{"id":191849,"date":"2009-06-16T23:03:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T04:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/obamas-weak-tea-on-gay-rights\/"},"modified":"2009-06-16T23:03:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T04:03:00","slug":"obamas-weak-tea-on-gay-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/obamas-weak-tea-on-gay-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama&#8217;s Weak Tea on Gay Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, Obama is extending &#8216;some&#8217; federal benefits to gay partners, and as  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pamshouseblend.com\/diary\/11509\/nyt-obama-admins-lame-fed-partner-benefits-plan-designed-to-stop-dnc-fundraiser-disaster\">Pam Spaulding notes<\/a>, it&#8217;s awfully meaningless and ill conceived.<\/p>\n<p>First, as is noted in the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">New York Times<\/span>, but buried in the last &#8216;graph, it&#8217;s not intended to be meaningful change:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Further, it&#8217;s not even an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">executive order<\/span>, but an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">administrative memorandum<\/span>, so it expires when he leaves office.<\/p>\n<p>It also does <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">not<\/span> cover health benefits, so what is left to cover?  The only thing that comes to mind is relocation benefits.<\/p>\n<p>And they are leaking the reasons to make clear that people don&#8217;t think that this is the start of a trend to support gay rights, it&#8217;s just a ploy to appease people before a fundraiser.<\/p>\n<p>LBTG&#8217;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<sup>\u2122<\/sup>, and meaningful reform of the financial system were thrown <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">months<\/span> ago.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not particularly comfortable here, and now it&#8217;s getting <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> crowded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, Obama is extending &#8216;some&#8217; federal benefits to gay partners, and as Pam Spaulding notes, it&#8217;s awfully meaningless and ill conceived. First, as is noted in the New York Times, but buried in the last &#8216;graph, it&#8217;s not intended to be meaningful change: But administration officials said the timing of the announcement was intended to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,971,1030,979,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-civil-rights","category-lgbtq","category-wanker","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}