2016 Georgia Presidential Primary

Hilary Clinton early favorite among LGBT Democratic voters

is right. Note to my friends Bill and #Hillary: Pls stop saying DOMA was to prevent something worse. It wasn’t, I was there.”

The Sanders campaign is eager to point out those two votes to LGBT voters, with campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs telling Georgia Voice, “When you look at his record and find out more about him, our experience is the more people know about him, the more they like him. He didn’t have to think about it, he voted against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He didn’t have to think about it, he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act.”

But after that, things get a little tricky.

Despite his votes against the two anti-LGBT laws, Sanders has remained silent on marriage equality for much of his career, explaining for years after those two votes that they were based more on constitutional grounds and government overreach.

Both candidates evolved on marriage equality, as President Barack Obama and many others have over time, with Sanders coming out publicly for it in 2009 and Clinton following him four years later, a few months after she left the State department. But Clinton did struggle with the topic in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross in 2014, and didn’t say it was a constitutional right until April 2015.

One event that has stuck in the minds of numerous LGBT supporters of Secretary Clinton who we spoke to is a speech she gave before the United Nations in Geneva on International Human Rights Day in 2011. She devoted the entire 30-minute speech to LGBT rights, with the line, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” leaving an indelible mark consider-