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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.

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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.”

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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.”