3 Queer Questions We Hope Lena Dunham Asked Hillary Clinton

Lena Dunham is launching the website for her femininst newsletter, Lenny Letter, next week. She released a teaser yesterday from an interview with Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton that will go live next Tuesday. 

In the clip, Lena asks Hillary, "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" Hillary answers, "Yes, absolutely!" The exchange between the two shows that they have good chemistry, but it made me think, what did Lena ask her about her position on LGBT issues?

In her 2011 speech at the United Nations, Hillary was Secretary of State, she spoke about LGBT rights and said, "Being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights."

But she wasn't always so progressive about LGBT topics. Recently, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative newspaper, obtained audio recordings of Taylor Branch, a close friend of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, who interviewed them for an oral history project, talking about how his wife, Hillary Clinton, feels about "the gay agenda."

In the recording, Branch says:

“[Bill] came in and he said, ‘You know I’ve had much more contact in my life with gay people than Hillary has. He said, ‘I think she’s really a little put off by some of this stuff.’ [Bill] said, ‘Generally I support the gay agenda right down the line. He said [signing Don't Ask Don't Tell] was hard for me, and I’m sure there are still a few things that are hard for me to swallow.'"

As recently as 2013, Clinton said she supported civil unions, but not marriage equality. In a Senate debate over marriage equality from 2004, Hillary Clinton said:

"I believe that marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman." 

People have accused Clinton of flip-flopping on LGBT issues, and in an interview on NPR with Terry Gross, she addressed the accusations. He asked her why she changed her position, and Clinton was bothered by the assumption that she only flipped her view for political capital. “I think you’re trying to say that, you know, I used to be opposed and now I’m in favor and I did it for political reasons and that’s just flat wrong.”

Now, flash-forward to 2015, she is selling LGBT pride merch on her website. You can buy a "pride pack" for only $35.00. It comes with six buttons, six bumper stickers, and a t-shirt. She celebrated marriage equality on her Instagram by posting this photo and captioning it, "Love won." 

 

Love won.

A photo posted by Hillary Clinton (@hillaryclinton) on

Jun 26, 2015 at 7:18am PDT

It's great to see a candidate progress on issues, but here are some questions we hope Dunham addresses in her interview next week:

1. 40 percent of all homeless youth are LGBT. What do you plan to do to help alleviate homelessness amongst LGBT youth? 

2. How will you protect LGBT people from religious discrimination laws? They basically give businesses a "license to discriminate," which could allow them to refuse service to LGBT people.

3. Transgender immigrants are routinely placed in detention cells with detainees of their opposite gender. They have experienced rape, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. What is Hillary's plan to create a solution for this issue?

What LGBT-related questions do you hope Lena asked Hillary? Let us know in the comments.