Hillary Clinton Wins Endorsement of Human Rights Campaign, A Major Gay Rights Organization
Hillary Clinton has received the endorsement of gay-rights organization Human Rights Campaign, a group which promises to mobilize LGBTQ voters to register and vote for the Democratic front-runner, the agency announced on its website Tuesday.
Among current Democratic possible presidential contenders, Clinton has been the most outspoken proponent of same-sex marriage and gay rights, and has been so for the longest time. This means that her endorsement from Human Rights Campaign was not unexpected, according to CNN, but will nevertheless help shore up the candidate’s liberal base.
Despite her less-than-perfect record when it comes to same-sex marriage, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said, in a statement Tuesday, that with Hillary in the White House, the gains that have been made in LGBTQ rights in recent years are likely to continue. If a Republican were to win, he said, LGBTQ people and their allies can expect the clock to turn backward on gay rights.
“All the progress we have made as a nation on LGBT equality — and all the progress we have yet to make — is at stake in November. In most states, LGBT people are still at risk of being fired, evicted or denied services simply because of who they are… Against this backdrop, we’ve heard the leading Republican presidential candidates repeatedly threaten to block our progress, and to revoke, repeal, and overturn the gains we’ve made during President Obama’s two terms. While they fight to take us backwards, Hillary Clinton is fighting to advance LGBT equality across our nation and throughout the world. We are proud to endorse Hillary Clinton for president, and believe that she is the champion we can count on in November — and every day she occupies the Oval Office.”
In particular, Human Rights Campaign is pleased with Clinton’s support for the Equality Act, a bill that would offer explicit, clear, and permanent non-discrimination protections for LGBT people at the federal level. Clinton also supports outlawing so-called “conversion therapy” for minors (a practice Human Rights Campaign calls “dangerous”); supports ending the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military; and supports making HIV treatment and prevention affordable.
Further, Hillary has been an advocate for LGBTQ rights outside of the U.S. Speaking to the United Nations in 2011, in her role as then-U.S. Secretary of State, strongly advocated for gay rights across the globe, saying that gay rights are human rights. Her remarks came at a time when several nations across the world were making headlines for their increasingly harsh stances on LGBTQ rights. For example, in 2009, Uganda’s parliament considered a bill that would put adults who engage in homosexual acts in prison, a bill which was passed into law in 2013.
Clinton’s Republican opponents in the 2016 presidential race have positions on LGBTQ rights that are at odds with those of Human Rights Campaign. Republican front-runner Donald Trump, for example, has been mostly silent about the issue, although has said that he “supports traditional marriage,” according to the Washington Post. The other major Republican candidates have also said they support “traditional marriage,” although Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have both said that, since the Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, there are bigger issues for conservatives to debate about.
Hillary Clinton will formally accept Human Rights Campaign’s endorsement at a fundraising event in Iowa this Sunday.
[Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images]
