“I’m honored to receive the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest organization working to achieve full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans”, Clinton said in a statement.
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Human Rights Campaign announced today that it would endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. Most troubling for her political aspirations now, however, is her previous support, or silence against, the Defense of Marriage Act, a bill that was passed in 1996 when her husband was in office, which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Due to her change in viewpoint, she had a spat with NPR’s Terry Gross, who questioned why she had changed her viewpoint, to which she replied that change was inevitable and that “we have all evolved”.
“[Clinton] has a long record of being a strong advocate for LGBT rights and for being a leader in the debate – especially when she was in Congress and as Secretary of State”, Richard Socarides, a Democratic political commentator and former aide to President Bill Clinton, told The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview Tuesday.
“I’m not going to get establishment support with few exceptions…But the reason that we are doing so well…is not from the establishment, it’s from the grassroots of America”.
HRC said Clinton has a long record as a champion for LGBT rights both in the United States and around the globe.
For politically aware gay Americans, the news yesterday that the HRC endorsed Hillary Clinton for president was a bit of a “dog bites man” story.
With the HRC’s endorsement, Clinton has picked up the biggest interest groups allied with the Democratic Party. Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley provided answers, while no Republican candidates for president returned HRC’s questionnaire.
In June of 1983, when Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, gay rights organizers planned Burlington’s first-ever pride parade. In many USA counties, Planned Parenthood is the best or only community health center available; by providing health care to patients in poverty without regard for their insurance status, immigration status, or ability to pay, Planned Parenthood stands in defiance of the economic injustices Sanders has built his campaign to solve. Once thought to be the prohibitive front-runner, Clinton is now facing a much more enthusiastic and enduring challenge from Sanders that looks like it could last the duration of the primary season.
‘Really Senator Sanders? How can you say that groups like @PPact and @HRC are part of the “establishment” you’re taking on?’ Clinton tweeted in response.
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Reddit user Danielle Muscato, who identified herself as a President’s Circle level donor to PP and a blogger for Bernie Sanders, shared a letter she sent to the organization after learning of their endorsement. Briggs also cited Sanders’ support in calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn DOMA.
