Six of the candidates seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination participated Thursday in a two-hour forum in Los Angeles devoted to issues of concern to gays and lesbians. The event — moderated by journalist Margaret Carlson and sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights activist group — was broadcast live by co-sponsor Logo, a lifestyle cable channel aimed at gay and lesbian viewers.
Taking questions separately in a talk-show-like setting were front-running candidates New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Also participating were New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.
Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., did not attend, citing scheduling conflicts. Logo offered to hold a second forum for Republican candidates, but the leading candidates for the party’s nomination declined to participate, Carlson said.
Unlike several candidate debates held earlier this year, the Democrats never appeared on stage together, but took questions at 15-minute intervals from Carlson and a panel made up of Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, singer Melissa Etheridge and Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart. Candidates were questioned in the order in which they agreed to commit to the forum, with chief rivals Obama and Clinton book-ending the discussion as first and last, respectively.
The questions covered a mix of topics, including same-sex marriage, AIDS funding and employment rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples.
The following is a roundup of some of the forum’s key moments:
Most Discussed Issue: Debate about same-sex marriage dominated the forum. With only two candidates, Kucinich and Gravel, supporting full marriage rights for same-sex couples most of the scrutiny went to Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Clinton: All of them proclaimed their support for civil unions that provide many partnership rights to same-sex couples but do not constitute marriage under the law.
“The country isn’t there yet,” said Richardson of his opposition to gay marriage. “Civil unions with full marriage rights is achievable.”
Clinton described her opposition as “a personal position,” adding that marriage laws should be determined by state legislatures.
Obama, who served in the Illinois Senate for eight years prior to his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, would not say if he would have voted for a bill to legalize gay marriage. “It depends on how the bill would’ve come up,” he said.
In one of the most direct moments of the night, Edwards backtracked on recent comments that his personal faith influenced his opposition to gay marriage. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Edwards said, adding, “My position on same-sex marriage has not changed. I believe strongly in civil unions.”
The discussion also focused heavily on the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, a 1996 statute that was crafted by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by a Democrat, President Bill Clinton, who is married to Hillary Clinton. The law prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage.
Edwards went the farthest in calling for an outright repeal of the law. “We desperately need to get rid of DOMA,” Edwards said. Edwards has said he would not have voted for the bill if he had been in the Senate in 1996.
Richardson was a member of the U.S. House in 1996 and did vote for the DOMA bill. But he said he backed it as part of an effort to block conservatives from pushing through a more stringent measure, a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Richardson described DOMA as “a cheap political way to decimate a bad initiative.”
Clinton, whose husband was heavily criticized by gay rights groups for signing the law, gave a more defensive response, saying it helped Democratic candidates in 2004 deflect Republican efforts to brand them as pro-gay marriage.
“DOMA provided great protection against the Republican strategy to cynically use marriage as a political tool,” she said. But she expressed support for repealing the section of the law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, leaving in place only the section that gives states jurisdiction over marriage laws.
Most Uncomfortable Moment: Capehart grilled Richardson for using the Spanish word for the anti-gay epithet “faggot” on the Don Imus radio show in March 2006, then asked Richardson pointedly if he believes being gay is a personal choice or an inherent biological trait.
Richardson voiced the most conservative view among the candidates. “It is a choice,” he said quickly, looking down. Etheridge repeated her question in a friendly tone, wondering aloud if Richardson did not understand her the first time.
“I’m not a scientist,” he answered. “I don’t see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people...I don’t like to answer definitions like that that are grounded in science or something else that I don’t understand.”
Most Impassioned Moment: Kucinich, one of the most vocal supporters of gay rights among the candidates, won high praise from the panel for his support of full marriage rights for homosexuals. Carlson joked that Kucinich is “so evolved” for a member of Congress and asked how he got that way. Kucinich said that, as mayor of Cleveland, he was attacked for hiring a police chief who was sympathetic to gay rights.
“To me, who cares? It really doesn’t matter,” he said, over cheers from the crowd. “Every one of us taking a stand has the potential to help any one of us evolve. That’s the gift we give to each other.”
Most Nuanced Response: For the candidates who don’t fully support legalizing same-sex marriage, the challenge at the forum was to explain their positions on issues in a way that made them palatable to the gay constituency, while not alienating the majority of voters who are not gay.
All the candidates endorsed repealing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ ban on gays in the military, but Clinton had a little more to prove. She was first lady when the law was signed by President Clinton in 1993, and said she only came out against the policy in 1999.
Clinton said that at the time the law was enacted, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was meant to be a defensive bill designed to prevent more restrictive measures that moderates as well as conservatives might have been tempted to endorse.
Best Line: “Back then, mainstream media marginalized me. Oh, I was a maverick. Oh, I was ‘Kooky Gravel.’ Well, I tell you what, all you gotta do is live long enough that they look back and say, ‘My God, was he a courageous leader.’” — Gravel, who was initially not invited to the debate, playfully acknowledging his role as an outsider candidate in the race.
Top Point of Agreement: All the candidates agreed that federal marriage benefits should be extended to all couples, regardless of sexuality. The disagreements only b egan when candidates were asked what they would call such a union and why. While candidates who supported anything less than full marriage rights didn’t impress the moderators, they all agreed that homosexuals should be guaranteed equality under the law.
By Sara Lubbes, Josh Stager and Jesse Stanchak, CQ Staff
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