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Good for Terry.


On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 3:27 PM, Eric Schwerin <eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
> wrote:

>
>
>
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> Eric D. Schwerin
> Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
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> eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
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> http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=E053D6B3-6A1D-4EBE-90D5-C4E232623633
>
> Hillary Clinton gets testy over gay marriage - POLITICO.com Print View
>
> Hillary Clinton had a tense exchange with an NPR host in an interview
> airing Thursday over whether she made “a calculus” against publicly
> supporting gay marriage before endorsing it last year.
>
> It’s the first time Clinton, a potential candidate for president in 2016,
> has been extensively questioned about her support for gay marriage. She did
> not back it in her 2008 presidential campaign but she issued support for it
> by video in 2013, weeks after leaving the State Department.
>
> Her support came after President Barack Obama, shoved toward it publicly
> by Vice President Joe Biden, backed gay marriage as a concept in middle of
> the 2012 presidential race.
>
> (Also on POLITICO: Bush celebrates 90th by skydiving
> <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/george-hw-bush-90-birthday-skydiving-107773.html>
> )
>
> NPR’s Terry Gross was interviewing Clinton about her newly released
> memoir, “Hard Choices.” She repeatedly asked the former secretary of state
> whether her opinion on gay marriage had changed, or whether the political
> dynamics had shifted enough that she could express her opinion.
>
> “I have to say, I think you are being very persistent, but you are playing
> with my words and playing with what is such an important issue,” Clinton
> said.
>
> “I’m just trying to clarify so I understand…” Gross said.
>
> “No, I don’t think you are trying to clarify,” Clinton snapped back. “I
> think you’re trying to say I used to be opposed and now I’m in favor and I
> did it for political reasons, and that’s just flat wrong. So let me just
> state what I feel like you are implying and repudiate it. I have a strong
> record, I have a great commitment to this issue, and I am proud of what
> I’ve done and the progress we’re making.”
>
> (Also on POLITICO: Why MSNBC is in trouble
> <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/06/why-msnbc-is-in-trouble-190281.html>
> )
>
> The interview was taped by America Rising, a Republican research group
> that’s spent the majority of its time focused on Clinton.
>
> “You know, somebody is always first,” Clinton said. “Somebody is always
> out front and thank goodness they are. But that doesn’t mean that those who
> join later, in being publicly supportive or even privately accepting that
> there needs to be change, are any less committed. You could not be having
> the sweep of marriage equality across the country if nobody changed their
> mind, and thank goodness so many of us have.”
>
> Clinton was lauded at the State Department for focusing on LGBT issues
> related to agency personnel and also in other countries. But she formally
> stated her support for gay marriage after a number of prominent Democrats,
> such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and
> even some Republicans, such as Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. Her allies have
> attributed her timing to the need for her to stay apolitical while at the
> State Department.
>
> Gross noted that in the 1990s —when Clinton’s husband, former President
> Bill Clinton, signed the Defense of Marriage Act — there already were
> supporters of gay marriage.
>
> “To be fair Terry, not that many,” Clinton replied. “Were there activists
> who were ahead of their time, well that was ... true in every human rights
> and civil rights movement but the vast majority of Americans were just
> waking up to this issue, and beginning to think about it, and grasp it for
> the first time, and think about their neighbor down the street who deserved
> to have the same rights as they did, or their son, or their daughter.”
>
> Throughout the segment, Clinton said several times that she has “evolved”
> on the issue, and bristled at the suggestion that, “for political reasons,”
> she couldn’t speak out sooner.
>
> “I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage, and I don’t think you
> probably did, either,” she said to Gross. “This was an incredibly new and
> important idea that people on the front lines of the gay right movement
> began to talk about and slowly, but surely, convinced others of the
> rightness of that position. And when I was ready to say what I said, I said
> it.”
>
>


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Alexander Snyder Mackler
(302) 598-867