Hillary Clinton compared her hard decision to stay married to Bill Clinton to the experience of parenting a transgender child (YouTube/ABC)
Hillary Clinton has described her decision to stay married to Bill Clinton after he was unfaithful as “gutsy”, and likened the experience to parenting a transgender child.
Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 after having an affair White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In the wake of the revelations the Clintons’ marriage came under immense scrutiny, but Hillary boldly issued a public statement reaffirming her commitment to Bill.
Appearing on Good Morning America on October 1, the Former Secretary of State said it was the “gutsiest” thing she’d ever done, alongside running for president. She was later asked about this comment on ABC’s The View.
“You know, for some people that I’ve known the right thing was take your kids and go, clean out your bank accounts, don’t look back,” she said. “For other people, you know, get into a negotiation and figure out whether you want to stay.
“In my case, after really hard, hard thinking about it, counselling, praying, all the things that I did and that we went through, I just decided it was the right decision for me but that doesn’t mean it was an easy decision. It was a really hard decision.”
Clinton, 71, continued by comparing this hard “moment of decision” to that of parents considering how to act when their child tells them they are transgender.
“Sometimes when your child has an issue — I had a friend a few years ago who called up and said ‘I don’t know who to talk to about this, but my little girl wants to be a boy. What do I do?’ And, you know, several of us kind of — we didn’t know what to do, we never had a friend who’d faced that before,” she said.
“Several of us kind of read everything and talked to people and gave her advice and it was really gutsy for her to say okay, ‘I’m going to respect the feelings of my child as hard as it is for me to understand this.’
“So, I think when the question was asked, personally, everybody faces a moment of decision, and you have to reach deep down inside and decide what’s right for you to do and hopefully it’s reached with love and understanding.”
Clinton reaffirmed her support for the transgender community earlier this year on the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
On this #TransDayOfVisibility, let’s affirm that we see, stand by, and celebrate our transgender friends, family, and neighbors. pic.twitter.com/NfvXJbcAzw
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 31, 2019
And on International Women’s Day in 2018 she paid tribute to a transgender woman, Danica Roem, who was elected as the first out trans state representative in the US.