The rewriting of history: DOMA and DADT

I need to start by saying that I didn't know what the initials DADT stood for. But I ended up in an online discussion about the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) when someone started to mention DADT; Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You may have heard Bill Clinton say, recently, that he "didn't want" to pass don't ask, don't tell... but that he was forced to. He implied heavily that it was conservatives who made him do it. So lets start there.

Don't ask don't tell was passed into law in 1993. Since then, Obama has repeatedly said that he was going to repeal it. Let's go back in time.

1993 was the 102nd/103rd, congress in the house of representatives.
The 102nd congress was made up of 267 democrats and 167 republicans.
The 103rd congress was made up of 258 democrats and 176 republicans.
It would have been statistically impossible for Republicans to not only get a bill passed on their own, but steamroll it through.
The process started in the house, as the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy was put into a congressional defense spending bill.

In the Senate, 22 members voted "No" on Don't ask, Don't tell. 18 of those members were Republicans. 4 senators who voted "No" were Democrats.

Here's the vote in the House for DOMA:
As expected, all but one Republican voted Yes.
Not expected? 118 Democrats voted yes, while only 65 voted no.

The next time someone tells you that Republicans made it impossible for the Democrats to oppose DOMA or DADT, please send them those links.