Blogs May 8, 2012 at 11:09 am

Comments

1
I recently worked with a woman in her 20s, a Mormon, who came out and left the LDS. I don't know if they tracked her movements, but apparently they harried her mother and sister out of the church for having the temerity to keep on loving her.
3
Very nice! Frank Bruni made the point wonderfully today as well:
But right now, Obama could stir up a lot of counterproductive noise and passion with an emphatic position in favor of marriage equality. And while it’s the job of advocates to focus on one issue and amass their armies on a single front, it’s the job of those who govern to promote an array of concerns and serve multiple constituencies. To do any good in office, you have to be in office.

Obama has exhibited more concern for the equal rights of gays and lesbians than his predecessors did. He ended the military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He instructed the Justice Department not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

He brags about this progress, and has a right to. But he shouldn’t expect those of us who support marriage equality to find the sound of that trumpeting so very musical. It’s a tentative, incremental bleat. And it’s especially unsatisfying from a president who’s such a moving, hopeful symbol of this country’s imperfect and incomplete journey toward full respect for all its citizens, no matter their gender, race, creed or sexual orientation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/opinio…
4
Haven't you heard, Dan? False equivalency is the new black.
5
@2, remember if you vote for a third pary liberal then you may as well vote for Hitler. (kidding, I'm voting the Democratic/Socialist party this year)

6
Obama is far and away the most LGBT-friendly President we've ever had. His record is impressive, and speaks for itself. The fact that some of us might not vote for him because he "hasn't done enough" would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. There's a real risk that Romney will win, and we have a responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.
7
@2 @5

It's not equivalent to voting for Hitler, but it is equivalent to voting for Romney, and there's no turning away from that fact. Whether you can live with that is between you and your conscience.
8
It's not the same but Obama's record on K-12 public education is no better. It is very frustrating to support someone (and I do) where the one issue you care the most about is a weak one on their part.

He is just killing public education and it's because he picked his best friend for Department of Ed.

He gets my vote but no money or support.
9
a bigot is a bigot and they're both bigots.
10
@9: everyone's a bigot about something. i, for instance, cannot abide dave matthews band fans.
11
Echoing @7 here: voting for a party that you know will never win in the current political climate is equivalent to voting for Romney, basically. You may as well not vote if you're going to throw it away.
12
I can't help but feel that Obama's major LGBT-rights push is solidly penciled in for action during his second term, and has been for some time...

Not that there's no room for criticism with such a game plan, when it's people's lives we're talking about, but... there ya have it. Politics is politics, and make no mistake.

13
I am a full on supporter and advocate of marriage equality, but it is a non-issue regarding the presidential election.

Obama is better for GLBT issues than Romney. Obama will have a better oportunity to make necessary progress as a second term president. This issue very likely will hit the supreme court in the next 2 to 3 years.

If Obama doesn't win, it will be at least another 8-12 years before we have a second term liberal president, and who knows how much damage and retrograde policy between now and then.
14
And Mitt Romney isn't Stalin, which I suppose is a reason to vote for him, too.
15
Just a point of clarification I was wondering if someone could please identify:

Wasn't the repeal of DADT effectively dead once it was removed from the Defense Authorization Act / Military Budget and Obama was happy enough to wait until after the 2010 freshman took their seats in 2011 barring a last-minute call to a couple of members to change their minds? And wasn't it until Pelosi and Reid got enough votes during the lame-duck session to quickly pass the repeal on its own measure before the changing of the guard took place?

If so, I don't see how in any way one can equate the effort to repeal DADT with a guy who sat back and just waited for it to pass his desk for his signature.
16
@14 Romney isn't running against Stalin, he's running against Obama. Dumbass.
17
Gotta wonder whether the whole "more flexibility after the election" thing will apply on all topics?
18
@7 and @11 What you suggest would be true if Romney was to win. Since Obama is going to win, though, casting your vote to an alternative candidate is a good way to make a statement.
19
The president has the ability to communicate an agenda of (and, I know this sounds corny) "liberty and justice for all" to the people, and the ability to then set out a group of legislators to act upon that message by introducing legislation to Congress that moves in line with that agenda.

I mean, did Kennedy get us to the moon? Probably not, but he certainly inspired us to do it (with the help of our Nazi friends in NASA).

Who is a better communicator, in the history of American Presidents than President Obama? (maybe Lincoln and the aforementioned Kennedy, but only barely).

What has his message been on the issue of gay (citizen's) rights, or the rights of anyone else?

From my perspective, it's been, "smoke 'em if you got 'em, boyos, 'cause I ain't gonna let you keep 'em for long."

I have no idea how, even as a fervent anti-gay homophobe, Romney could be any worse.
20
@18, While I do think Obama will win, I don't think it will be a landslide. I think it will be close enough that if enough people choose to "make a statement" it could lose the election.

I will be voting for Obama. I definitely consider him the lesser of two evils, but from the stand point of a gay person he is clearly the best option despite his pansy assed statements about same sex marriage, not to mention that I will never forget or forgive the whole Rick Warren thing.

But the alternative is so awful I think it a bad choice to risk it to make a point. I try never to underestimate the stupidity of people.
21
Drew2u @15: You are misinformed. Obama and Lieberman - not Pelosi and Reid - deserve personal credit for passing DADT repeal. It was their initiative and their arm-twisting that got it through at the last minute before Republicans took control of Congress. Thanks to them, the largest employer in the US (the Pentagon) is now an equal-opportunity employer.

DADT repeal, in turn, will accelerate marriage equality by 5 to 10 years, as Americans get used to images of gay and lesbian war heroes, and start to think of us as human beings with equal dignity and equal investment in society. Already the strongest legal challenges to DOMA are coming from lesbian and gay servicemembers whose pay and benefits are less than they should be, simply because their spouses are of the "wrong" gender. It helps that Obama has ordered the Justice Department not to fight these cases.

If we work hard enough to deliver a Democratic congress, then I fully expect Obama to sign ENDA into law and to see DOMA wiped from the books in his second term.

No President - not even Hilary - could have been better or done more for gay rights over the past three years. And yet malcolmxy has no idea how Romney would be worse. [sigh]
22
edit:

No President - not even Hilary - could have been better or done more for gay rights over the past three years and still be in a good position to be reelected to a second term. And yet malcolmxy has no idea how Romney would be worse. [sigh]
24
15: It took Congress and the President. And it got done.

But since Wash is a reasonably safe state for Obama, go ahead and fan-duh- size away. Vote green, yellow or blue for all I care.
25
@19 - Completely disagree with you. It's not just the man himself, but the entire apparatus of government. All we have to do is look at the House to know what they would do with even more levers of power. Then there's the matter of the Supreme Court.

Right now we're moving forward and I feel like the worst that could happen on the federal level right now is pure inaction. With Romney and the Republican freakshow apparatus in charge, we run the real risk of moving backwards. Romney can't even stand up to a woman calling for Obama to be tried for treason, do you really think he's going to stand up to the Congress if they wanted to repeal our hard fought gains?

Now, do you see how it could be worse?
26
@Drew: The articles you cite correctly give credit to Lieberman, but you do have to read between the lines a little to understand what was going on in the White House. I have direct personal knowledge that HRC was lobbying the White House to drop DADT repeal (which is where the "signals" that the White House was considering dropping it came from), but that the President intervened at the last minute and helped secure the vote.

That it why I will be donating to Obama and to congressional Democrats this year, but probably never again to HRC.
27
Oh, not to mention all the groundwork for DADT repeal that Obama laid. He lined up a pro-repeal Pentagon report, got all the Chiefs except Amos to toe the line, and kept DADT on the agenda when us activists thought it was dead by including a reference to it in his State of the Union address.

He hardly "sat back and waited." This was one of the signature achievements of his first term, and he worked for it.
28
BABH: I am in no way doubting what you are saying (and forgive me if I come off that way, I don't mean to), but can you provide online sources for your statements? I am really interested in reading in more detail.
Most of what I get from news sources tend to just gloss over the details of a story and I have a lot of trouble trying to find sources or more in-depth information for that presentation. I'm a nerd that way. :p
29
Sorry, I don't know whether any insiders have spoken out (and I myself was only on the margins of the inside). Articles like this one show that when the Defense Authorization bill was blocked (which we all thought was DADT's best chance for 2010, and therefore for Obama's first term), HRC was ready to throw in the towel and do what it does best: give cover to Dems when they fail to advance gay rights. HRC (and to be fair most other activists) were taken by surprise when Lieberman, with Obama's backing, was able to pass a stand-alone bill for the repeal of DADT.
30
Nothing brings voter turn out like being not-quite-as-bad!

Oh wait, that actually sucks. Maybe Obama should try some leading instead of waffling.
31
@25

I think we need to move backward in order to move forward. If we keep accepting the tepid, flaccid policies of the DNP on this issue, nothing is ever going to get appreciably better.

If people see what can happen if/when things get worse, perhaps a true reformation candidate/party will emerge to break the whore party that the donkey vs elephant struggle in this country has become.

Plus, y'all act like Romney will govern to his ideals or morality. He's never done this before. Romney will do whatever the hell it takes for Romney to get re-elected.

Right now, he desperately (God, I can almost smell it on him when I see him on TV) wants to be president. If he happens to reach that goal, he will shift to desperately not wanting to be a 1-term president. He won't do a single thing that alienates any constituency in any serious way...that's his thing, and it always has been.

The dude is about as dangerous as a nerf gun. I know they look like they can do some serious damage, but they're nerf. Romney is nerf.

Whatever...I know it helps to continue to support a shitty president in your party of choice by demonizing the other guy, so don't let me stop you. Continue...please.
32
Malcolmxy: I would agree that Romney, if elected, would be desperate to be elected to a second term. However, I think his reaction would be the opposite of yours: his most significant challenge would not be a resurgent Democratic Party, but a candidate to his right who rallies the fundie base to deny Romney renomination. And if he fails to toe the conservative line - if he moderates even slightly on gay rights, if he fails to push through a repeal of the Health Care Affordability Act, if he fails to further cut taxes on the rich - they will turn on him in a heartbeat, because they know they have other candidates in the wings who could beat him for the nomination if he's wounded by his own party.

And if Romney wins this fall - who's the next Democratic challenger to take him on, in 2016? There's no heir apparent and nobody with enough national exposure and appeal to start doing the work to get there - certainly not anyone who's to Obama's left.
33
Hasn't Romney already said that he'll pass a federal law prohibiting gay marriage? Wouldn't that make it impossible nation-wide for marriage equality to become a reality -- not just in states that ban same sex marriage now, but all other states?

I can't see how Romney and Obama are equivalent on gay rightts issues. But if Romney wins, I guess we'll all find out together.
35
Andrew Sullivan is so star-struck by Obama and the new social circles he frequents, that he has thrown every principle he ever had out the window.

The fact is that Romney is no anti-gay bigot. I happened to live in MA when he ran for governor and he came to meet with a small group of Log Cabin Republicans. Despite the small numbers, Romney stayed the entire allotted 90 minutes where we discussed multiple issues. In the end he came up to each of us individually and shook our hands.

Romney supports civil unions. If he was sich a bigot he would not. Also, it is unfair to hold Romney to account for the views of his church hierarchy. Many black protestant churches are very anti-gay but the Obamas aren't being blamed for that. Enough of the double standard.
36
@35: "Romney supports civil unions. If he was sich a bigot he would not"

He used to, he doesn't any more.

Once Romney wasn't a rabidly anti-gay bigot, although he has never been a supporter of full equality. But just as some bigots change their stripes and become decent people, sometimes, for various reasons (like pandering to right wing lunatics for political gain) some people go from being not too bad to being flaming bigots.

August 25, 2005 on Hardball with Chris Matthews:

Chris Matthews: Do you think there's any difference, really, between a gay marriage and something called a civil union?
Mitt Romney: Well, I would rather have neither, to tell you the truth. I'd rather that domestic partner benefits, such as hospital - hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples. I don't want civil unions or gay marriage.

So he's kind enough that he doesn't want to prevent gay people from being able to visit their partners in the hospital. How nice of him.

But he clearly no longer supports civil unions. He clearly said: I don't want civil unions or gay marriage."

So fuck him.

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