Flip-flop flap & Kerry, Part Deux

Source: The Washington Times Inside Politics by Jennifer Harper
August 12, 2004 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040812-123642-9177r.htm

Flip-flop flap
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry is living up to his reputation as a flip-flopper, according to Human Events yesterday.

"Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry has waffled again, this time on his own recollections of a supposed mission to Cambodia on Christmas of 1968," an editorial noted, citing a Kerry speech from the Senate, made in 1986.

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what is was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me," Mr. Kerry had said.

Mr. Kerry made other references to his Christmas in Cambodia in a 1979 letter to the Boston Herald.

But Kerry campaign adviser Jeh Johnson was on mop-up detail yesterday on Fox News, noting that Mr. Kerry had amended his story yet another time:

"He has corrected the record to say it was some place near Cambodia, he is not certain whether it was in Cambodia but he is certain there was some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia."


Kerry, Part Deux
"The misnamed and misguided Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is as unconstitutional and unnecessary as it is mean-spirited and malicious," Sen. John Kerry wrote in a Sept. 3, 1996, column in the Advocate.

The Democratic presidential nominee, who now says he opposes same-sex "marriage," in 1996 called the law banning federal recognition of such unions "legislative gay bashing."

"Echoing the ignorance and bigotry that peppered the discussion of interracial marriage a generation ago, the proponents of DOMA call for a caste system for marriage," Mr. Kerry wrote in the Advocate, a national magazine devoted to homosexual issues.

Mr. Kerry said supporters of DOMA were motivated by "hatred and bigotry," but the measure passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins in 1996. On July 12 that year, the House passed the bill 342-67, while the Senate approved the act 85-14 on Sept. 10, and on Sept. 21, President Clinton signed it into law.

In his Advocate column, Mr. Kerry cast himself as a leading proponent of homosexual rights: "When the Senate debated the outrageous ban on gays in the military, I knew firsthand from my tours of duty in Vietnam the bravery and distinction with which gay soldiers served their country. ... When I first came to the Senate in 1985 as part of a new generation of young Democrats, I authored the federal gay and lesbian civil rights bill."