The Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton Will Not Break Up Over the Question of Gay Marriage

The endless parsing of the marriage between former President Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flared up recently when she bristled at a questioner who asked during her tour of Africa what her husband thought about an issue involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and China.

But on the issue of gay marriage, we can happily report there doesn't seem to be any room for disagreement between the Clintons.

When Ms. Clinton was campaigning in Oregon last year for the Democratic presidential nomination, WW asked during a 20-minute interview what she thought about her husband signing the Defense of Marriage Act when he was president. She said in that 2008 interview that DOMA "enabled us to prevent the [2006] Federal Marriage Amendment from passing."

Her husband, in an appearance before Netroots Nation that turned confrontational over gay rights, said, "We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states."

"I didn't like signing DOMA, and I certainly didn't like the constraints that were put on benefits," he continued. "I've done everything I could — and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees."

If you want to watch the whole exchange, here's the clip (the DOMA stuff is about four minutes in after the ex-president sounds off on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell").

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uciy6G_1t0w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwonkette%2Ecom%2F410520%2Fbill%2Dclinton%2Daddresses%2Dangry%2Dgay%2Dbloggers%2Dabout%2Dgay%2Dstuff&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]