Gay community: Don't give up on Obama yet
The GLBTQ community's concern about Obama failing to keep his campaign promises has me worried. I have faith that he's going to keep his end of the bargin, but for days I've had no way to articulate that except with the old-fashioned earnestness of, "Come on! Give him a chance!" I also have felt a bit uncomfortable under the stares and the implication that Hillary would have done differently. I finally decided to talk to someone who's political experience and opinion I could trust to help me make sense of the conflict.
Roey Thorpe - GLBT activist and current political director of Planned Parenthood - had this to say: "What president in history has ever done anything for the gay community? Only Barack Obama." She kept going: "What president has even said the word gay? Bill Clinton did, then he looked us in the eye and signed DOMA."
In five months, Barack Obama has already done more for the GLBT community that any president in history by extending benefits to domestic partners. By all measures he seems to want to keep going. He has never stopped saying that he'll work to repeal DOMA and he continues to say the words "gay" and "lesbian" without lowering his tone of voice or looking away from the camera. Obama went as far as penning a personal letter to a solider - discharged for coming out - saying he would do something about Don't Ask Don't Tell.
I don't want the pressure to let up on President Obama, but I don't want committed GLBTs and allies to give up on him either. Our voices need to encourage him to keep going in the quest for complete equal rights under the law. We will remind him that we are here to defend him from attacks from the Right as he makes way for GLBT freedoms and support him as he kicks down the walls. We also need to remind our members of Congress that we want them to give Obama a bill to sign.
Watch Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin talk to Rachel Maddow about what it's going to take, congressionally, for futher action:
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June 19, 2009 |
Karol Collymore | Comments (60 so far)
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Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 19, 2009 7:34:22 PM
Kristin (& rw),
There is a difference between "very rare" and an obligatory duty.
But I still would like to know what you think about the question I posed to Paul Gronke -- Let us suppose that the DoJ filed this brief not only out of duty, but because in their analysis the challenge to the law was weak legally (as Kristin posits). That could come in a weak version: that the DoJ thought the arguments unlikely to prevail given their interpretation of the law, which one could argue raises the presumptive duty to defend extant law. It could also come in a strong version: that the DoJ not only thought the arguments weak or legally wrong, but that they saw in them some principle that if accepted and applied by analogy could be destructive of other legal values that should be defended. I have no idea how the DoJ actually was thinking about those things.
But, assume they chose to defend the law out of some combination of duty and believing the challenge weak and deserving of defeat on legal grounds.
Do you defend the form in which that defense of DOMA was put forward, using many of the same most pernicious, vicious and false stereotypes and images used in bigoted arguments against same-sex marriage? Do you defend not just the fact of the brief but its forma and content?
If not, should not President Obama direct the DoJ, or persuade Attorney General Holder to do so, to withdraw the orginal brief and file an amended one not based on false and bigoted analogies and stereotypes, arguments which if they are accepted as the basis of the court's decision will themselves entrench bad, destructive and bigoted law as precedent and be cited in the political defense of DOMA when the administration does move against it legislatively (giving Obama the benefit of the doubt on his promise)?
It is not just the brief, and not even just the insulting and erroneous and grotesque and any number of other negative adjectives form and content of the brief.
It is that said form and content provides ammunition for the political struggle to repeal DOMA when that struggle is engaged.
Posted by: Assegai Up Jacksey | Jun 21, 2009 12:15:59 PM
No doubt this is the first of many, "fill in the blank", don't give up on Obama yet. Truth is, we all should.
My bellweather, lifelong Dem, still worships Hubert Humphrey, spits bile at my contention that there is no diff between the parties, this week gave up on Obama over the environment and his continuing to kidnap foreign nationals and deliver them to torture to our stooges. This month the green party in Europe ran on the best platform I've yet seen anywhere. You're in the same boat with the Republicans, but since they're more bloated, the skiff is tipped toward their end, keeping your feet dry, which you have mistaken as evidence that you're not sinking.
Obama is a fraud. Today you chose your party politics over the GLBT community. Glad Kari likes what you do. Can't believe you have any credibility left with the readership. This might be interesting. I think Jeff will bail before 4 are up. That could be interesting. T.A. is trying to rationalize how the guard's situation on the ground hasn't been affected one iota by Obama's election. I think he'll choose sides based on the resolution to that. Meanwhile the blog will continue to highlight the Dem message of the day.
Most the readership respect these writers. The conclusion will not be that they're naive or cognitively challenged, it will be that they are party hacks. I guess it's a lot easier demonstrating intellectual honesty when the other party is in power. I'd say it was disappointing, but progressives have been saying this was coming for two years. November was this board's high point. Now it's nadir time.
Posted by: Assegai Up Jacksey | Jun 22, 2009 2:09:03 AM
This needs to be taken in context of what Kari said, defending Obama on single payer, that "he only said it on an early campaign stop", on another thread.
A note of thanks to Kari for externalizing the hack mind, for us, and Karol provides a remarkable example. You see there's a point in the candidacy when statements become "record", but before that it's just...well, you can't hold them accountable for it. Unless it's unPC speech, and then you can keep tabs for as long as you like. Got it?
It was still in the "just talking" phase when Obama proposed single payer. And an end to "don't ask don't tell". And going beyond Kyoto. And ending extraordinary rendition. And getting out of Iraq.
That point is not fixed, and pols don't let you know it. Further, statements after "it counts", might be a reference to the ones that didn't. Bottom line: Obama's a good guy. Just trust him. Politics is over your head. Leave the operations to the hacks. You turn out and vote, but you then have to trust that they're implementing what you voted for. Can't trust the senses. Gotta keep your powder dry. He's forging consensus. Not worth the political capitol. He'll come good in the end. Just like Sam. He came good in the end.
And if we want more, we can wait for puppy dogs and unicorns to fly out of Kari's ass. Or Karol's more user friendly approach. We can just wait.
Posted by: James Hipps | Jun 22, 2009 7:32:33 AM
As a gay man, the managing editor of an online news source for the LGBT community, and a weekly host of a BlogTalkRadio show that deals exclusively with LGBT issues, this is EXACTLY my sentiment.
There has been no President to date who has provided any type of "hope" for the LGBT community when it comes to gaining equality and inclusion. President Obama has done more for LGBT people in his first several months in office than all the other presidents combined.
One thing so many fail to realize, he is everyone's president, and not everyone feels that the LGBT community should be equal.
I would in no way try to equate the gay rights movement to the Civil Rights Movement, but I stand firm there are many similarities. I would also like to remind people of how many years it took for people of color to be afforded equality in this country...not to mention even with the advances made, there is still a great deal of racism in the U.S.
Perhaps some feel President Obama hasn't done enough yet. Patience...this is NOT going to happen overnight and if you ever thought it was, unfortunately you were living in your own world of disillusion. Equality for the LGBT community is work in progress and we have several years of struggle left.
To all those out there who feel the president hasn't done enough, I would ask them to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask; What have I done to contribute to the equality and inclusion of the LGBT community. Why is it we feel someone should just hand our liberties to us? Why do we feel it's the obligation of someone else?
President Obama is one man. Maybe he hasn't lived up to some people's expectations, but again, I curious if those same people have lived up to their own?
Posted by: Bill | Jun 22, 2009 10:16:32 AM
It seems disingenuous to criticize Clinton for signing DOMA, while at the same time excusing Obama for defending it, and while it's true that Obama "has never stopped saying that he'll work to repeal DOMA," it is also true that he has never actually started working on it. Members of his administration make vague noises about possibly getting around to that during his second term. Maybe we'll get around to supporting their party around the same time. Maybe not.
Obama has thrown us a few tiny crumbs with a few symbolic gestures, but he and his party have done nothing to move us closer to full equality.
We're sick of the Democrats' telling our community to sit down, shut up, and trust them. Trust has to be earned, and so far Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have done absolutely nothing to earn our trust. Every day that the Obama administration continues to defend DOMA, every day that the Democrat-controlled Congress fails to act on DOMA and DADT, their party continues to lose LGBT support, and rightly so. They can have all the cocktail parties they want with their house gays; the queers in the street are through supporting a party that won't acknowledge us as full citizens.
Posted by: Roey Thorpe | Jun 22, 2009 1:06:41 PM
Oh, Anthony, that is exactly the kind of giving up on Obama that Karol is talking about and that I agree with her about. We all need to take a deep breath here. President Obama hasn't been in office even 6 months yet and is dealing with so many major issues. I personally am proud of him and I believe his promises to repeal DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Your list of disappointments just breaks my heart--not the things on the list, but that you're already making it. We expect perfection of our leaders, and we're so relentless in our criticism when they don't do everything that we, in our limited knowledge of their constraints, believe we would do in their shoes.
Isn't there a difference between loyalty and blind loyalty? I certainly don't favor the latter, but sometimes it seems like we Progressives are afraid of the former. To be loyal, to give the benefit of the doubt, is not to be less thoughtful or passionate. It's a gesture of support, to my mind the exact thing that our leaders need to create a climate for courage. Because if they're damned if they do, damned if they don't, then why bother? This isn't just about presidents, by the way--it's about everyone from community leaders on up.
I was at the inauguration and one of the most moving things for me about the experience was meeting all the older African American people who had come by bus from all across the country who said they just wanted to show up to show Obama that they were going to stand with him, and support him, and help him succeed. A lot of us could take a page out of that book.
I love what Karol said about the distinction between not letting up on the pressure but not giving up on the man. That feels right to me, emotionally and strategically.
Is Barack Obama perfect? Of course not. Will he make mistakes? Sure. But is there anyone who would make a better president? No, absolutely not, in my very strong opinion. I am so proud of him, so proud of all of us for electing him, and I believe so much that his heart, and his aim, are true.
And one more thing--we in the LGBTQ community need to start seeing more than just LGBTQ equality as our issues, and to understand that there are, in fact, things that just might be more urgent than our civil rights struggle, critically important as that is. War, economic crisis, and flu epidemic are three things that could be on that list. I know saying that is close to heresy, but really, as a person whose career and life has been dedicated to the LGBTQ equality movement, I feel it needs to be said.
Posted by: BlackRabbit | Jun 22, 2009 1:33:38 PM
You can't un-rile the internet once it's been riled. Fact remains, he may have done some things for the GLBT community, but certainly not enough things, and one would certainly not classify him as a "Fierce Advocate" for the minute steps he's sort of taken... Just because we want to like Obama, doesn't mean we have to apologize for him or be lenient with him.
Posted by: rw | Jun 22, 2009 2:10:24 PM
Roey I appreciate you encouraging GLBT folks to remember that there are others who need THIER voice and energy as much as they need others'. I think it would be good, even, to identify oneself as GLB or T sometimes when speaking passionately (if one ever does speak of anything except one's own travails...) so as to announce to the world that GLBT are NOT emotionally stunted or otherwise narcissistically damaged goods capable only of screaming for their turn now, right now. And wailing about centuries of patience and now, right now. THe now right now cry is imperative, necessary. But also occassionally sounding out one's throwness as one speaks to other issues that are of passionate concern, especially when standing up for those NOT of one's identity group... this might be a powerful and broadening act.
We are a choppy ocean. No one wavelet is getting much sustained focus. Popping up, then down then up again. Maybe if more of the chop pulled together we'd get some kinda wave...
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Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 19, 2009 7:34:21 PM
Kristin (& rw),
There is a difference between "very rare" and an obligatory duty.
But I still would like to know what you think about the question I posed to Paul Gronke -- Let us suppose that the DoJ filed this brief not only out of duty, but because in their analysis the challenge to the law was weak legally (as Kristin posits). That could come in a weak version: that the DoJ thought the arguments unlikely to prevail given their interpretation of the law, which one could argue raises the presumptive duty to defend extant law. It could also come in a strong version: that the DoJ not only thought the arguments weak or legally wrong, but that they saw in them some principle that if accepted and applied by analogy could be destructive of other legal values that should be defended. I have no idea how the DoJ actually was thinking about those things.
But, assume they chose to defend the law out of some combination of duty and believing the challenge weak and deserving of defeat on legal grounds.
Do you defend the form in which that defense of DOMA was put forward, using many of the same most pernicious, vicious and false stereotypes and images used in bigoted arguments against same-sex marriage? Do you defend not just the fact of the brief but its forma and content?
If not, should not President Obama direct the DoJ, or persuade Attorney General Holder to do so, to withdraw the orginal brief and file an amended one not based on false and bigoted analogies and stereotypes, arguments which if they are accepted as the basis of the court's decision will themselves entrench bad, destructive and bigoted law as precedent and be cited in the political defense of DOMA when the administration does move against it legislatively (giving Obama the benefit of the doubt on his promise)?
It is not just the brief, and not even just the insulting and erroneous and grotesque and any number of other negative adjectives form and content of the brief.
It is that said form and content provides ammunition for the political struggle to repeal DOMA when that struggle is engaged.