Category: LGBTQ

So We Have a Bunch of Homophobe-Phobic Idiots in the White House

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Barack Obama’s former campaign organization, Organizing for America, just sent out mass emails to Maine voters in preparation for the elections.

Well, with the best chance yet to defeat an anti-gay marriage plebiscite, in years, what to they have to say about the Maine’s hate amendment?

Why, nothing, of course.

Just go out and vote, because Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ all cut their political teeth on the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” fiasco in the early 1990s, and so they live in fear of bigots.

The degree to which the Obama administration has internalized the idea that civil rights for gays are simply a captive special interest group who can be thrown under the bus is appalling.

Text of email after flip.

From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Get out the vote in Maine

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
Subject: Get out the vote in Maine

XXXX —

One year ago, we made phone calls, went door to door, and proudly cast our ballots to elect Barack Obama and bring real change to this country.

Tomorrow is Election Day once again in Maine. It’s as important as ever for you to get out to vote. And just like you did last year, bring friends, family, and co-workers with you when you go to the polls.

(Click here to find your polling location. http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsH/ )

http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsE/

On Election Day last year, we knew that victory was just the beginning — that the hardest work was still ahead of us. We didn’t build this movement for a single election or issue.

And we know — now more than ever — that our voices and votes are critical to continuing this movement for change and in shaping the outcome of the issues that are most important to us like health insurance reform and creating jobs to turn around the economy.

So please remind friends and family to go vote and bring them with you to your polling location tomorrow.

Thanks,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Congress Passes Hate Crimes Legislation

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Obama is expected to sign it.

One surprise:

The 68-29 vote was a victory for civil rights groups that have long sought to expand the federal statute beyond attacks motivated by religion, race, color or national origin.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, includes penalties for assaults based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity.

(emphasis mine)

For some reason, I thought that disability was already a protected class.

In fact, Sharon,* who does special ed consulting and advocacy, thought that the disabled were already a protected class too.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

There is a Message to this Madness

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OK, so we have some anonymous adviser to Barack Obama saying that people who want more substantive action on LGBT rights are a pajama clad left wing fringe:

For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

There are a lot of people out there who are claiming that this is not official White House policy, and it’s an anonymous source, and maybe John Harwood is flat out lying.

It’s clear from the discussions that Harwood is a turd: The idea that moving in a direction that a majority of the country supports is dangerous, and that Obama has to fear Letterman, Leno, and O’Brien is ludicrous. (see video)

That being said, he did not just make this up from thin air while on the air. Harwood is standing by his statement, but does now offer that perhaps it was more about the people who want us out of Afghanistan.

Barack Obama and his people have done a very good job at keeping some groups on the reservation, to the degree that Andrew Sullivan describes the Human Rights Campaign as having “Battered Wife Syndrome”, and Glenn Greenwald correctly describes the administrations dealings with liberal organizations, particularly in the case or Rahm Emanuel, as being liberal veal pen.

So, the question here is what is going on, and I think that Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog nails it: this is a deliberate attempt to send out contradictory messages:

The deliberate muddying of the message was the message.

That’s what’s going on now. Obama reached out to the gay community — and yet he wants to be seen as not being tight with gays or the angrier lefties. So a friendly journalist leaked this remark — this deniable remark — which has since been, um, denied. And now the message is muddied. The mixed signals are meant, I think, to confuse supporters of gay rights and wavering but potentially Democratic-voting non-liberal voters (including non-white social conservatives) in, oh, say, New Jersey and Virginia.

What is going on here is that Obama’s staff is populated by old Clintonistas, and if there was a defining characteristic of the Clinton Administration, it can be summed up in three words, Sister Souljah Moment.

You see Republicans prove how macho they are they attack their opponents, but Democrats, particularly those who came to politics under Bill Clinton, prove how macho they are by attacking their allies. They make a fetish of it.

There are people in the Obama White House who are terrified at what might happen if people started to think that the administration supported civil rights, because that would likely mean that they would lose the white male vote in the south….Never mind, already lost…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the foaming at the mouth bigot vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the voters who want to criminalize abortion….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…

Gee, I’m beginning to sense a pattern, and I think that it means that there some really stupid folks playing politics in Obama’s white house.

Potential Good News on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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The Joint Forces Quarterly, an official military publication reviewed prior to publication by the office of the JCS, has published an article calling for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anti-Gay policy:

The article, which appears in Joint Force Quarterly and was reviewed before publication by the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that “after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.”

Although the article, by an Air Force colonel, Om Prakash, carries no weight as a matter of policy, it may well signal a shift in the official winds. It won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition.

(emphasis mine)

Someone is sending a clear message, and I am not sure whether this is non-bigoted members of the military sending a message to the Obama administration to get the policy repealed, or it’s a message to the minority of officers in the military who use DADT as an excuse to engage in bigoted witch hunts to stop from either the JCS or the SecDef, or it’s a message to Congress to fix this.

In any case, this is a welcome development.

House Moving on LGBT Job Protection Bill

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The House Labor Committee is looking at a bill which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes under the civil rights laws.

About damn time. It passed in the house in 2007, but wilted under a Bush veto threat.

The cynic in me wonders how Obama’s people are going to try to knife it this time around, because they have gone out of their way to knife the LGBT community on almost every other level, because they found morality inconvenient in their quest for bipartisanship.

Jesus Was Best Man at a Gay Wedding

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Seriously, this is a part of early Christian mythology:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay “wedding” is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs. These two officers in the Roman army incurred the anger of Emperor Maximian when they were exposed as ‘secret Christians’ by refusing to enter a pagan temple. Both were sent to Syria circa 303 CE where Bacchus is thought to have died while being flogged. Sergius survived torture but was later beheaded. Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

….

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).

So much for “traditional” marriage.

What the Christofascist jihad against gay marriage is really about is that some (far too many) people need to use religion to excuse their hate, and that gays, and gay marriage, are simply the latest target for their “5 minutes of hate.”

Obama is Dog Whistle Gay Bashing

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Normally, I’m not a big fan of protest theatrics, to my mind, Code Pink frequently does more harm than good to the cause, but I have to approve of ACT-UP’s chaining themselves to the Capitol Rotunda today.

What’s going on here is that during the campaign, Barack Obama promised to lift the ban on funding needle exchange programs, which:

  • Do not encourage drug use.
  • Reduce AIDS transmission.
  • Reduce the cost to society.
  • Provide an entry point with addicts for counseling.

The problem is that the White House submitted a budget to Congress still contained the ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs.

So this wasn’t even a matter of his not fighting for the program, it’s a matter of him submitting language reauthorizing a program that he explicitly campaigned against in his budget.

A president’s budget is purely advisory. Congress can, and does, amend it, or ignore it, as they see fit, but he is unwilling to even leave out a bit of language authorizing a program he claims to oppose.

I’m with John Aravosis’s take on this

  1. The candidate promised to lift the ban.
  2. The White House Web site reaffirmed the president’s commitment to lifting the ban.
  3. The White House Web site no longer reaffirms his commitment to lifting the ban.
  4. The president now refuses to lift the ban.
  5. The president actually affirmatively makes things worse by administratively supporting [and] defending the ban.
  6. The spokesman reiterates the president’s support for lifting the ban, some day, once Congress gets around to it.

There is a pattern to all this, whether it’s his sucking up to homophobic screeds “reformed homosexual” Donnie McClurkin, using legal arguments equating gay marriage with pedophilia and incest, refusing to take administrative actions to even modestly impede the anti-gay witch hunt in the military, and now affirmatively submitting anti-gay legislation to Congress.

Either there is some real homophobia here, or there has been a political calculus made that appealing to homophobia is a political win, because the opposition wants gay people dead.

At best, it’s no different than the prosecutors in and around Baltimore who will routinely demand more severe sentences in plea bargains for black defendants, because they know that they have a better chance to convict a black man, even in front of a black jury.

I believe that this action has been taken because it can be seen as a gay issue, not in spite of it.

This is dog-whistle gay bashing, and it is quite deliberate.

We Are Seeing a Real Change in Politics Here

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We now have a second threatened Democratic pol coming out in favor of gay marriage, the 1st was Chris Dodd, New Jersey Governor John Corzine, who currently trails his challenger significantly.

What this represents is a change in the politics of gay rights and gay marriage.

Democratic politicians are now seeing this position as a political asset rather than a political liability.

Barack Obama should note this when dealing with DOMA and DADT.

Dodd Comes Out in Favor of Marriage Equality

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I am not sure whether Chris Dodd’s official announcement of his support for marriage equality is being driven by a legitimate change in view, a recognition that the public is moving in this direction at a blindingly fast pace, or desperation over his otherwise low poll numbers in Connecticut following the entire business with his mortgage.

I really don’t care why he is doing this as much as I care that it is the right thing.

Obama’s Weak Tea on Gay Rights

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So, Obama is extending ‘some’ federal benefits to gay partners, and as Pam Spaulding notes, it’s awfully meaningless and ill conceived.

First, as is noted in the New York Times, but buried in the last ‘graph, it’s not intended to be meaningful change:

But administration officials said the timing of the announcement was intended to help contain the growing furor among gay rights groups. Several gay donors withdrew their sponsorship of a Democratic National Committee fund-raising event next week, where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to speak.

Further, it’s not even an executive order, but an administrative memorandum, so it expires when he leaves office.

It also does not cover health benefits, so what is left to cover? The only thing that comes to mind is relocation benefits.

And they are leaking the reasons to make clear that people don’t think that this is the start of a trend to support gay rights, it’s just a ploy to appease people before a fundraiser.

LBTG’s of America, welcome to under the bus, where supporters of government transparency, accountability for war crimes and torture for Bush and His Evil Minions™, and meaningful reform of the financial system were thrown months ago.

It’s not particularly comfortable here, and now it’s getting very crowded.

Obama Getting Hammered on Selling Out Gays

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It’s got the Human Rights Campaign up in arms, finally.

They’ve been a captive of the Obama administration for some time, and it’s nice that they have found some guts.

What’s more it looks like people are bailing from the DNC’s very high profile $1000 a person gay fundraiser as a result.

Additionally, the New York Times blasted Obama on his call to defend the law, noting that Obama’s assertion that the DoJ was compelled to defend the statute is simply not true.

Obama Comes Out for DOMA

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Americablog. has the scoop.

Basically, an Obama DoJ appointee made motions in a court case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, and while I guess that there is an obligation for them to defend statute, the filing invoked pedophilia, called gays freeloaders, and generally invoked every bigoted right-wing talking point out there.

On the stump, he condemned DOMA.

Even better, today is the 42nd anniversary of Loving v. Virginia.

I would not hold my breath on a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

I told you so after the whole Donnie McClurkin thing.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Pledge to NPR

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There is a documentary out called Outrage about closeted gay politicians, and NPR did a review, and upper management rewrote it to specifically exclude the names to two politicians, Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Senator Larry Craig, from the review, which so outraged the author that he removed his byline from it. (His story had been written with close consultation of his editor)

As Pam Spalding notes, “NPR has no business tossing out the “privacy” card when it couldn’t resist deeming John Edwards’s heterosexual tomcatting newsworthy, underscoring that there were legitimate political reasons for the reporting.”

If I weren’t not giving because of their vociferous opposition to low power local broadcasts, I would not give to them because they have been completely captured by the sensibilities of the “inside the Beltway” crowd.