One of the most egregious mistakes of Bill Clinton’s tenure as President—a politically-motivated blunder that almost rivaled his unconscionable rejection of a needle exchange program, which medical evidence clearly demonstrated would save millions of lives—was his signing into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), less than two months before his re-election of 1996.

Caving into rampant fundamentalist Christian homophobia—and a National GOP Platform which endorsed DOMA and didn’t want States to be forced to recognize same sex marriages—Clinton signed the law which defended all marriages except those between two individuals of the same sex, because he feared he’d lose the election to Senator Bob Dole if he didn’t, despite polls which showed he was never in serious trouble of being beaten by the duller-than-dull Dole.  Clinton clobbered Dole by a 220 electoral vote margin.

Years later, after state and federal court cases began to accumulate against DOMA’s clear 14th Amendment equal protection clause violations, Clinton, on his “Mea Culpa” tour to apologize for all the slippery, cowardly actions he took as President (Don’t’ Ask, Don’t Tell, DOMA, Needle Exchange, Welfare Repeal), invented the excuse that he feared if he rejected DOMA, the GOP—in control of both houses of Congress—would pass a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages.

Evan Wolfson, who headed the National Freedom to Marry Coalition, at the time—one of the foremost “Marriage For All” advocacy organizations in the nation–called out Clinton’s lame excuse for what it was:  “Complete nonsense. The idea that people were swallowing DOMA in order to prevent a constitutional amendment is really just historic revisionism and not true.  That was never an argument made in the ‘90’s”.

Having been there at the time, and following the debate very closely, I can affirm that Wolfson was precisely correct, and Clinton was lying.  On December 12, 1996—three months after Clinton signed DOMA into law–and exactly 26 years to the day before it was finally repealed by the President Joe Biden’s signing into law “The Respect for Marriage Act,” I wrote a column entitled “Marriage For All,” which appeared in newspapers across Long Island, New York.

I have reprinted my column “American Tune” from the North Shore Newspaper Group, entitled “Marriage For All,” from December 12, 1996.  The fact that after decades of struggle, organizing and leadership from many LGBTQ organizations and politicians as diverse as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice-President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden, “marriage for all” was finally achieved 26 years later, from the day my article added its voice of advocacy for it, completes a circle that has been a long-time coming.  The text of my 1996 column is below:

“In her powerful book, “The War Against the Jews, 1933-45,” Lucy Dawidowicz recounts the chilling history of the Nuremberg Laws, which legalized discrimination against Germany’s Jews. 

“As once before in 1933, and now in 1935, “ Dawidowitz writes, “the violence of anti-Semitism was channeled into law…the so-called Nuremberg Laws, were adopted unanimously by the Reichstag on September 15, 1935. 

“These laws,” she continues, “legitimated racist anti-Semitism and turned the ‘purity of German Blood,’ into a legal category.  They forbade marriage and extra-marital relations between Germans and Jews.”

The basic provisions of the “Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” were uncomplicated: ”Marriage between Jews and nationals of German kindred blood was forbidden; extramarital relations between the two groups were forbidden.”

Adolf Hitler himself provided the rationale for the Nazi’s racist legislation in his book “Mein Kampf:  “Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.”  

Dawidowicz noted that Hitler had already conceived of the State’s regulating marriage for racial purposes when he wrote in Mein Kampf:  “A Folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of continuous defilement of the race, and give it to the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities half-way between man and ape.”

And, in what is probably his most famous statement on marriage, Hitler wrote:  “Marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve the higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and race.  This alone is its’ meaning and task.”

Yet, Hitler and the Nazis were not the only government officials who enacted and enforced “laws” restricting marriage by race or religion.  Up until 1967, when the Loving vs. Virginia US Supreme Court decision struck down laws banning interracial marriages, many American states throughout the South had laws against miscegenation, or mixed-race marriages, in existence since the founding of the United States.   Those states had prohibited marriage or cohabitation between Blacks and Whites.

Now, there are new targets of marriage restrictions in 20 states and by the United States of America.  These targets, not selected by religious beliefs or skin color, have also been accused of “defilement of the race,” or of not serving the “higher goal” of marriage, “the increase and preservation of the species and the race.”  These new targets just happen to be of the same sex, and to have committed the crime of being in love, and wanting to spend their lives together—with all of the legal protections accorded all married couples.

Even before a judge in Hawaii ruled last week (November, 1996) that it was unconstitutional to continue to ban same sex marriages, opponents on the Far Right had already pressured lawmakers in 20 states and in Congress to declare that they wouldn’t recognize such marriages as legitimate, even if another state did.

Such action to deny the validity of the future action of a sister state is unprecedented in American history, and in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution which requires that “full faith and credit shall be given each state to the public acts, records and proceedings of every other state.”

The targets of this new brand of legalized hate may be different this time; they not be Jews, or Blacks, though some are.  They are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters and friends, and all of us—entitled to the same fundamental human rights protected by the Constitution, by a commitment to equality, and by conscience.”

@copyright 1996, North Shore Newspaper Group.

(Thirty months ago, back in July 2020, I urged Dr. Tony Fauci to resign from the Trump Administration in protest, and spill the beans about Trump’s terrible handling of the COVID Pandemic, which has killed 1.2 million Americans as of November 2022.  Fortunately, Dr. Fauci paid no attention to my advice.  He opted to tenaciously stick it out among the troglodytes of the Trump Administration, and continued to speak truth to power, from within.  For his toughness and his fealty to public service, Fauci—and his family—received many death threats from the anti-science, Fascist fanatics hypnotized by Donald Trump. 

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This week, scientific charlatan, and South African-born Elon Musk—who has turned Twitter into a cesspool of lies and misinformation since taking it over—called for Fauci to be prosecuted for his medical science leadership in public health. It was an odd attack coming from an odd man, whose family profited under Apartheid, especially since Musk—who acknowledges he is on the Autism Spectrum—ignored the decades of Anti-Vaxxer fraud and damage directed at autistic individuals, from many of the same Know-Nothings who opposed the COVID vaccines.  Instead, Dr. Fauci, who at 82 years old, will end his 54 year long stellar public health career at the end of this year, wrote a courageous and compelling op-ed in the New York Times urging young people to continue seeking to save lives by working in public health.

Fauci’s unfailing tenacity, toughness and devotion to medical science, public health and vaccine research & distribution, have all been proven by circumstances to be correct, and may be responsible for saving and enhancing hundreds of thousands of lives.   Trump, meanwhile is facing criminal prosecution on many fronts, and Musk’s businesses, and his bizarre theories, are collapsing.  In tribute to Dr. Fauci, I am reposting my vote of confidence in his devotion to medical science, public service, and the truth.)

I tried to warn you, Tony.

Three months ago — almost to the day — I wrote an article urging you to speak the unfettered truth about how Donald Trump was incompetently mishandling the federal response to the COVID 19 Pandemic, resulting in record-breaking infection and death in the United States.

Instead, you made the General Mattis mistake; you figured that, based upon the strength of your own character, you could change things from within, ignoring the wise counsel of the writer Rick Wilson, that “Everything Trump Touches, Dies.” Now, it’s your turn to be dirtied and discredited by the Garbage Pail-in-Chief, a pernicious pathogen of a President.

I tried to warn you to step out and bring the Science-denying sociopath down. You didn’t listen. Now, he’s coming for you.

You’ve been Director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases since the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, and the only believable spokesperson in the Trump Administration on the COVID 19 pandemic.

Your fashion-consumed colleague Dr. Deborah Birx, the Administration’s Corona Virus Response Coordinator — a job she has flamboyantly failed at — crushed her own credibility by telling the Christian Broadcasting Network the preposterous lie that “The President is so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data.”

Unlike “Ambassador” Birx, who comes across like a wealthy dilettante, bemoaning being unable to host “dinner parties for 20 yet,” because of social distancing, you are a down-to-earth, likeable 79-year old, highly educated Italian public health professional from Brooklyn — still bearing scraps of your Brooklyn accent.

Who couldn’t like a regular guy who played basketball in High School, rooted for the Yankees despite growing up on Brooklyn Dodger turf, had a Zoom talk with the Warriors’ Steph Curry, and wears a Washington National’s mask to Congressional Hearings?

That training in street toughness, highlighted in a New Yorker article by Michael Specter, and entitled, “How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor,” should have made you fight more furiously, against the anti-science prejudice and profit-over-patients Darwinism infecting the Trump White House. Unfortunately, like the good point guard you were on your high school team, you chose to stay in your lane and be a team player, when it was the team itself that was utterly corrupt, immoral and incompetent to the marrow of its bones.

I urged you to use your enormous credibility and popularity: last month’s Sienna College Poll had you clobbering Trump 67%-26% on the question of trust with the American public. Your approval rating is even higher today, as Trumps sinks into the sewer from where he was spawned.

 I begged you to forcefully expose the lies and intentional falsehoods by Trump and the always bizarre Alex Azar, an oleaginous former Big Pharma executive, which resulted in thousands of unnecessary COVID deaths — including a beloved member of my family, and a younger, former colleague.

It’s still not too late, Tony, to use the force of the facts, of your character and your moral and popular standing, to save lives before the number of COVID deaths in this country tops 200,000. (NOTE:  As of July, 2020).

It’s time for you to resign in protest and expose all of the lies, stupidities and criminal negligence of the Bleach Belching Imbecile in the Oval Office. I’m sure the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, funded by Mike Bloomberg, would continue to fund your important work, and Joe Biden’s campaign would give you a big enough megaphone to get your public health messages out to millions of Americans. You could do a COVID Zoom conference call with Biden each day, and the whole world will be watching. And, unlike Trump, Biden will listen and understand the urgency to act.

You have far more power today — with nearly 50 years of solid scientific, public health work in your corner. And you have far, far more, widespread public support now during this COVID pandemic than you have had at any time in your distinguished career.

As far back as Easter Sunday — a date Trump pulled out of one of his orifices to have all churches “beautifully open,” — you told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union:

“Obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. But, there was a lot of pushback about shutting things early in the outbreak.”

At that point, three months ago, the United States had just surpassed 20,000 COVID-related deaths. Today, we’re approaching seven times that number, and you still haven’t told us about the pushback against shutting things down. It’s time to blow the whistle, Tony.

No one else has the enormous capacity, knowledge, record of accomplishment, depth of expertise, passion for public health, and track record in getting a huge bureaucracy to move into action as you do, Tony. But now, the deadly virus of Trump’s venality, ignorance and vituperation, have been turned on you. And even a surgical mask & gobs of hand sanitizer won’t keep those grotesque germs away.

It is no longer possible for you to stay where you are, to do, as you told the New Yorker, “everything possible to stop the worst from happening.” The worst of the COVID pandemic is happening despite your best efforts, because Trump and his evil enablers have taken the ball out of your hands, and put you on the bench.

They are coming for you, Tony, but we have your back, if you’ll let us. You once asked the key question about the Reagan Administration’s glacial response to AIDS, “Why wasn’t the Administration moving faster?” as Michael Spector wrote in the New Yorker.

You’ve struggled mightily to raise this question everyday from inside the Trump Administration, but they don’t want to hear your truth anymore. Instead, they’ve chosen to trash you. Get out now. Your team is US, not them.

I thought I knew pretty much everything about the 2011 attempted assassination of former Arizona Member of Congress, Gabby Giffords, and her remarkable and arduous recovery from being shot in the head.  Then I watched an eye-opening CNN documentary about her entitled Won’t Back Down, and was inspired anew.  As the son of a strong woman who fought polio for 92 years, few things move me like the daily, determined struggle to overcome disability.

Giffords’ story is astonishing, as is the unshakeable love story between her and Mark Kelly, an astronaut and genuine American hero—whose bald head reminds me of a modern day Dwight D. Eisenhower.  I love watching how he still takes her hand and gently guides her through crowds each time she speaks.  I love Gabby’s inspiring story for all of us, to never give up; I love how much Mark Kelly loves her.  This is the essence of life, and love, and hope, and the right stuff we like to see in our leaders, and ourselves.

Following Kelly’s recent re-election as a Democratic Senator from Arizona, winning his first full-term to fill the seat of John McCain—another American hero– the national Democratic Party should be fixated on figuring out a way to put Mark Kelly on the 2024 ticket. 

Biden, an octogenarian who’ll be 82 if he runs for re-election, needs to follow the graceful example set by Nancy Pelosi, also 82, and embrace smart, succession planning, to clear the way for a new generation of leadership.  At 58 years old—even though he looks older–Kelly clearly fits in that category, as do many other promising Democrats, including Kamala Harris, also 58; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who turns 41 in January, 2023; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, age 52; New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, 53, and Colorado Congressman Jason Crow, age 43.

With such a deep Democratic bench of raw political and public service talent, it’s time for Biden to take the advice of one his political heroes, JFK, and “pass the torch to a new generation.”  He can take pride in a whole list of accomplishments during his term:  from defeating Trump, to saving the nation from a calamitous COVID response, rescuing the economy from ruin, and passing the largest infrastructure rebuilding program ever.  His elevation of the first female Vice-President in American history was also enormously consequential. 

 Good job, Joe; but now, it’s time to go.  I know that it’s tough for someone accustomed to center stage for 50 years to step out of the spotlight.  But, your legacy may well depend on how smoothly you leave.

If the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, it might be easier for Biden to ensure that legacy and step down before the end of his term.  Such a bold move could give Kamala Harris, the advantage of incumbency heading into 2024, permitting the nation’s first female President, to pick the perfect Vice-President— a heroic and humane figure, with broad bipartisan appeal like Mark Kelly– ready to assume office immediately.  Biden’s self-less stepping aside could neutralize the Hunter Biden hangmen of the GOP, and force the country’s focus on a new generation of exciting, pioneering leadership and issues of urgency to Gen Z and Millenials, like climate change, gun safety, and the right of individual bodily autonomy. 

In such a scenario, to preserve the Democrats’ Senate Majority, the newly elected Democratic Governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, would have to immediately fill Kelly’s Senate seat with a new progressive Democrat, like Latino Congressman Ruben Gallego, a 43-year old Iraq War veteran and rising progressive star.  The possibilities for diversity, youth and a newly energized electorate would be unlimited.

Unfortunately, the 25th Amendment, and the takeover of the House of Representatives by a collection of crazies from Marjorie Taylor Greene, to Jim Jordan to Matt Gaetz, and Arizona’s own ghoul, Paul Gosar—despised by his own family– puts the kabosh on my dream sequence. 

Passed in 1967 following the assassination of JFK four years earlier, the 25th Amendment requires that any person appointed to fill the Vice-Presidency be approved by both Houses of Congress.  It was tested twice in the decade after the Amendment’s passage, when Nixon replaced the disgraced, indicted, bribe-taking, avatar of corruption Spiro Agnew, with Gerald Ford in 1973, and again the following year, when Nixon himself resigned, and Ford—who assumed the Presidency—nominated Nelson Rockefeller to the Vice-Presidency.  Although the Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House for each vote, Ford and Rockefeller, both Republicans, were approved in the interest of national unity.

It’s unlikely an uncontrollable, chaotic GOP-slimed House would care one iota about the national interest, even if, God forbid, Biden died or became incapacitated during his last two years in office. A dysfunctional deadlock in the House of Representatives over a new Vice-President, would keep Kevin McCarthy, or whom ever becomes Speaker, as next in line for the Presidency until the next election–a terrifying thought. 

It’s doubtful that GOP dark-money groups, having just polluted Arizona’s fresh, clean air with tens of millions of dirty dollars in a failed attempt to defeat Mark Kelly, would lay low during Congressional confirmation hearings.  They clearly understood and feared the power of Kelly’s cross-party, All-American appeal, and the lock on the White House he could bring the Dems—generating even greater national visibility for his wife Gabby Giffords to fight for gun safety.  The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, in lockstep with Leonard Leo, would be apoplectic, having nightmares of Assault Weapon Bans, background check legislation, and a steady stream of rational, intelligent, compassionate Democratic judicial nominees.

So, we’ll just have to keep fighting for the future the way we’ve been doing for decades:  in an open set of 2024 Democratic primaries to choose the next Presidential candidate.  Only to make it truly open, President Biden has to announce sometime in 2023, that he’s not running for re-election; that he’s accomplished what he set out to do, especially cultivating a new crop of highly qualified successors, to continue.

Such a bold, Biden move would demonstrate that Democrats—like the courageous and inspirational Gabby Giffords–Won’t Back Down, and are unafraid of passing the torch of public service over to a new generation of leaders, ready to take on the battles for democracy, decency, human rights, economic and social justice and equality for all.  

After all, it’s the American way.

The first time I met Josh Shapiro, he didn’t strike me as Ted Lasso, the way the brilliant writer David Sirota described him earlier this month, in his piece “The Democrat Who Picks Fights with Bad Guys,”  (https://www.levernews.com/the-democrat-standing-between-america-and-fascism/).

After all, Shapiro, the Governor-elect of Pennsylvania, and I met four years ago in April, 2018, two years before the upbeat Ted Lasso entered America’s consciousness on television, and six months before hate and anti-Semitism murdered 11 Jews quietly worshipping at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg on an ordinary Saturday morning.

Serendipity brought our families together at Beth Sholom Synagogue, in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, on a similar Saturday morning across the State. Carol Villano and I were there to celebrate the 90th birthday of the matriarch of Carol’s family, Ethel “Etty” Jacobson Hamburger.

Shapiro’s family, like our beloved Etty’s, also belonged to the only synagogue in the United States designed by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and declared a National Historic Landmark.   Josh Shapiro was there to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of his son, Jonah, who, two years later would achieve instant internet fame by casually walking in on his father’s November 2020, MSNBC post-election interview, as then Pennsylvania AG Shapiro explained his legal challenges to Trump’s Presidential election deniers.

Twenty years earlier, with Josh Shapiro fresh out of Georgetown Law and living in DC, we first visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural “tribute to Mount Sinai,” when Etty, then 70, and her granddaughter Stephanie, both made their Bat Mitzvahs.     The synagogue’s soaring design—with its’ translucent glass roof reaching skyward, and the graceful melding of geometric shapes in every detail– mesmerized and inspired me.

 During long Hebrew riffs in services that I didn’t always fully understand, my eyes would wander up and down the fiberglass walls of the Temple, and up 110 feet to the crest of the ceiling, marveling at every meticulous detail in metal, wood, stone or glass.  Being at Beth Sholom, was a feast for every sense, and left me feeling uplifted.

So it was in that context, bathed in the soft, filtered light passing through the luminescent roof of this Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, that we were introduced to Josh Shapiro and his family by our Etty, and her oldest daughter, Pam.  Most of her fellow synagogue members knew Etty, since, a decade earlier, she was honored as “Congregant of the Year” at Beth Sholom.  That’s just who she was.

At the Oneg celebration following that morning’s services to literally “break (challah) bread” with the other families sharing joys of life that day (like the Shapiros), Etty waved us over to where they were sitting. 

“Carol, Steve,” Etty called to us, reaching out her arm.  “Come, come–you’ve got to meet our State’s Attorney, Josh Shapiro. I was just telling him of your work with Mario Cuomo, and of the book you wrote all about it.”

This was Ethel Jacobson Hamburger at her cheerleading, family-advocacy best.

Ever since I entered the family 46 years earlier (and later converted to Judaism), I fell head over heels in love with the woman.  She embraced us wandering Jews, for Shabbat dinners and Jewish Holidays, and was there to help us out when our son, Matt, was born in Washington, DC, in 1975, (two years after Josh Shapiro was born), and was present in New York to celebrate Matt’s Bar Mitzvah, 13 years later.    It was as natural as sunshine for Etty to become a booster for my memoir, “Tightrope:  Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother,” when it was published in 2017.  It’s just who she was.

She arranged a “book talk” for me at Martin’s Run, the senior care facility where she was living outside of Philadelphia in the Fall of 2017, and filled the room with dozens of her fellow residents—aged 80 to 100—who were interested in learning how to write their own memoirs.

A former teacher, founder of libraries, and a literacy maven, Etty had some practical, and loving, advice for me on how she, at age 89, would help sell my book.

“Steve,” she said.  “I’ve put together a list of many Jewish publications in and around Philadelphia, and I think it would be advantageous for you to contact them before you come down here.”

“ I love this idea, Etty,” I responded.  “Plus, I may be the only new author with an 89-year old Jewish grandmother for my press agent.”

Etty kvelled and smiled her sweet smile:  “Great grandmother,” she added, to be more precise.

So, Josh Shapiro— the up and coming Pennsylvania politician and national political figure, and as Dave Sirota wrote, “cheery mensch your Jewish grandmother really wanted you to be,” had met his match.  Etty entertained him with her generous review of my book, and felt that because of our similar commitments to make our faith come alive through compassionate, inclusive, and progressive public service, it was fate that we meet.  She was merely fate’s facilitator, a Yentl, of sorts.

Not even the brilliant, natural light that poured in through the panels of Frank Lloyd Wrights’ “luminous Mount Sinai,” could match the warmth and brightness of Ethel Jacobson Hamburger’s sparkling smile that day, her 90th birthday.  I cannot think of Josh Shapiro and his battles against injustice and hate, without thinking of Etty’s love and gratitude.

I think of her, and Josh Shapiro, and the moment we met inside the heart of Frank Lloyd Wright’s concrete & glass ode to exultation, and I permit myself to, once again, have hope for humanity.

I am ALL 12 angry men.

I am a truthful man,

Furious at the evil hate and fear

Of strong women, by flaccid, weak men;

Shriveled souls, hell-bent on complete control,

To compensate for un-faced failures, buried deep inside dark holes.

I am a Caucasian man,

Enraged at so many vile, bigoted White people,

Ignorance etched into every pore,

Proud of their prejudices; poisoned to the core.

I am the descendant of Italians,

Disgusted by the pig-headedness of many brothers

Whose names end in vowels, but think with their bowels,

Forgetting when our people were the “others.”

I am a Jew by choice,

Refusing to mute my voice,

When Christians, I once was, and knew,

Campaign to erase all living, and dead, Jews.

Nor do I support Theocratic Israeli Jews,

Who think they have nothing to lose,

By resorting to that same Rule by Hate,

To justify a Jewish State, as if that breaks the chain.

I am a grandfather of girls,

Determined to repair and improve their worlds,

So they can live in peace and calm,

Free from all violence or any harm.

I am a man closing in on death,

Who’ll fight until my dying breath,

For freedom to love, and live and think,

That could be gone in but a blink

If we shut our eyes to injustice and pain,

Our legacy, forever stained.

I am a student of the law,

Passionate about fairness and playing by the rules,

With zero tolerance for arrogant fools,

Who demand order, for all but their own ghouls.

I am an angry man, demanding dignity for all,

Detesting acts so cruel and mean and small,

Protesting “jokes” and winks, to purposely berate,

Or anything from anyone which masquerades the hate.

I am a father and a lover,

Fierce in the protection of my loves,

And of the other, who, unsheltered, or without embrace,

Have no less need to be seen, or feel a caring eye upon their face.

I am the son of immigrants, and of imagination,

Of dreams, of values, of hope, and indignation

That incantations about equality and fairness are goals, not actual,

That until achieved, are far, far, less than satisfactual.

I am an ethical human child, whose present is my future;

Who, despite my age, will not be mild in my rage for what is right,

Nor sit silently through the dreadful, deepening night,

Knowing that beauty and life and love depend upon our light.