It is extremely rare for former Presidents to admit mistakes made in office, and rarer still for one to disavow a major piece of legislation. As his former White House adviser on gay-rights, I was not surprised by the message. But the op-ed leaves a political mystery intact. Still, how was it that Bill Clinton, the first President to champion gay rights, put his name on one of the most discriminatory anti-gay statutes in American history?
The simple answer is that he got boxed in by his political opponents, and that his campaign positions on gay rights ran ahead of public opinion.
But there was another important factor: a failure to imagine how quickly gay rights would evolve, and how difficult it would be to undo the damage that DOMA did. When Bill Clinton first ran for President over twenty years ago, he was the first candidate for national office to seek and receive support from an organized gay political community, which was itself new to Presidential politics.
In , after twelve years of Republican control of the White House, the federal government had neglected funding the battle against the quickly burgeoning AIDS epidemic. Clinton was sympathetic; because of his interest in civil rights generally, and long friendships with gay and AIDS activists, he was then one of the national politicians most conversant on gay-equality issues.
During that campaign, in May of , as governor of Arkansas, Clinton spoke at the first large-scale Presidential campaign event for gay and lesbian supporters, in West Hollywood, California. He gave an emotional speech largely focussed on the AIDS crisis, in which he spoke of the moral costs to the country of ignoring those suffering from the disease. Gay men with AIDS had been dying at a stunningly rapid rate. Their families, friends, and caretakers had, in many cases, shunned them, and so had national leaders.
