gay couples. The race for president often redefines a party's positions on issues generally, and the HRC questionnaire has raised the "floor" of what we can expect from Democrats - and any politician who claims to be "Gay friendly." Chris Crain is former editor of the Washington Blade, Southern Voice, and Gay publications in three other cities. He can be reached via his blog at www.citizencrain.com |
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copyright Seattle Gay News - DigitalTeamWorks 2007