LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Talk |
by Bill Sievert |
When it comes to LGBT issues, is it time to egg Obama on?
We're four months into the presidency of Barack Obama, the most gay-friendly president this country has elected, and thus far the only carrot his administration has dangled in front of the LGBT community was an invitation for children with gay and lesbian parents to roll eggs around the White House lawn. Though symbolically sweet, that act smacked of tokenism to many of us Americans who are denied more than 1,000 federal rights of citizenship extended to heterosexual families. It goes without saying that no reasonable person expects LGBT civil rights to surpass economic disorder and a collapsed health-care system as the administration's top priority. However, we should be seeing signs that our president has upper-level members of his team working on the gay-related issues he pledged to support during his campaign. Throughout the president's first 120 days we've heard a lot of excuses for delays. Consider the abysmally unsuccessful 1993 policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which Obama promised to end. Last month, Defense Secretary Donald Gates said it's not going to happen any time soon, if at all. The director of the world's mightiest military essentially conceded that our government is scared. "If we do go down that road, we [must] do it right and in a way that mitigates any downsides," he said. "This is a complex and difficult problem." It's actually a relatively simple problem to fix. National polls show that the public favors opening the military to all Americans who want to serve, and more than 100 retired generals have called for the repeal of "Don't Ask." Yet, Representatives Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, co-chair of the House LGBT caucus, both say repeal should wait until next year. As Baldwin recently stated, "We don't even know the votes in committee, let alone the votes on the floor." Then you'd better get busy, Congresswoman. The trouble with deferring is that next year is an election year when House members tend to be more timid about the votes they cast. The reluctance to just go for it on a matter as basic as "Don't Ask" makes me wonder if there are any gay rights issues the new government is willing to address head on. Barney Frank, who clearly has the ear of the president, has made frequent gloomy statements since Obama's inauguration. For example, he has told interviewers (including ones from LOGO and The Washington Blade) that LGBT people should not expect significant progress toward repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. "We're not even close to being able to do that," Frank said. "We are not yet at the point where that's going to pass, certainly not in the first term of Obama." Not in the first term? Frank's pragmatism is problematic for a couple reasons. First, it assumes a second term. It also ignores the fact that the president has been enjoying a well-deserved honeymoon during which he has been able to make progress on other contentious matters large and small. If Obama and his Congressional majority do not seize this time, what makes them think it will become any easier to enact gay rights legislation in another year or four? Frank also warned couples not to expect significant movement toward the president's promise (still on the White House website) to "ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions." According to Frank, it would be "just as hard" to persuade Congress to approve civil unions as marriages "because it's the same thing politically." What ever happened to profiles in courage? Even for Frank, a Congressman who was bold enough to come out of the closet 22 years ago, LGBT issues now seem too tough to tackle. Such a defeatist attitude is particularly disappointing at a time when so much progress is being made at the state level, where gay people have won the legal right to marry from Maine to Iowa. Certainly President Obama realized that taking on LGBT-rights issues would be hard when he made them a part of his campaign. I still believe he intends to honor his commitments, and he may eventually surprise many of us on the subject of marriage. But he also may be confused about what gay people want. LGBT leaders have been sending him mixed signals as to our own priorities. On "Don't Ask," gay Congress members like Frank and Baldwin are telling him to wait, but the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network this month launched "a major offensive" urging the president to repeal the policy immediately by eliminating funding for it from the Pentagon's budget. That could be a quick and relatively easy fix. The administration has also been bombarded with conflicting views on how to address its biggest promise and our thorniest issue: same-sex partnerships. Obama has no desire to fuel a fire between supporters of LGBT marriage (including legally married couples) and those who agree with him that civil unions (which would be available even to couples who live in states where marriage is illegal) are the most realistic direction for the federal government to go. According to the Washington Blade, marriage proponents are asking whether Obama's idea (as stated on the White House website) would specifically cover LGBT couples legally wed in their home states. If so, that could easily be interpreted as a federal endorsement of same-sex marriage, something administration officials suspect would doom any legislation. If not, and if Congress should fail to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, LGBT married couples could be left without any federal rights unless they form separate civil unions, conflicting with and diminishing the importance of their marriages. If this conundrum is given sufficient attention, the brightest minds in the White House, working with LGBT leaders, should be able to craft language that includes everyone without alienating potential Congressional votes. (And repeal of DOMA is essential.) But the Blade has quoted gay-movement insiders who predict that the issue could become contentious among our own people. As one said, "This could turn into another pitched battle among gays similar to the one we had over whether ENDA [The Employment Non-Discrimination Act] should include protections for transgender Americans." The threat of brouhaha within (as well as without) the gay community is likely giving the Obama administration reason to pause and delay. It doesn't help our cause when we fail to present a coherent, consistent plan delivered in a common voice. In other words, before we whine too loudly about the waddling pace of progress in Washington, we should make sure our queer ducks are aligned in a row. As one wobble in the right direction, The White House earlier this month invited leaders of several gay organizations to meet with Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina. The participants reportedly worked on a strategy for passing new hate-crimes legislation as well as repeal of "Don't Ask." Among those attending was Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, who told The New York Times afterward that, while gay rights "might not be unfolding exactly as we thought,...they have a vision. They have a plan." I still don't doubt the vision, but I see no evidence of a plan either from the Obama administration or our LGBT leaders. For once, our side needs to develop and follow through on a unified "gay agenda"like right-wingers have always accused us of having. Bill Sievert can be reached at billsievert@comcast.net. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 19, No. 05 May 22, 2009 |