There was this wonderful time not so long ago that I watched my president take an ax in hand and go to work on stacks of the once elected Dubbya's executive order library. For a century of days I greeted the morning news with a sense of vindication and hope. I liked to think that if I listened carefully to the wind I could hear the distant crack and pop of Richard "the dick" Cheney's jaw as he ground his titanium replacement molars down to stubs. "Any day now," I thought, "the great liberation will begin." I waited and waited and waited.
I have stayed quiet. My friends and family have really cut you slack. They say things like, "he is trying to make sure that the majority lasts more than two years," and "He wants to unify the country, not pull a Bush era strong-arm."
I was at a friend of mine's family cookout and his grandfather and I were talking about living in Nashville during the lunch counter sit ins. He was a young black farm laborer during those years and he said that he remembered wishing he could have afforded to go into town and join the protesters. He said, "I was desperate to go and join them kids. It felt like we were fighting for our lives. You don't remember the danger a black man faced in the south before the struggles." I asked him, "what do you think about Obama not making good on don't ask, don't tell?" (thinking about Matthew Shepard, a beautiful, talented young man not two months my junior)
"Kennedy pulled this crap." Emmet said, "Johnson got the real work done. Kennedy didn't want to piss off anybody. Johnson didn't care and he used Kennedy's ghost to railroad the southern legislators and the racist union men into doing what he wanted without compromise. I can tell you, the black community was getting to the point of being fed up. Some thought it was going to be revolution and by some I mean black and white folks, so we would not have been happy with a compromise." Nor should you have been. When I look at the levels of acceptable discrimination that permeates this nation in regards to the basic rights of freedom, property and safety, I wonder how the gay community has let itself accept anything short of revolution? Perhaps they just don't have the numbers, or perhaps the civil rights movement was a slight pressure valve for the gay community. Well the pressure is back up, and we don't need compromise, we need a bulldozer.
Mr. Obama, you need to think less Kennedy and more Johnson. We need you to piss people off and it shouldn't be your base. To hell with the right. To hell with bi-partisanship. People are being denied the most essential freedoms that generations have suffered and died to uphold. I am fed up with waiting. Patience unto death is poison! Until our gay brothers and sisters are taken seriously by this administration I will not give a dime nor speak a word of support on behalf of your administration. Go and fight Mr. Bush's war Mr. Obama. You won the right to play at being president. Let me know when you decide to try being a leader.