Bill Clinton Honored by GLAAD

Clinton accepts the award, flanked by Chelsea

Former President Clinton accepted GLAAD's "Advocate for Change" Award at the GLAAD Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday, making a moving speech in which he praised gay-rights activists for helping America progress towards "a more perfect union" - and credited daughter Chelsea and her gay friends with helping him evolve in his views.  The speech is quite good, well worth your time:



In March of this year, Clinton wrote an editorial for the Washington Post, urging the Supreme Court to overturn DOMA, an act which he signed into law in 1996 after being passed by overwhelming majorities in the Republican-controlled Congress. Excerpt:

In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but some were moving in that direction. Washington, as a result, was swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite draconian. As a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their March 1 amicus brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that its passage “would defuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.” It was under these circumstances that DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535 members of Congress. . . .

When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.