I've been asked by several commenters to turn my listing of Obama's inaction into a diary. I hope this conveys why the GLBT community has been so upset over the last few months with Obama and the dearth of progress in GLBT rights.
Markos hit the nail squarely on the head earlier today in his Front page story Obama reacts to angry LGBT community ... with relocation assistance in mocking the administration's dismal response to the GLBT community's growing tsunami of anger over the lack of progress on GLBT issues and rights. The lack of progress however isn't the earthquake that triggered this tsunami, it was the Obama DOJ filing last week of an incendiary legal brief in Smelt v United States defending the constitutionality of the D[enial] of Marriage Act. The brief cited cases involving incest and pedophilia ephebophilia as reasons to justify that same sex marriages can be banned.
Said Markos:
But let's remember, gay anger isn't stemming from administration inaction (though that's fueling it). It stems from action -- the submission of this hateful brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (which, by the way, totally failed to protect Sen. Jon Ensign's marriage). That anger is well justified.
The DNC needs to reschedule next week's gay fundraiser until after the administration gets its act together on its plan for gay rights. I'm pretty confident the administration eventually will, but until it does, out of simple common courtesy, it should refrain from treating the gay community like an ATM.
And this is where we come to why we're seeing a reaction from Obama now. The fundraiser.
Incase you were unaware, June is pride month on the GLBT calendar of events and this year's pride month takes on much more significance because this pride month is an anniversary of an event that is the source of this month being pride month: the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York. Without delving too much into the history, the NYC police force back in the day made it a habit of raiding the Stonewall Inn, a hotel/bar/club for the New York GLBT community, rounding up the patrons and cracking a few skulls. It was good fun for them picking on the fags and fairies. That is until the early morning hours of June 28th, 1969. The Stonewall patrons had had enough. They fought back. The violence lasted three days. Stonewall was when the GLBT community in America finally found its voice and finally resolved to fight back for our rights. It was a watershed moment. It was something for which we as GLBT Americans could be proud. Hence the month long celebration each year.
The Democrats also annually hold a GLBT fundraiser in June because of pride. Its a chance to fundraise from the GLBT community since the party at least purports to be more progressive on gay rights issues and most of the GLBT community votes Democratic. This year however, the DOJ brief has changed the mood considerably. We're 40 years removed from Stonewall and yet have failed to see even a single federal law passed protecting the GLBT community. Not one...in forty years.
Obama in his Presidential campaign promised hope and change for America and many in the GLBT community liked what they heard and became full fledged supporters of the then Illinois Senator while other liked what they heard but remained highly skeptical as the generally polished and adept Obama campaign kept tripping and falling again and again on GLBT issues. Sen. Obama talks a good game on GLBT rights, but his words were starting to be out paced by a series of events disturbing to the GLBT community. This sequence of events started in October 2007 when Obama organized a concert for black evangelicals in South Carolina.
Obama invited gospel singer Donnie McClurkin to emcee and sing at the event apparently oblivious to McClurkin's anti-gay history as an "ex-gay" and supporter of reparative therapy for gays and lesbians. Numerous GLBT organizations tried to explain this to Obama, but Obama's response was not to disinvite McClurkin, but rather issue a release that Obama didn't agree with McClurkin's views on gays. Obama failed to realized the depth of the problem with McClurkin and how the "ex-gay" movement is poison in the GLBT community, how it is essentially radioactive. It is a primary source of many suicides by those in the GLBT community as it teaches gays to hate themselves and try to stop being something they cannot help from being. At the time, I had been starting to warm to Obama's candidacy having mainly following and supporting Edwards and Richardson at the time, but open to supporting other candidates (with the exception of Sen. Clinton principally because of the Clinton's betrayal of the GLBT community). That came to an abrupt end thanks to McClurkin. In a diary, Surviving Childhood, I tried to explain why this issue was so important in the GLBT community, why validating "ex-gays" and their movement was such a threat to the health and safety of GLBT persons, especially the very fragile GLBT youth so often driven to suicide because of the profound sense of loneliness and depression exacerbated by the claims of the "ex-gay" movement. Paraphrasing a quote from Ellen Degeneres (or her mother Betty, I've never managed to find the original quote, I simply paraphrased the sentiment) I tried to convey this sense of loneliness and disconnectivity that GLBT children suffer:
Growing up, when a black child is confronted with racial bigotry and discrimination and needs a sympathetic shoulder to cry on or sympathetic voice to give them support and comfort, the child generally has a parent they can turn to. Most black children have atleast one black parent, a parent that likely suffered from the same bigotry and discrimination, if not worse. Likewise, a Jewish child confronted with religious bigotry and discrimination generally has a Jewish parent to whom they can turn to. For the gay child however, this generally is not the case. A gay child generally does not have a gay parent that has has similar experiences facing the same type of bigotry and discrimination. Indeed, the gay child may well face bigotry and discrimination from their own parents if their sexuality is revealed.
Obama just didn't get it. In a rather lame attempt to quell the concerns of the GLBT community, he decided to have an openly gay minister deliver the invocation at the concert. He picked the Rev. Andy Sidden for the duty. Sidden, who is white, accepted but is was later revealed that Obama had declined the offers of several gay African American ministers to deliver the invocation. The was highly irksome as whites preaching to African Americans has never gone over that well with African Americans so one can imagine how well the image of a GAY white preaching to an African American crowd was going to go over. When the Rev Sidden delivered his invocation the concert venue was almost empty with reports up to one third of the eventual size. McClurkin on the other hand had the microphone all night as emcee and used it to address the controversy spewing his "ex-gay" spiel of
how "God delivered me from homosexuality." After the concert, the Obama campaign distributed to the media a release again defending McClurkin but distancing Obama from McClurkin's views. The release however was very dismissive of GLBT'c concerns and included the highly condescending statement, in all caps "MCCLURKIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE GAYS AND LESBIANS WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR LIVES." So its OK to target unhappy gays with "reparative therapy" when such "therapy" is condemned by medical authorities including the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Amercian Psychiatric Association? The whole fiasco was a real eye opener to the GLBT community about Obama. Some were willing to forgive and forget easily, but some, myself included, refused. He was just too dismissive of our concerns and it was troubling.
As the campaign wore on Obama continued to do some things the GLBT community found irksome:
- When asked by a DKos member about his association with McClurkin in New Hampshire, the member reported that "he seemed ticked off that I brought it up. He did not apologize or say anything that would make me think he understood how offensive the incident was to LGBT folks. His answer was to repeat over and over 'It was just one concert.'" That's just goes to show he really didn't get that he had done something wrong. It was highly dismissive of something that is very important to the general mental health of the GLBT community and to the very lives of GLBT youth who are often forced into these "reparative therapy" programs against their will. (See eg. Zach Stark)
- Obama shows his position on McClurkin is a double standard when he not only denounced the anti-Semitism of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, but famously at a debate with Hillary Clinton had to both reject and denounce a nonexistent offer of support from Farrakhan since such would sour Obama with the Jewish community, but it was OK to throw the GLBT community under the bus with McClurkin.
- Obama appointed Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec to be a "faith surrogate" for the Obama campaign in the state of California at the same time that Kmiec was actively serving as one of the biggest cheerleaders for Proposition 8.
- Obama went to Rick Warren's church for a forum with Republican John McCain. At the forum, Obama used the common right wing language to talk about marriage, abbreviated in the GLBT community as IBMIBAMAAW: "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman." Obama's exact statement was event worse that that stating "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian -- for me -- for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix." He went on to reiterate his call for a return to segregation by creating a separate but "equal" institution for us fags.
- Just prior to the election, Obama released a toothless statement opposing Prop 8 in California, a statement so utterly weak, proponents of Prop 8 were able to chop off the first sentence of the statement and use the rest of the statement in robocalls advocating the passage of Prop 8. Obama didn't condemn the move or make a clear message that he definitively opposed Prop 8.
That lead up to the second McClurkin size fiasco after the election. Obama invited the Rev Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Inaugural ceremonies on January 20th. At the time that announcement was made, the GLBT community was still actively protesting in the streets of California over the passage of Proposition 8. It wasn't just pouring salt into a wound, it was rubbing it in. The story eventually died down some, but real damage had been done to Obama's credibility in the GLBT community. Whereas most were willing to forgive him for McClurkin, a second fiasco of this magnitude was too much. In an attempt at an olive branch, Obama, after several weeks had passed, extended an invitation to the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, to deliver an invocation at a concert kicking off the Inaugural festivities. The parallels to McClurkin incident continued when Bishop Robinson's invocation failed to be broadcast to the nationwide TV audience because Obama's inaugural committee had scheduled the invocation for before the broadcast began. Even when Robinson delivered the invocation, it was not heard by the vast majority of those in attendance at the Lincoln Memorial and on the National Mall because of a curious speaker malfunction right after a successful mic check had been performed.
This of course all preceded Obama actually being President. As President, surely Obama was going to make right with the GLBT community and fulfill his promises, right? We soon discovered that he had no such interest in doing so. Since taking office, Obama's track record with the GLBT community has been anything but positive:
- Obama did not appoint a single openly GLBT cabinet secretary, but made certain to appoint one from each of the other major constituencies of the Democratic Party.
- The Windy City Times revealed it had found a 1996 candidate questionnaire from Obama's run for the Illinois state Senate in which then Prof Obama stated his unequivocal support for same sex marriage meaning that his position on the issue has devolved from one of full equality to one of opposing equality opting for a segregationist institution instead.
- After the Iowa Supreme Court decision, the Obama White House released a statement on the ruling reiterating Obama's opposition to marriage equality and failed to even use the word "equal" at all. After a mini-blogosphere storm started to form, a "corrected" release was sent out changing the clause "he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive protection under the law" to "he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive equal rights under the law."
- After Vermont successfully overrode Gov Douglas' veto of the marriage equality bill and after Maine and New Hampshire's bills were signed into law, the White House's response was: " <cricket churp> <cricket churp>"
- The White House started deleting pro-GLBT language on the White House website. The outcry over the removal of the items prompted some of the material to be put back, but with much weaker, softer language forcing yet another revision of the language to placate the outrage.
- While appoint some GLBT persons to his administration, none of the appointments have been very high positions, the highest being the Director of Personnel Management. Obama passed on selecting an openly GLBT nominee to the Supreme Court and none of his other judicial appointments have been GLBT meaning there is still but one GLBT judge out of approximately 860 federal judgeships (0.12%).
- Obama made light of same sex marriage at the annual Correspondents Dinner joking about he and advisor David Axelrod going to Iowa and "making it official"
- Obama has passed up several high profile opportunities to suspend separations under Don't Ask, Don't Tell when the discharges of 2nd Lt. Sandy Tsao, Lt. Dan Choi and Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach became publicly notable. GLBT servicemembers continue to be discharged at a rate of approximately two per day.
- The Obama administration successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to deny a hearing on Lt. Col. Fehrehbach's challenge to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
- Obama's DOJ files an incendiary brief in a challenge to DOMA that relies on analogies to incest and pedophilia (or more correctly ebophilia) and goes well beyond what was necessary to secure that the petition in question is not granted a writ of certiorari.
Which brings us to today where Obama may finally take a positive step towards securing equality for GLBT Americans. But we're not going to see a moratorium on discharges under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," or a signing of the Hate Crimes Protection Act, or a repeal of the D[enial] of Marriage Act or a signing of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. While details are sketchy at this time, it appears all we will see is an expansion of Bill Clinton's executive order (retained by Bush II) protecting gays, lesbians and bisexuals from employment discrimination in the Federal Government to now include our transgendered brothers and sisters and an extension of domestic partner benefits to the partners of federal employees sans the two most important ones, healthcare coverage and pension benefits. It is also worth pointing out these piddlely benefits that are being extended to same sex couples will be subject to taxation under federal law unlike the comparable benefits for married opposite sex couples. After this veritable mountain of inactions and insults to the GLBT community from Obama over the course of the last 20 months, this is hardly something that will stem the tide much less stop a tsunami.
President Obama stated during the campaign that all that was need to secure equal rights for GLBT Americans was leadership and said "when it comes to my attitudes about whether this is a priority or not, I will put it at the top of the list along with many other issues". Mr. President, this is not leadership. You haven't made it a priority. You only now are acting in a positive fashion on GLBT rights with a gratuitously minute gesture to prevent the DNC fundraiser next week from being a complete disaster with numerous high profile GLBT activists pulling out including David Mixner, the Human Rights Campaign, Empire State Pride and GLBT blogger Andy Towle. It is not enough Mr. President. We expect the leadership you promised. We expect the leadership of which we know you are capable.