Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not buying Hillary Clinton’s excuse that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law by her husband in 1996, was a defensive measure aimed at protecting gay people.

“To my mind, I think the evidence is very, very clear that that legislation was anti-gay legislation, it was playing off the fears of a lot of Americans,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

DOMA made the federal definition of marriage the union between one man and one woman and allowed traditional-marriage states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other states.