Bill Clinton has stated that it was wrong for him to have signed the Defense of Marriage Act. He wants the Supreme Court to overturn it. But why did he sign it in the first place? Because doing so helped him win the 1996 election.
Here's detail, and as you read it, think about what this suggest about the role elections play in establishing public policy in a democracy - especially when the policy affects a numeric minority.
As Republicans prepared for the 1996 Presidential election, they came up with what they thought was an extremely clever strategy. A gay-rights lawsuit in Hawaii was gaining press coverage as an initial series of preliminary court rulings suggested that gay marriage might be legally conceivable there. Clinton was on the record opposing marriage equality. But Republicans in Congress believed that he would still veto legislation banning federal recognition of otherwise valid same-sex marriages, giving them a campaign issue: the defense of marriage.
What Republicans had not counted on, though, was just how adverse the Administration had become, especially in an election year, to getting ahead of public opinion on gay rights after having had to backtrack on open military service.
. . . Inside the White House, there was a genuine belief that if the President vetoed the Defense of Marriage Act, his reëlection could be in jeopardy. There was a heated debate about whether this was a realistic assessment, but it became clear that the President’s chief political advisers were not willing to take any chances. Some in the White House pointed out that DOMA, once enacted, would have no immediate practical effect on anyone—there were no state-sanctioned same-sex marriages then for the federal government to ignore. I remember a Presidential adviser saying that he was not about to risk a second term on a veto, however noble, that wouldn’t change a single thing nor make a single person’s life better.
So there was the assumption that public opinion was not behind the issue in 1996, so signing it was risky. This is apparently not the case now. Perhaps we should consider whether Clinton's decision was or was not in keeping with what we want policymaking in a democracy to look like.
