Stonewall celebration or Intervention?

I have been thinking about Obama and LGBT rights a lot. And I have to admit that Obama's strategy (or lack thereof) makes no sense at all. While many of us do not agree with Obama on many issues, most of us do agree that Obama seems to be a very shrewd politician.

So what's up with the mess he is in now? Here is my guess as to what is going on and how it may play out - and I admit that I am being optimistic:

The 3 LGBT-related civil rights issues that that are getting a lot of attention are Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

It appears that the country is 'ready' for the repeal of DADT. The results of recent polls have been consistent in showing that a majority of adults support allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military. This Gallup Poll shows that 69% of all adults support the repeal. The lowest level of support is still 58% and that is in people who identify themselves as Republican or Conservative. So the repeal of DADT doesn't seem to be a terribly risky endeavor.

And just as the country seems ready to repeal DADT, there are some very high-profile enlisted men being kicked-out of (or already discharged from) the military under DADT. They are getting a lot of media attention and frankly, it's about time.

So what gives? The country is ready. Certainly gay and lesbian military enlisted are ready. The LGBT community is ready. Many members of Congress are ready. And Obama said that he would work to repeal DADT. So why the foot-dragging on the repeal of DADT?

I think there may be a few dynamics at work here. One is my gut feeling that when DADT is repealed, the floodgates will be open and getting ENDA passed and even getting DOMA repealed will be easy to achieve. This isn't the first time that the military will be seen as the 'great equalizer.' And if DADT is repealed, we could have no better (read: safe) examples of gays and lesbians that most of the country can accept (in contrast to my heavily inked and pierced friends). Their acceptance will be quick and widespread. And because of that, the other LGBT rights issue should be easier to tackle.

Given that, it is no wonder that Obama may have 'cold-feet' about this. Not only will this frame his legacy, it will be all that the mainstream media will cover for about a month or so after the repeal of DADT, and that may interfere with Obama's ability to get the media traction that he needs on other issues.

Another dynamic involve may be that of our 'advocates' in Washington, such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). According to some sources, HRC is working to put DADT on the back burner, instead convincing Congress to pass ENDA first. So what would their motivation be for doing that?

Could it be that they think that it would be easier to pass ENDA than it would to repeal DADT? Could it be that because their ENDA debacle last year was so divisive and such a failure that they need a huge a 'face-saving' effort now? Or worse, could it be that in an effort to maintain their 'power' and justify their existence, that they want a 'go slow' approach, prolonging our agonizing quest for our rights AND prolonging their ability to solicit even more fund from us?

My answer is that I really don't know. But several years ago I stopped trusting HRC and nothing they have done since then has caused me to change my mind.

So what CAN happen now? Well, call me Pollyanna, but tonight I saw Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach on Rachel Maddow. He is planning to go the the White House's Stonewall anniversary celebration next week. It is my sincere hope that Obama will meet and get to know Fehrenbach. Because if he does and if he is the honorable man I think he once was, he will commit to doing something about DADT and Fehrenbach's situation ASAP.

The Obama administration 'flinched' when we got people to boycott the DNC fundraiser. I think that if Obama has the guts to meet and shake the hand of Fehrenbach and look him in the eye, Obama will do the right thing and work to repeal DADT and issue an executive order to stop the enforcement of DADT.

So if we can somehow turn the White House Stonewall anniversary celebration into an 'intervention' we may be able to convince Obama that because we love him, it is time for our tough love. He needs to kick his addiction to politics, or homophobia or whatever it is that is keeping him from acting NOW on our issues, and we are just the group to help him do it.

Anyway, that is how I hope things will happen. And you - what do you think?

Now what do we do?

So we identified a successful model - hitting them right in the pocket book. E-activism was widely used to 'inform' and pressure people which caused them to withdraw from the pricey DNC fundraiser. In politics, this is equal to a terrorist attack.

And respond to this attack they did: They called a press conference and Obama signed a memo to provide some meager rights to same-sex couples. He also reiterated his commitment to repeal DOMA. The press conference was laughable. I have watched Obama speak on many occasions and given his oratory skills and passion, he often brings me to tears. But not so during the 'memo signing' ceremony: Obama was neither eloquent nor convincing. It was as if he was being forced to do this and while he was trying to be convincing, he failed miserably in the 'passion' department. He actually looked angry a few times.

So now what do we do?

First let's discuss what we shouldn't do. We can stop bashing Obama. Some are continuing to bash Obama as if he is the worst president ever. News flash to them: Even if Obama was the 'fierce advocate' for our rights, he could never have done it alone. It is not as if Obama has a 'magic wand' that he waves and PRESTO, we have our rights. No, we have to work with him, pressuring members of Congress, etc. in order ro repeal DOMA and/or DADT.

Other than hearing about the HRC meeting with the Obama administration, I cannot identify one unified action that has been taken by us to engage the Obama administration or the Democrats to start working on our issues. Did anyone really think that once Obama was elected everything would be easy?

And yes, the new 'benefits' for Federal employees who have same-sex partners are insulting in their meagerness. There is no health insurance benefit and of course, that is the most costly and sought-after benefit. And as others have stated, the granting of these benefits is so 1999 - most corporations have offered these same benefits plus health insurance for more than a decade. I have had health insurance and other benefits for more than 20 years. Actually, I just assumed that same-sex partners of Federal employees already had health insurance and other benefits. It's pretty shocking that this is not the case.

Now some are beginning to bash Barney Frank as if he never did anything for the LGBT community because he seems to be confused or maybe supports Obama and the defense of DOMA. So we have a difference of opinion with Frank about DOMA and the fund raiser - big deal. Can't we disagree about this and not tear down Frank as if he is the enemy of LGBTs? This feels somewhat like a witch-hunt and I am not at all comfortable with it.

Yes, it is important to know if politicians are fierce advocates, friends or enemies. I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm just saying that it does not advance our cause at all if we continue to rant about politicians and do little else.

So based upon our successful model, this is what I think we should do is this: Identify every fund raising event for the Democratic party this year. Create a master calendar of these events. And then begin the 'information' campaign, urging people to not attend or to pull out of the event. Plan on picketing these events - with clever, entertaining but biting messages. As these events will be scattered around the country, we need to movilize LGBTs, friends and others who live near the fund raiseing events to picket these locations.

There are other actions we can take - but since I have been consistent in focusing upon restricting the flow of money as the way to get the Democrats attention (and it seems that I was right about this) - I will leave it to others to figure out other strategies to achieve our goals.

And we need to figure out what our goals are: For me, if the Democrats showed us a plan or created a committee to plan to repeal DOMA and DADT, that would be enough for me to urge activists to work with the Democrats.

What do you think?

Synopsis of the DOMA debacle:

There is a lot of chatter going on about the DOMA controversy. Some of our supporters are defending the Obama administration in their defense of DOMA.

What I am attempting to do here is to synthesize our issues into simple and succinct messages. I am not a lawyer, and this is what I have been able to glean from the last 2 days of blog slogging. Please use the comments to critique these messages and to let me know if I have omitted anything.

Our issues with the Obama administration’s defense of DOMA fall into the following categories:

1. The Obama administration did not have to defend DOMA.
   
   
2. Even if they did file a brief, it did not have to be such a vigorous defense of DOMA.
   
   
3. Parts of the defense appear to expand upon the hateful ‘soundbites’ of the most virulent, anti-gay extremists.
   
   
4. All of this is being seen as ‘more of the same’ from the Obama administration. Obama made a lot of promises to the LGBT community So far there has been no action and worse, it appears that there is some ‘backtracking’ on promises made, which is cause for concern.
   

Expanded discussion of each issue:

Issue 1: The Obama administration did not have to defend DOMA.

John Aravosis at Americablog has excellent coverage of this. Contrary to the Justice Department’s claims that it had to defend DOMA, there are several cases that past administrations chose NOT to defend in the Supreme Court.

These include:

• George W. Bush (ACLU et al., v. Norman Y. Mineta)
• Bill Clinton Bill Clinton (Dickerson v. United States)
• George HW Bush (Metro Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission)
• Ronald Reagan (INS v./ Chadha)

(see this post at Americablog for further analysis)

Providing further evidence that it was not necessary for the Obama administration to defend DOMA, there is this post at Daily Kos:

"But as it turns out, there may be another exception to that obligation out there, and it's exceptionally on point. Back in 1990, an ambitious young acting Solicitor General maintained before the Supreme Court of the United States that the DOJ was not obligated to defend the constitutionality of what he deemed to be a discriminatory federal statute -- the type of discrimination that his President had campaigned against. He indeed argued that the statute his President had himself signed into law should be struck down as unconstitutional, urging the Court to employ a stricter level of scrutiny than what existing constitutional analysis actually required for laws of that sort." (See post at Daily Kos)

That solicitor general was John Roberts, the current Chief Justice of the United States.

Also, reader 'Dave' sent this link - it turns out that the Obama administration has already chosen to not defend laws. More information about this at the ACLU website.

During his presidential campaign, Obama said that he wanted DOMA repealed. It was a reasonable expectation for us to think that the Obama administration would choose not to defend DOMA in the Supreme Court.

Issue 2: Even if they did file a brief, it did not have to be such a vigorous defense of DOMA.

As with almost everything in life, there are degrees. In this case, there are degrees of defending DOMA.

If we can make the assumption that Obama was being honest about wanting to repeal DOMA, and for some reason, his Justice Department did not know that they could have declined to defend DOMA in this case, they could have chosen to limit their defense of DOMA to the claim that the Court lacked jurisdiction or the plaintiffs don’t have standing. But no, the defense went beyond that. As John Aravosis wrote:

“. . .it means that Obama wasn't content to simply argue, based on technicalities, that this case should be thrown out. He went out of his way to argue that DOMA is actually constitutional, and then went into detail destroying every single constitutional argument we have for opposing DOMA in court. This will screw us on every lawsuit we file on every gay issue, in every public policy debate we have in the states on any gay issue.” (See post at Americablog)

And as Kelly Canfield discusses at Les Enragés, the defense attempts to ‘whitewash’ the issue of discrimination by demonstrating that because DOMA doesn’t seek to advance ‘gender-based’ supremacy, (implying that heterosexist-based supremacy is OK) it is just:

From the Obama's Motion to Dismisss (defense of DOMA): “Loving v. Virginia is not to the contrary. There the Supreme Court rejected a contention that the assertedly "equal application" of a statute prohibiting interracial marriage immunized the statute from strict scrutiny. 388 U.S. 1, 8, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967). The Court had little difficulty concluding that the statute, which applied only to "interracial marriages involving white persons," was "designed to maintain White Supremacy" and therefore unconstitutional. Id. at 11. No comparable purpose is present here, however, for DOMA does not seek in any way to advance the "supremacy" of men over women, or of women over men. Thus DOMA cannot be "traced to a . . . purpose" to discriminate against either men or women.”

Issue 3: Parts of the defense appear to expand upon the hateful ‘soundbites’ of the most virulent, anti-gay extremists.

This is one of the more contentious issues. But a little background here. Most of the vocal opponents of same-sex marriage often use the ‘slippery slope’ argument, that if same-sex marriage is allowed, we will descend to allowing people to marry their siblings or parents (incest), or even animals. Pastor Rick Warren is one of many who made this argument - see this post at ABC News (you may have to scroll down for the substance of the article).

For everyone I know, when discussing our parents marriages or even ‘marriage theory’ itself, the discussion never turns to having sex with our siblings, cousins or parents. This is not the case with the opponents of same-sex marriage. This logic is perverse and insulting. That the LGBT community and others have issues with this perverse logic has been widely discussed. As the link above to ABC News shows, our objections with this type of argument became national news when Rick Warren was chosen to give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration.

And yet, the Obama administration chose to use the fact that people in incestuous relationships and are legally married in other states or counties can be denied recognition of their marriages by other states or even the US government as an example of 'marriage validity regulation.'

I’m sure that there are several other examples they could have used to make this point, but they chose to use same-sex opponents' 'soundbite' issue of incest. As one of the posters to the Daily Kos wrote (see the post linked in Issue 1 above), there is an implicit 'value judgement of parity' by making such a comparison. An extension of that comparision is that there is no difference between incestuous relationships and same-sex relationships.

Issue 4: All of this is being seen as ‘more of the same’ from the Obama administration. Obama made a lot of promises to the LGBT community So far there has been no action and worse, it appears that there is some ‘backtracking’ on promises made, which is cause for concern.

Before the election, Obama said that he supported the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and the Defense of Marriage Act. Since the election, there have been ‘modifications’ to his promises. The president’s website has been modified – there is now a condition placed upon the repeal of DADT:

“…He supports repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security. . ” (See Whitehouse.gov).

Of course, there is no discussion of what a ‘sensible way’ is. Regarding DOMA, here is what is listed in Wikipedia:

"Until May 2009, President Barack Obama's political platform included full repeal of the DOMA. As of May 2009, President Barack Obama no longer explicitly supported full repeal of the DOMA. And on June 12, 2009 the Department of Defense issued a brief defending the constitutionality of DOMA in the case of Smelt v. United States of America, signaling a sharp reversal by the Obama administration. This measure drew much anger from organizations in favor of gay marriage such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Empowering Spirits Foundation." (See Wikipedia).

Conclusions:

Given. . .

• That more than 200 enlisted gays and lesbians have been discharged from the military under Obama’s leadership (and yes he can suspend the enforcement of DADT until it is fully repealed),
• Obama’s apparent flip-flop on repealing DOMA,
• This despicable defense of DOMA in the Supreme Court,
• That even Dick Cheney supports same-sex marriage,
• Obama’s coziness to homophobic members of the ‘faith community’ and most importantly,
• That every issue does not have two sides – that sometimes it does boil down to right and wrong,

I think it is reasonable for us to conclude that Obama is not a ‘fierce advocate’ for LGBT rights, that he has little regard for the LGBT community and that he is no better on LGBT issues than George Bush.

Please comment - if you like this, tell me how I can improve this. If you don't like it, tell me why.

Thanks.

Gary

Savior? Nope, Betrayer

The Obama administration helps us celebrate LGBT Pride month by filing a despicable brief in the Supreme Court that supports the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), even though he promised to work to repeal DOMA during the campaign.

The Obama administration would have us believe that they are forced to support DOMA in the Supreme Court, but Presidents Bush II, Clinton, Bush I and Reagan all chose not to 'defend' certain laws, etc. in the Supreme Court.

Furthermore, the brief filed by the Obama administration is vile. It expands on the hateful soundbites of Republicans, the Mormon Church and other hate groups.

Today is also the 42nd anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that make it illegal for states to prohibit marriage between people of different races.

So happy LGBT Pride month and happy anniversary of the Loving decision from the Obama administration.

John Aravosis at Americablog is doing a good job of covering this issue.
Kelly Canfield at Les Enrages also has a good analysis.

Speaking of Americablog, poster "Nate" had this observation:

Laws Obama doesn't care to Execute:

• War-Crimes
• Drug Law
• Illegal Wiretapping

Laws Obama Vigorously Upholds:

• Laws Keeping the Gays from Marrying

NOT ONE NICKEL FOR OBAMA OR THE DEMOCRATS UNTIL THEY SHOW SOME ACTION ON OUR ISSUES.

It may be time for civil disobedience. Should we block the entrances of Democratic headquarters until they agree to pressure Obama on this? Please comment - let me know what you think our next steps should be.

How to get change we can believe in:

Just as Franklin Roosevelt had to be 'pressured' to do the right thing during the depression, Obama is not going to do anything unless we pressure him.

Our advocate organizations are mired in DC culture, and while this may be necessary, they too are missing the bigger picture. The rest of the country has advanced, but DC is still stuck in their moldy existence.

With the polls showing so much support for the repeal of DADT, we need a media campaign NOW. We should have ads on all of the major TV news shows, drive-time radio shows, etc.

This will foment a media frenzy, and each new DADT discharge will become a media event. Only then will we have sufficient clout to force Obama and Congress to repeal DADT.

I believe that if DADT is repealed, we may have an easier time with the rest of our civil rights issues because we can 'ride on the coattails' of that success. It is synergy, pure and simple.

Relying upon the HRC to broker back-room deals with the Obama administration will get us ENDA, probably minus LGBT, by the end of Obama's first term.

ENDA was first introduced in 1994 by Congressman Gerry Studds, and we still don't have a protections. So why is it that we think that doing more of the same is going to change the outcome?

Not One Nickel for Obama and the Democrats (our friends, right?) until they begin moving on our issues. The money would be better spent on a media campaign.

Is there an organization - with a track-record that includes successes (ie not the "No on 8" campaign in California) that can take the lead on this effort?

Making lemonade by becoming bus mechanics

Update: Some have asked about the title of this posting. It is the union of the saying 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade' with the feeling that I and many in the LGBT community share - that we are being 'thrown under the bus' (which means being abandoned for the benefit of others) by the Obama administration.

If one can believe what is being widely reported in the blogsphere, Obama’s LGBT agenda is pretty weak. According to Michelangelo Signorile and others, our friends at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) are supporting Obama in not taking any action on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the policy that allows gays and lesbians to be kicked out of the military, and other LGBT issues anytime soon. It appears that HRC is asking that Obama and the Democrats focus upon the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Matthew Shepard (hate crimes) Act.

HRC, of course, denies this, but there seems to be compelling evidence that this is true. Pam’s House Blend, Americablog and Joe.My.God. have great postings about this.

Assuming that this is true, and assuming that the HRC is really an advocacy group for LGBTs (and not a group secretly working against us), their approach would appear to be ‘go slow’ on these issues. Many of us remember how HRC supported the removal of protections for the Transgender population from ENDA in 2007 because Congressman Barney Frank and others said that ENDA wouldn’t pass unless citizens and organizations in the US retained the right to discriminate against Transgender individuals. That action alone started some of the ugliest discussions ever amongst LGBTs and our supporters, such as ‘why should we fight for their rights, the T’s are not like us, etc.’

Of course, a winning strategy is a winning strategy, but ENDA when down in flames, in part because of the resulting divisiveness over the removal of Transgender protections.

Building upon that success, it appears that the HRC wants to ensure that the Obama administration and the Democrats go slow, maybe because they want them to only work on what they think is possible.

What they are ignoring is that getting ENDA passed (assuming that someday it will be passed) is an iterative process. It has been the same with many civil rights laws. ENDA was first introduced in 1994 by Gerry Studds and it has failed to pass several times over the years. But that is the iterative nature of this process. So the longer we wait to introduce the repeal of DADT, the longer we will have to wait and work to pass it. In the meantime, 230 or so enlisted gays and lesbians have been kicked-out of the military because of DADT under Obama’s leadership.

The HRC is also ignoring the other important issues:

• The polls show that more than 70% of Americans support allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military.

• DADT and some of the recently-discharged gays and lesbians are getting a lot of attention in the national media. The average ‘Joe’ on the street knows about this issue. The average Joe has never heard of ENDA. This is important because the passage or defeat of DADT will be an event of national importance and provide us with ‘synergy’ to move to tackle the next issue (if DADT passes) or to work harder with more advocates on DADT (if it doesn’t pass).

One other issue is worthy of mention: HRC is allowing the Obama administration to backtrack on LGBT issues by providing them with ‘cover’ to do nothing - certainly nothing new.

So Not One Nickel for Obama, the Democrats and now HRC until we get some action.

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Personal touch will change minds on marriage

Father's Day is June 21st. Taking a break from Obama and the Democrats, this is one of what I hope to be many posts dealing with the role of our fathers in our quest for civil rights. It is also to honor our fathers in June, the month of Father's Day. This column was written by C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle and it was published last week. Here is a link to the full article on SFGate.

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Of course, that's not news to people in their 20s and 30s who have winced at family gatherings when their parents said something like, "I wouldn't mind if gays want to live together, but why do they have get married?"

But what you might not have known was that the debate was also taking place around the Thanksgiving table at the Newsom home. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who created a national sensation when he granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, couldn't convince his father that it was the right thing to do. "He was a Catholic from the old school," the mayor said this week. "I wouldn't call him a bigot or a homophobe - he always supported civil unions - but he was fixated on that word, 'marriage.' "

"I had difficulty with it for a long time," said William Newsom, a former judge at the state Court of Appeal. "You have every single right that opposite-sex people do, except to say you are married." But last month Judge Newsom announced in an interview in a Sacramento paper that he had changed his mind.

"I was wrong," he told me. "I literally read that in the paper," Mayor Newsom said. "I was stunned. And I thought it was very cool."

For many families, that will be the progression - from outright disapproval, to accepting the idea of civil unions, to supporting same-sex marriage. But the important point is, for all the expensive television ads that were rolled out for and against Proposition 8, it is the personal touch that really changes minds. . .

That's exactly what this civil rights battle needs.

Want proof? A December 2008 Harris poll surveyed a group who said their "feelings about gays and lesbians had become more favorable." Asked what the contributing factor to the change was, 79 percent said they knew a gay or lesbian person. . .

For Judge Newsom, the start of his conversion was when his son had him come down to City Hall in 2004 to watch the marriage ceremonies.

"He got a little tear in his eye," the mayor said. "He had to go outside." Is that true? Did he puddle up? "

Um, I can't recall," Judge Newsom said. Your son said you did. "Well, I won't deny it," he finally concluded.

Judge Newsom asks that you take his background into consideration. He was educated by Catholic nuns, attended the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, and very nearly became a priest.

"I come from a generation where, never mind considering it, we never talked about it," he said.

Still a devout Catholic, Judge Newsom, like many people of faith, wrestled with the religious objections to homosexual marriages in the church. But he is also a student of the law, and thought that the Iowa Supreme Court's April 3 decision to allow same-sex marriage contained a deft solution. The court said it recognized the "sincere belief" by some religious groups that same sex marriage would undermine the sanctity of marriage. So the court said churches are not required to hold same-sex marriages in their sanctuaries. . .

"That seems to me to be the answer," Judge Newsom said. "It's a great idea." Little by little, one conversation at a time, Judge Newsom came around to support the idea.

"We talked around this for years," Mayor Newsom said. "But it is the human side of this that makes the difference." After seeing the couples marrying at City Hall, wrestling through the religious objections and discussing the issue with his son, Judge Newsom finally came to a question he couldn't answer.

"Why in the world do you want to interfere with someone who wants to make a binding commitment?" he asked himself. He didn't have an answer. Neither will others when they reach that point. But give them some time. They're coming to it one personal experience at a time.

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Mr. Nevius' column demonstrates that Harvey Milk was right - that in order to win friends (and elections) we have to make it personal - about us - and not about laws. This column also teaches us what many of us already know - the process of acceptance comes in steps. It is an 'evolutionary' process and it is up to us to help those who will be our future friends and advocates move along the evolutionary path.