Bombshell: 15 Years Ago The Clinton White House Debated Supporting Same-Sex Marriage

Fifteen years ago events that could have led to President Bill Clinton announcing support for same-sex marriage were quashed.

In early 2000, top aides in the Clinton White House considered having President Bill Clinton change his position to support same-sex marriage. Drafting comments for the president to deliver while speaking in California, aides had the President denounce Proposition 22, which like the more recent Prop 8, banned same-sex marriage in The Golden State.

Buzzfeed’s legal editor Chris Geidner visited the Clinton Presidential Library in April, and last night published a bombshell story that, had events moved slightly differently, might have brought marriage equality to same-sex couples and the nation a decade or more earlier.

Clinton’s deputy chief of staff emailed top aides, asking how the President could denounce Prop 22 while not appearing inconsistent, having signed into law DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

“I now conclude that I was wrong about same-sex marriage,” Eddie Correia, the president’s special counsel for civil rights, wrote in a draft statement meant to be delivered by Clinton, Geidner reports. “I continue to believe that the people of California should be able to decide what marriages they will recognize. But I hope they will choose to recognize the validity of marriage between people of the same gender if the marriage is legal where it occurred. Consequently, I am opposed to Proposition 22.” 

Eric Liu, Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser, rejected it almost immediately. 

“Well, let’s not go there yet, and let’s certainly not start there,” Liu responded.

But possibly even more shocking is that another top Clinton aide, Mary Smith, the associate director of policy planning in the Domestic Policy Council, believed that DOMA itself might even be unconstitutional.

In an email arguing the President not get too deep in why he would oppose Prop 22, Smith wrote that DOMA “is probably constitutionally suspect as well.”

Geidner labels Smith’s “offhand comment” as “striking.”

In 1996, when DOMA was under consideration in the House, the Clinton Justice Department wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that “there are no legal issues raised by” DOMA and that it would be “sustained as constitutional.”

Less than four years later, a domestic policy adviser was writing — almost as a given — that DOMA likely was “constitutionally suspect.”

Eddie Correia also drafted another statement for the President to deliver while in California.

“Four years ago, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which provides that states should have a choice as to whether they will recognize a marriage between members of the same sex. I still believe states should have that choice,” Correia wrote for Clinton to say.

“For many years, I have been personally opposed to same-gender marriages, and, until recently, I would have agreed with those states who choose not to recognize them. After having reflected on the impact of this position on thousands of loving, committed couples, I now conclude that I was wrong about same-sex marriage,” Correia offered, as comments the President could make.

Seven minutes after Correia emailed that to Liu, it was rejected.

Less than a year later, George W. Bush was sworn in as president. In the years that followed, thanks to Bush’s political “architect” Karl Rove, dozens of states banned same-sex marriage.

Bill Clinton would announce support for same-sex marriage in 2011, President Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton would announce that “gay rights are human rights” in 2011, and officially endorse marriage equality in 2013.

 

Photo: President Bill Clinton greeting people in a large crowd at a “get out the vote” rally in Los Angeles, California, Nov. 2, 2000. Image via Wikimedia