Category Archives: Bill Clinton

GLAAD honoring all the wrong people

Are the good people at GLAAD suffering from amnesia?

First, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation honored lifelong closet case Anderson Cooper with its Vito Russo Award last month. Then came word that former President Bill Clinton will be honored with the Advocate for Change Award.

Russo was a pioneering LGBT activist and author who wrote “The Celluloid Closet.” Cooper became infamous in the gay community after Out magazine published a 2008 cover story featuring his image along with Jodie Foster’s above the headline “The Glass Closet, Why the Stars Won’t Come Out and Play.”

Cooper finally came out publicly last year in a blog post and is immediately honored by GLAAD for doing what exactly? Is GLAAD so desperate to sell tickets to its awards shows that it must genuflect at the feet of anyone with a modicum of fame? This star-fuckery does a disservice to the movement and overlooks the hard work and visibility of more deserving honorees.

As transparent as the Cooper award was for its pandering, the Clinton award is even more disappointing. Clinton gave us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He signed the Defense of Marriage Act and later bragged about it in 1996 campaign ads. Former HRC President Elizabeth Birch recently revealed that during that time, Clinton White House officials threatened to re-air the offensive ads if she took credit for their being yanked amid a firestorm of protest. More recently, Clinton reportedly advised John Kerry to support state constitutional amendments barring marriage equality during the 2004 presidential campaign. He only recently changed his position; his wife only endorsed marriage last month.

With such a stellar record of support, it’s time for a GLAAD award! I’m sure the wealthy Los Angeles gays will shell out plenty of cash for tickets to the award show later this month. (Individual tickets start at $500; a platinum table will set you back $25,000.) For some inexplicable reason, the gays are drawn to the Clintons like moths to the flame.

While GLAAD is busy dispensing awards to the unworthy, others who are actually making a difference go unrecognized.

Take Ken Mehlman, for example, who ran the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and cynically unleashed a barrage of state constitutional amendments attacking our relationships. He has since repudiated his dirty deeds and worked behind the scenes to do his penance. He has raised money for the New York and Maryland marriage efforts, among other contributions. Where is the award for Mehlman? He has certainly done more to advance gay rights than Cooper.

And what about Sen. Rob Portman, who bravely endorsed marriage equality last month, becoming the first Republican senator to do so? He was pilloried by progressive bloggers because he attributed his evolution on the issue to having a gay son. The Wonkette blog went so far as to suggest we buy him a cake to celebrate with “Fuck that guy” written in icing.

But just days later when Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, announced her newfound marriage support and attributed it in part to having gay staff and friends, the progressive bloggers erupted in predictable praise.

This misguided strategy of turning LGBT rights into a partisan issue and the LGBT movement into a wing of the Democratic Party is as much a mistake today as it was 20 years ago.

Of course, we should welcome converts like Cooper and Clinton to the cause, but we mustn’t rewrite history in the process. And if our national advocacy groups are going to honor public figures like Cooper and Clinton who have such complicated records on LGBT issues, then shouldn’t they reach across the aisle and honor some Republicans, too?

Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at knaff@washblade.com.

Obama nominates lesbian attorney for judgeship

Elaine Kaplan, U.S. Office of Personnel Management's general counsel (Blade photo by Michael Key)

Elaine Kaplan, Currently serves as U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s general counsel. (Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Obama on Tuesday named attorney Elaine D. Kaplan, the current general counsel for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as one of two nominees to become a judge on the United States Court of Federal Claims.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Kaplan would become the second out gay person to serve on the specialized court, which hears cases brought by citizens against the federal government to recover monetary damages.

In 2009, Obama nominated Federal Claims Court Judge Emily C. Hewitt, a lesbian, to become the court’s chief judge. Hewitt, whose 15-year term on the court ends in October, was first appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

On Tuesday, Obama also nominated attorney Patricia E. Campbell-Smith to become a judge on the Court of Federal Claims. Campbell-Smith has been serving since 2005 as a special master for the court as part of its program to adjudicate cases involving vaccine related injuries.

“These nominees have dedicated their careers to serving the public good,” the president said in a statement released by the White House. “And in so doing, they have displayed an unyielding commitment to justice and integrity,” he said.

“I am certain that they will serve the American people well from the Court of Federal Claims, and I am honored to nominate them today,” Obama said.

Kaplan has served as general counsel for OPM since 2009 under gay OPM Director John Berry, who was one of Obama’s first high-level gay appointees.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Kaplan worked from 2004 to 2009 as Senior Deputy General Counsel for the National Treasury Employees Union and from 2003 to 2004 as an attorney for the D.C. law firm Bernabei and Katz.

In 1998, Kaplan was nominated by President Bill Clinton and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to serve as director of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, where she served a designated five-year term that extended into the first two years of the administration of President George W. Bush.

Congress created the Office of Special Counsel as an independent agency intended to protect the merit-based U.S. civil service system by investigating and prosecuting complaints of prohibited personnel practices against federal government employees. The OSC is also charged with protecting whistleblowers who report instances of government misconduct or waste from improper reprisals.

Kaplan made news during her tenure as OSC chief when she strengthened protections against discrimination based on federal employees’ sexual orientation, citing a provision in the existing U.S. civil service law that she interpreted to cover LGBT employees.

She became the subject of further news reports after completing her term at the OSC when her successor named by Bush, anti-gay attorney and religious right figure Scott J. Bloch, reversed her policy toward gay federal workers. In an action that created an uproar among LGBT activists, Bloch declared that that no legal protections existed for gay or lesbian federal workers targeted for employment discrimination.

During her tenure as general counsel for the NTEU, Kaplan criticized Bloch for his actions as OSC head. Bloch subsequently became the target of an investigation by the FBI, which raided his office and home following allegations that he improperly sought to purge employees at the OSC who disagreed with him and allegedly was responsible for hiring a computer company to “scrub” files from his office computer. He resigned from his OSC position in 2008.

Shortly after pleading guilty in 2011 for contempt of Congress, for allegedly failing to disclose information requested during a congressional hearing, Bloch filed a lawsuit against more than a dozen people he claimed conspired to have him ousted from his job at the OSC. Among those named in the lawsuit, which sought $202 million damages, were Kaplan, Berry, and the Human Rights Campaign, which Bloch accused of conspiring with Kaplan and others to oust him from his job.

According to a clerk at the Fairfax County, Va., Circuit Court where Bloch filed the lawsuit, Circuit Court Judge Jane Roush dismissed the lawsuit on June 29, 2012 without prejudice. The “without prejudice” dismissal gave Bloch the option of filing the case again within six months under Circuit Court rules, but the clerk said there is no record of him having done so.

D.C. attorney Debra Katz, who was also named as a defendant in Bloch’s lawsuit, told the Blade the judge dismissed the case on grounds of “failure to prosecute” because Bloch, who represented himself in court, never served any of the named defendants with a complaint or summons.

Cartoon: The clear winner

gay marriage, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, DOMA, Defense of Marriage Act

Who is the clear winner when it comes to Presidential support for gay marriage and the LGBT community?

Bill Clinton’s desperate bid to rewrite history

Former President Bill Clinton today penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, disavowing the discriminatory and unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act that he signed into law 17 years ago.

It’s a typically cynical, desperate bid to rewrite history.

Clinton now suggests that his support for DOMA was really intended to thwart a constitutional amendment that would have banned marriage equality for a generation or more.

The truth is that Clinton said at the time that he “had long agreed with the principles in the bill but hoped it would not be used to justify discrimination against homosexuals,” according to the New York Times. Of course, the point of DOMA was to discriminate. What’s worse, Clinton bragged about his support for DOMA in radio ads during his 1996 re-election campaign against former Sen. Bob Dole, after criticizing Republicans for “gay-baiting.” In the same ads currying support among Christian conservatives, Clinton announced his newfound support for abortion restrictions.

Nearly a year after President Obama’s courageous endorsement of marriage equality, Clinton chimes in from the safe confines of retirement. Meanwhile, Hillary, still adored by legions of gay fans waiting breathlessly for 2016, has yet to utter a word about marriage.

Clinton’s op-ed is a naked attempt to get on the right side of history before the Supreme Court strikes down DOMA. He sounds desperate, highlighting the fact that “DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535 members of Congress.” That only makes his support worse — at least 81 other politicians at the time had the sense and foresight to oppose the discriminatory measure. The op-ed, of course, contains no apology from Clinton for enacting the most hideous piece of anti-gay legislation ever conceived in this country. DOMA has literally destroyed the lives of countless couples — from the financial ruin triggered when a surviving partner is faced with crippling tax bills to the separation of thousands of bi-national couples forced to choose between love and country.

But never mind all those ruined lives. Clinton was just trying to spare us a constitutional amendment. Cue the parade of gay rights advocates, who will commence tripping over themselves to praise Clinton’s bold stance for equality. HRC’s Chad Griffin has already called Clinton’s op-ed “eloquent.”

If we’re going to so easily forgive and forget Clinton’s anti-gay sins, then our advocates should be consistent and shower former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman with similar praise and awards. As horrible as Mehlman’s record is, at least no one ever elected him president; and he’s been working hard to raise money for marriage equality since coming out of the closet and repudiating his own dirty deeds.

This warm-and-fuzzy new era of gay love is gratifying for those of us who’ve been working for change for years and decades. And although we should welcome converts to the cause, we must not forget the past or rewrite the ugly history that relegated LGBT people to second-class status. Clinton represents cynicism and politics at its most self-aggrandizing. Obama is the real deal — the president who is leading Americans to a true revolution in thinking on LGBT equality.

February is Heart Health Month

February is probably best known for Valentine’s Day. February is also Heart Health Month, an opportunity for all of us to think about what we can do to prevent heart disease.

Without a doubt, heart disease is a medical crisis. It is the No. 1 cause of death for both men and women in the U.S. Heart disease causes one in every four deaths.

And, according to the CDC, D.C. has one of the highest rates of heart disease in the nation.

Heart disease is more prevalent in the LGBT community than in the heterosexual community. Lesbians and bisexual women have higher rates of obesity and smoking, which are risk factors for heart disease, while gay and bisexual men are also known to have higher rates of smoking.

Fortunately, there are ways to reduce your risk of heart disease. We all know them. We’ve all heard them, over and over. We just need to DO them.

Exercise. All that is needed is moderate physical activity that gets your heart rate up and moving. Go for a long walk every day. Take the stairs at work or in your building. Simple, regular activities will help keep your weight down and reduce stress, two important things for a healthier heart.

Stop smoking. If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, stop now. Smoking increases the risk of coronary heart disease by two to four times. Stopping smoking is hard, but your primary care physician can help you quit.

Eat healthier. You don’t have to go vegetarian or vegan, although those are good diets for heart health. Just ask President Clinton. But eating healthier will help reduce your weight and your cholesterol. Eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Cut back on salt and sugar. Drink more water. Eat reasonable portions. The most important thing you can do is to reduce the calories you intake each day.

There’s one more habit you should adopt: regular medical checkups.

An annual physical can help your provider keep track of your overall health along with your heart health. Keeping an eye on your blood pressure and your cholesterol levels will help her or him advise you on the best ways to keep your heart healthy, from changing your diet to any needed medications.

And that’s where Whitman-Walker Health can keep your heart healthy.

Our providers can conduct regular exams to monitor the health of your heart, including your blood pressure and cholesterol. You can get any needed medications at our onsite pharmacy.

Our Behavioral Health department can help you with smoking cessation services.

And our nutritionist can help you learn how to eat a heart-healthy diet.

All of those services are available under one roof at WWH. As one large team that works together, we can help to improve your overall health.

Please take the health of your heart seriously. Taking care of yourself can help you to live a long, healthy and happy life.

To become a patient at WWH, visit whitman-walker.org/becomeapatient or call 202-745-7000.

Senate GOP urges Supreme Court to uphold DOMA

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(from left) Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are among the Republicans urging the Supreme Court to uphold DOMA (Photos public domain)

Senate Republicans are arguing the Defense of Marriage Act should be upheld as constitutional because withholding federal benefits from gay couples discourages states from legalizing same-sex marriage.

The 30-page friend-of-the-court brief, filed before the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 29, argues that Section 3 of DOMA promotes the restriction of marriage to one man, one man while by “removing an incentive” to change state law.

“The prospect of obtaining numerous federal benefits for same-sex couples could be a tremendous weapon in the arsenal of those who would seek to gain recognition of same-sex marriage at the state level,” the brief states. “It would be particularly tempting for courts to recognize same-sex marriage in order to award federal benefits to sympathetic plaintiffs.”

The brief was filed in the case of Windsor v. United States on behalf of 10 Senate Republicans: Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

Grassley’s participation in the brief is notable because the state he represents in the U.S. Senate, Iowa, is among the nine where same-sex marriage is legal. Also of note are the scant 10 signatures on the brief, which falls short of even one-fourth of the 45 members of the Senate GOP caucus.

Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said the brief’s argument that DOMA should be upheld to discourage efforts to legalize same-sex marriage at the state level demonstrates how “arguments made by our opponents get more tortured with every passing day.”

“This is a great example of how far down the rabbit hole they have to go to find justifications for discrimination,” Sainz said. “In essence, the senators are arguing that committed and loving gay and lesbian couples want to get married just for the benefits. Not only is it a ridiculous argument, it’s an affront to our humanity and any reasonable American would see it as such.”

The brief has three main arguments for why DOMA should be upheld: 1) DOMA didn’t change federal law, but reaffirmed the existing definition of marriage; 2) DOMA promotes a government interest in ensuring uniformity in existing law on marriage; and 3) DOMA ensures federal benefits won’t be used to “undermine traditional marriage” at the state level.

Additionally, the brief notes that one of the friends of the court, Hatch, was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time DOMA was signed into law and received assurances from the Justice Department the measure would be constitutional. The Obama administration has since said the law violates the U.S. Constitution, and won’t defend the law in court.

“If the Department believed that there was an inadequate federal interest to justify DOMA, the time to speak was in 1996, when Congress gave careful consideration to the need for DOMA,” the brief states. “Rather than urging the courts to give appropriate deference to an Act of Congress, as befits its proper role in our system of government, the Department now groundlessly impugns the motives of the overwhelming bipartisan majority that supported DOMA.”

The brief also disputes the notion that Congress passed DOMA in 1996 out of animus of the basis of the bipartisan support the measure enjoyed at the time, including from then-President Bill Clinton, who signed the measure into law. Clinton has since called for repeal of DOMA.

“The fact that DOMA passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming support across the political spectrum, and was signed by into law by President Clinton, further undercuts any attempt to characterize it as the result of unconstitutional ‘animus,’” the brief states. “Many DOMA supporters were on record as opposing discrimination against gays and lesbians.”

The attorney who signed the brief is Michael Stern, an attorney based in Fairfax, Va., who’s contributed to Republican political campaigns.

[h/t] Equality on Trial

Top strategist to depart HRC

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Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington, D.C.(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

WASHINGTON — The top policy and strategy strategist at the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization will depart this summer, according to a statement released earlier this week.

David Smith, who joined the organization in 1995, led efforts to make the Human Rights Campaign “a household name,” according to a statement on Smith by HRC President Chad Griffin, who also credits Smith with helping to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and the passage of federal hate crime protections, as well as helping create the HRC National Dinner, where Bill Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to address an LGBT advocacy group.

“Those of you who have worked with David directly know him to be incredibly passionate, kind, hard-working and generous,” Griffin’s statement reads. “He’s been a mentor, a sounding-board, and an advocate for good ideas wherever they emerge.”

National Stonewall Democrats curtails operations

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National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jerame Davis (Blade photo by Michael Key)

National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jerame Davis confirmed to the Washington Blade on Tuesday his organization will cease operations through at least the end of this year after it failed to bridge a $30,000 budget gap.

“We obviously had the budget shortfall that we announced late last year and in that process we learned a few things,” he said shortly after the Dallas Voice broke the story earlier in the day. “When we were talking with various interested parties, whether they were from the DNC [the Democratic National Committee] or the labor movement or just LGBT Democrats in general, while finding the money that we needed in the short amount of time like that wasn’t possible, what we did find was there was an interest in keeping the org around. A lot of people really believe there’s a need and a place for Stonewall, it’s just that circumstances over the past several years have led to funding crisis that we found ourselves in.”

Davis told the Blade in an exclusive interview on Dec. 4 that his organization would likely close its doors if it didn’t raise $30,000 by the end of the year. He said the last-minute fundraising appeal netted less than $10,000 as of deadline.

“The decision was made that we would close down our office, cut our expenses down to next to nothing,” Davis, whose last day as a paid executive director was on Dec. 31, said. He remains with the organization in a volunteer capacity. “We tend to spend odd number years in a rebuilding mode anyway. This just kind of fit with what we normally do, the only difference being is we’re not going to have paid staff or an office for this year. Obviously that means our operations will be curtailed, but that also gives us the ability to focus our time and energy on figuring out what the systemic problems are for why we’ve had such funding problems and take the time to look at the org and figure out is there a future and what does that future look like.”

National Stonewall Democrats’ financial problems had previously threatened to shutter the organization.

The Blade reported in Feb. 2011 an anonymous donor gave $100,000 to the organization amid reports then-Executive Director Michael Mitchell did not effectively manage the group’s budget. Davis said there was “1,800 in the bank and a boat load of debt” when he took over in November 2011.

“Most people agree that a big part of our problem was that we had strayed from our original mission,” he said. “We had a muddy, undefined reason for existence and you combine that with the other missteps that we’ve made operationally, turnover in staff, especially at the top and so forth and it just kind of all compounded.”

Melissa Sklarz, who co-chaired National Stonewall Democrats Board of Directors from 2009 through early 2011, noted to the Blade last month then-President Bill Clinton had signed the ban on openly gay service members and the Defense of Marriage Act into law in the years before former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank founded the organization in 1998.

“The Democratic Party and the LGBT political landscape have changed dramatically in the past 15 years since National Stonewall was founded,” she added earlier on Tuesday. “The Democrats needed to understand the LGBT community and the community needed to understand that the Democrats were the true party of progress. NSD was the right idea at the right time.”

Sklarz further described Davis as “a great leader.”

“I look forward to helping with the new NSD next year,” she said.

“It is not unusual for organizations to take a time out every once in awhile,” gay New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told the Blade. “There are many conversations going on right now, I am confident that NSD will emerge from this process stronger and more focused than ever before. I look forward to being part of that process.”

Gregory T. Angelo, interim executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, tweeted on his personal Twitter account that he is “not shedding any tears over” National Stonewall Democrats’ decision to curtail operations.

“It’s ironic that Republicans can throw big bucks around and use the partisan Log Cabin Republicans to try and destroy Democrats and their positive initiatives,” Barbra Casbar Siperstein, a former National Stonewall Democrats board member from New Jersey who is a member of the DNC Executive Committee, told the Blade. “Yet it appears that LGBT Democrats who talk about partisanship cannot support a partisan organization that exists to build for equality and expose the damage and destructiveness that the modern Republicans time and time again, almost single mindedly attempt to destroy the Great Society, the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, but also the work of the great Progressive, Republican Teddy Roosevelt.”

Derek Washington of Stonewall Democrats of Nevada agreed.

“Jerame Davis has done the best he probably could considering the hand he was dealt upon taking charge of national Stonewall,” he said. “Having said that I think it’s time for Stonewall to take this hiatus as a wake up call and rebrand itself as the premiere LGBT political organization regardless of party as we’ve done here in Nevada. Log Cabin and GOProud have no ground operation or presence here due to our aggressive branding and take no prisoners attitude in both our state and Southern Nevada chapters of Stonewall. And I’m not talking about sometime in the future. I’m talking about now.”