If You Can't Rise to Your Opponent, Bring Them Down To You.

Note: (Originally posted on my old blog)

What do you do when you are a horribly flawed candidate for political office running against someone with as squeaky clean a record as one could reasonably expect from any candidate? Well, there are two options if you want to win. You can either lie by claiming you're as good as your opponent, or you can try to bring your opponent down to your level. On gay rights and same sex marriage the supporters for Secretary Clinton seem to going for the latter.

I first came upon this when I read a story by Anthony Romeo on The Huffington Post in which the author outlines his reasons for supporting Secretary Clinton as a Gay father, which to me don't seem to amount to much more than "Hillary was nice to me once." As I was reading the story I, like many others I would imagine, wondered how a Gay man could support Secretary Clinton over Senator Sanders when we all know Secretary Clinton was opposed to same sex marriage until 2013. What I found was troubling to me at first.

"I get asked almost daily by Bernie Sanders supporters how I can support Hillary for president, with her history on LGBT issues, with my husband and son sitting at home. The focus on Hillary’s positions here is exclusive, and doesn’t discuss in any way that Senator Sanders, too, has evolved on this issue. But I don’t begrudge the senator his past non-support of same-sex marriage, because like any rational person, he’s given the issue a considerable amount of thought, and is now in full support, as is Hillary Clinton. What matters most to me is that they are both on the right side of the issue now."

I have, however, learned through experience to take what Secretary Clinton supporters say with a grain of salt. After all, they're supporting a candidate who is demonstrably a liar. So I decided to do some digging to see if Senator Sanders was guilty of "evolving" on same sex issues. The short answer for the TL;DR crowd is no, he's not guilty of it. But since I know some of you out there will want proof I present my case in The People of Hillaryland vs. Bernie Sanders.

The above quote linked to a Slate article by Mark Joseph Stern entitled Bernie Sanders Claims He’s a Longtime Champion of Marriage Equality. It’s Just Not True. The argument the article espouses is that Bernie Sanders didn't really care about gay marriage. Sure he voted against DOMA, but only because he thought it infringed on state's rights! He didn't actually care about gay rights at all! The problem for the author is that he lays the seeds for showing this is not true in his own article.

"Explaining his vote in 1996, Sanders’ chief of staff told the Rutland Herald that Sanders’ vote was motivated by a concern for states’ rights, not equality. Explaining that he wasn’t 'legislating values,' she noted that Sanders believed DOMA violated the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause by allowing one state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another."

The author tries to paint this as a damning statement when in actuality the segment I highlighted in bold shows the ultimately successful strategy Sanders, and the gay rights movement at the time, were employing. In 1990 the issue of same sex marriage in the United States first began to be officially adjudicated. The battleground was the Hawaiian Supreme Court in Baher v. Miike. At the time three same-sex couples argued that Hawaii's prohibition of same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. As we learned later with Massachusetts and Goodridge v. Department of Public Health the strategy to bring same sex marriage to the United States was to fight in the states to get it legalized in one of them and then use the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution to have them recognized in all the other states while the movement worked to win hearts and minds and waited for progress in the country as a whole. Progress that ultimately culminated in Obergefell v. Hodges' use of the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution to make it legal in all 50 states. Love Wins.

Now, you can argue with this strategy if you want, you can say it didn't go far enough and that everyone should have demanded equality for everyone instantly and I respect that view. But I personally think it was brilliant. Regardless, it was the strategy of the LGTB movement of the era. Sanders, who had been a champion for gay rights for decades at this point (as I'll demonstrate later in the article) knew it and represented this constituency by applying their strategy. The author of this hit piece then goes on to show a sinister video of then Congressman Sanders in a debate for the U.S. Senate seat he ultimately won in 2006. In the video moderator Stewart Ledbetter asks Sanders about the Massachusetts situation and Don't Ask Don't Tell. First, Sanders gives his full throated support to gays being allowed to serve openly in the military, saying

"God only knows that we have had gay soldiers forever. World War II, Vietnam, Today. Putting their lives on the line, and they deserve to be treated the same as other soldiers."

This isn't exactly the language of someone who doesn't care about gay rights. Then on same sex marriage he goes on to say

"I believe-- voted against the DOMA bill. I believe that the Federal Government should not be involved in overturning Massachusetts or any other state because I think Stewart the whole issue of marriage is a state issue. That's what it is."

I added the bold emphasis to hammer home my point. Sanders wasn't saying he thinks the Federal government shouldn't ALLOW gay people to be married. He's saying he voted against DOMA because he doesn't want the Federal government PREVENTING gays from marrying in Massachusetts, completely consistent with the strategy of the day I referenced earlier. Also he's stating a matter of fact, marriage is a state issue, because it is the states that issue marriage licenses. Sanders as we've previously seen knew the strategy and was executing it. If he really was against gay marriage he would have supported DOMA. It was insanely popular at the time, it would have been easy to do. But Sanders doesn't take the easy wrong road. He takes the difficult right road.

Next the Clinton camp has tried to latch on to Senator Sanders' statements from 2006 when Vermont became the first state in the country to allow civil unions. The Clinton camp and their people in the media have slammed Sanders for not coming out and supporting same sex marriage in that battle, in favor of the aforementioned civil unions. Sanders states in an interview with Rachel Maddow

“Vermont was the first state in the union to pass civil unions, and trust me, I was there and it brought forth just a whole lot of emotion, and the state was torn in a way I have never seen the state torn,” Sanders said. “So Vermont led the nation in that direction, and what my view was give us a little bit of time.”

 While researching this story and upon seeing this quote I was reminded of one of my favorite political videos of recent memory, in which Lawrence O'Donnell talks about how the 2014 electoral triumphs of the GOP spell complete disaster for them in 2016. O'Donnell quotes a Republican named Chris Ladd who wrote the story saying

"Few things are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short term victory."

And, if you're a YUGE nerd like me and love Star Trek Deep Space Nine you'll know that Kahless, the greatest Klingon warrior of them all said

"Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory. And ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat."

Sanders says it in the quote, the debate tore Vermont apart "in a way I have never seen the state torn." any sane person could see that there weren't what infamous former Quebec sovereignty movement leader Lucien Bouchard called "winning conditions." If you were faced with a battle that meant so much to you but knew that if you pushed it too hard you could lose the whole thing wouldn't you hold back? Wouldn't you bide your time until things were more favorable? Of course you would. In the incredible movie Lincoln starring Daniel Day Lewis one of the heroes of the movie and of the fight against slavery Thaddeous Stevens is forced to say publicly that he doesn't believe in full equality for African Americans but only equality under the law. It pains him to say this but he knows that if he says what he really believes it would kill the 13th Amendment, and slavery would stain the nation for years, perhaps decades to come. Bernie Sanders cared about the movement, he wasn't about to shoot his mouth off about gay marriage when he knew doing that would have harmed the people he was trying to help.

This is a fundamental difference between him and Secretary Clinton, especially on this issue. Sanders spoke out for gay rights decades before it was popular. He isn't afraid of being unpopular if he believes what he's saying is right, but he is afraid of harming progress because he, like General George S. Patton, doesn't want to have to fight for the same real estate twice. Secretary Clinton chooses her positions based on poll numbers and rarely says anything she thinks is right if it is unpopular. Time and time and time again during the period leading up to her conversion in 2013 she said she was not in favor of same sex marriage. Bernie Sanders did no such thing and to say otherwise is the pathetic and desperate attack of a supporter who knows their candidate was wrong.

Secretary Clinton supported DOMA. She tries to say now that she did so because the power brokers of the day were afraid that there would have been a Constitutional Amendment banning same sex marriage if they had not. As I've just said this is a perfectly reasonable strategy and Clinton supporters point to a 2013 amicus brief in which four former Senators seemed to confirm this theory. However even the Washington Post, a paper so in the tank for Clinton it wrote 16 anti Sanders stories over a period of 16 hours recently doesn't buy this explanation. If you need more evidence of this being revisionist history you can find it here and here. Also, President Clinton signed DOMA, even though Congress had passed it with a veto proof majority. Bills that are vetoed and then overridden become law without the President's signature. If he and then First Lady Clinton wanted to show the LGTB community that they were their champions the President should have vetoed the legislation anyway, and forced the 104th Congress to take full responsibility for it. If her revisionist explanation of wanting DOMA to prevent an Amendment was true vetoing the bill would have changed nothing. The bill would have still become law, and the first family would have symbolically shown they were on the right side of history. Instead they did what they always do; they looked at the polls and made their choice based on them.

Finally, we come to what I promised earlier, I'm going to demonstrate that Bernie Sanders has been a champion for gay rights, in fact for all civil rights for decades. The first piece of evidence comes from his 1960s arrest protesting segregation on the campus of the University of Chicago. I'd like to share this video from a town hall done by CNN in Derry, NH.

"As far back as I can remember, and Anderson I can't tell you why, injustice is something that I have always fought throughout my life."

This demonstrates the state of mind of Bernie Sanders. As far back as the 1960s he was a man who saw injustice and fought against it, even when it was unpopular and in this case personally dangerous to do so.

Next we move to more specific evidence on the gay rights question, and what I think is the most damning evidence against those who would try to claim Bernie Sanders hasn't been a long time supporter of gay rights. In the 1970s Sanders ran two third party campaigns for Governor of Vermont on the Liberty Union ticket. In a letter published during one of these campaigns he outlined his support for gay rights.

Since it may be a bit hard to read I've enlarged the relevant passage.

Let's (sic) abolish all laws which attempt to impose a particular brand of morality or "right" on people. Let's (sic) abolish all laws dealing with abortion, drugs, sexual behavior (adultery, homosexuality, etc.)

He's saying it right here for all the world to hear. I stand for gay rights, the government has no business imposing their morals on anyone else. I think I've proven my case in The People of Hillaryland vs. Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is proven to have fought injustice for 6 decades now, by fighting against segregation in the 60s.  He is proven to have been fighting for gay rights for at least 5 decades from this 1970s letter to his 1980s proclamation of Gay pride day, to his 1990s opposition of DOMA, to his 2000s defense of Massachusetts' marriage law to today. If you want more information on his record on gay rights you can check out FeelTheBern.org's section on the matter.

In a final message to all the Secretary Clinton supporters, I'm going to invoke the late Ambassador Adlai Stevenson II. If keep lying about Bernie Sanders I'll keep telling the truth about Hillary Clinton.