Bernie Sanders responded quickly to today’s news the nation’s largest LGBT group is endorsing Hillary Clinton.
Hours after the Human Rights Campaign announced it is endorsing Hillary Clinton, the Bernie Sanders campaign issued a scathing response.
Calling it “an endorsement that cannot possibly be based on the facts and the record,” Sanders campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs told the Washington Blade it is “understandable and consistent with the establishment organizations voting for the establishment candidate.”
Briggs added, “who knows what prompted the Human Rights Campaign to do what it does — I have trouble myself figuring why they do some of the things they do over the years — but I think the gay men and lesbians all over the country will know who has been their champion for a long, long time and will consider that as they make up their mind on support for his campaign.”Â
Briggs corrected himself, the Blade reports, adding, “LGBTQ people all over the country.”
Noting the HRC waited to endorse Barack Obama until he won the Democratic nomination, the Blade notes that “Sanders hasn’t always been in favor of full marriage equality. In 2006 when asked by the Vermont-based Times Argus newspaper if Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, Sanders was quoted as saying, ‘Not right now, not after what we went through,’ referring to the conflict in the state over civil unions.”
Briggs told the Blade that Sanders supported civil unions in his home state in 2000, saying the Senator from Vermont is “a pioneer on this early version of gay marriage, and has by far the most exemplary record on gay rights of any candidate ever in American history.”
The Blade added that last year, Sanders in an interview with The Washington Blade became “the first presidential candidate to support openly trans service in the U.S. military and make a point about including trans people in his campaign and presidency.”
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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