How quickly we forget that almost all politicians that are now pro-equality were at some point against equal civil rights for gays and lesbians. If you’re going to praise Obama and all of the other Democrats for their “evolving” (while ignoring their past discrimination) then you must do the same thing to every Republican that is also changing their tune…. or that will likely change their tune in the coming decade. Just like many Democrats eventually warmed up to civil rights for blacks. Some Democrats were loud racists but for some reason we conveniently ignore history.

I don’t want to re-write history as it pertains to Clinton, Democrats, Republicans or Obama. There is “evolving” occurring from many politicians and this is ONLY because public sentiment has changed drastically in the past 5, 10 and 20 years. Clinton and Obama would continue to be anti-gay in their view of marriage if society hadn’t carried them and most other politicians along. We didn’t have politicians leading this battle for civil rights…. our politicians were FOLLOWING. That is not leadership.

The Constitution never changed – but politicians did. Sadly it was not because of moral conscience after reading the Equal Protection Clause…. it was because society changed and it became politically safe (and increasingly expected) to become pro-equality. The same for businesses and corporate America.

I am thankful for every politician that is evolving, whether Democrat or Republican. But, I will not consider them “leaders” when it comes to equality – nor will I re-write history and forget that Democrats have been just as anti-gay as Republicans if we look back 30 or 40 years. The entire country is changing…. but Democrats are moving slowly towards equality faster than our Republican friends.

If you re-write history… it is likely because of your own political bias and prejudice.

I’ve yet to see any evidence that he has any credentials on anything other than gay marriage.

And if you’re going to hammer Bill fpr practicing just the sort of pragmatism that this publication regularly praised Barney Frank and any other gay politico at any level of government who could slobber out the phrase ‘incremental progress’ any time an excuse was necessary to throw trans people under the anti-discrimination bus (and then back up and run us over a few more times for good measure), then just admit it: You have no actual principles; you want what you want and you want gay marriage.

Want to argue fraudulent history and political philosophy? How about pointing out the abject failure of the Barney-HRC psychosis of keeping trans people out of ENDA then (and, given that there has been no true live ENDA proposal since 2007, even now)? Or is it bad manners to point out that keeping us out in 1996 didn’t didn’t do squat to get ENDA over the hump in that theatrical vote to try to attach it to DOMA but did reinforce all of the concrete in the road to everlasting distrust of Gay, Inc. by trans people?

I don’t worship either Clinton, but just what the f**k did you actually expect him to do with his presidential re-election coming at the height of the Gingrich ‘Contract on America’ era? Unlike any instance where ‘incremental progress’ has been cited as a justification for throwing trans people under the bus, how was the pragmatism of signing the thing anything other than his only option for DOMA? Bob Dole was a walking fossil and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pat Robertson who had no real chance of unseating Clinton, but a DOMA veto or even letting it become law sans signature would have been a shot of viagra for Dole’s campaign and possibly a noose around Clinton’s.