Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Promise

While President Obama has given tons of flowery speeches on equal rights based on sexual orientation (one of them came last night at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner) John Aravosis at AmericaBlog is pretty pissed off at the President's track record on fixing all the damage the Bushies have done on the issue.

As for my take... Barack Obama just promised us that if he becomes president, he's going to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, and get ENDA passed. It was a bit surreal. I'm sitting at a fundraiser for the No on 1 effort in Maine (that Obama didn't even bother to mention), and we were all just speechless (actually, hardly speechless - and I thought yelling at the TV was long since over). Obama repeated his campaign promises. That was it.

What's particularly disturbing is how President Obama contradicts himself, and his own administration, when talking to a gay crowd. The president claimed that he's for treating gay couples just like married couples. Then why is he against letting gay couples marry? The president claimed that it doesn't matter if we're at war and working on health care and lots of other important issues, we must forget ahead on gay civil rights. Then why is Obama's own administration putting out the talking point that they can't move ahead on gay rights until the wars are over, until health care is over, until Obama has less on his plate? Even General Jones last week said we can't do DADT because we're at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But President Obama claimed today that precisely because we're at war it is important to lift the ban now.

Huh?

What did President Obama say new tonight? Absolutely nothing. What did the Human Rights Campaign get in exchange for once again giving our president cover for all of his broken promises to our community? Absolutely nothing.

Now, John has a damn good point. One of the major GOP criticisms of the President is that Obama tries to do too much, and basically Obama's trying to hide behind that to avoid taking action on a number of civil rights fronts, and the LGBT community is pissed. America really does treat LGBT Americans like they are second-class citizens at best. That has to stop, and President Obama is actually in a position to do something about it.

On the other hand, BooMan has a decent argument as well that the Village is trying to paint this as war between the LGBT community and Obama.

When you've spent a good part of your life fighting for gay rights and equality, and/or suffering from the lack thereof, it may seem like seeing your concerns addressed is the most pressing issue imaginable. You may be in no mood for delay. But, while it is far from certain that Obama couldn't have moved on some issues of special concern to the gay community before now, accusing him of putting their agenda behind Wall Street regulation, health care, climate change, and foreign policy issues is a bit insane. In the priorities facing the nation, those four obviously come out on top. I'd add job creation and foreclosure mitigation to the list. In fairness, the Washington Post reporters who crafted that paragraph were not quoting anyone. That was their interpretation of the criticism that Obama has been receiving, but it is probably not a fair interpretation. Perhaps we should work with actual quotes:

"As someone who supported Barack Obama early on during the primaries, and raised nearly $50,000 for him during the campaign, it gives me no pleasure to burst the pink champagne bubbles of hope," John Aravosis, a gay rights activist and popular blogger, wrote in the Huffington Post. "But President Obama's track record on keeping his gay promises has been fairly abominable."

I don't interpret that criticism to be aimed at Obama's setting of priorities. I think Aravosis expects Obama to be able to do more than a few things at a time. And, regardless, pressure needs to be kept on so that Obama doesn't forget that fulfilling his promises to the gay community is somewhere in the queue.

Which I can understand. Obama really does need to roll on this.

The Democrats crammed the Hate Crimes Bill into the Defense Authorization Bill, infuriating Republicans. But it will soon pass. I fully expect that the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy will end before the end of his first term. A bigger question is whether or not Obama will be willing or able to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. That will be a tougher battle.

Which is also a good point. But it is a battle that needs to be fought and won, and on that, I agree with both bloggers.

[UPDATE 5:18 PM] Sully is much less happy with Obama's speech.

Look: I didn't expect these issues to be front and center given his appalling inheritance; I know he has many other things on his plate; I didn't expect the moon; I didn't believe he would do any of this immediately; I understand that the real job is for us to do, not him, and that most of the action is in the states. And I remain a strong supporter of him in foreign policy and in the way he is clearly trying to move this country past the ideological divides of the recent past.

But the sad truth is: he is refusing to take any responsibility for his clear refusal to fulfill clear campaign pledges on the core matter of civil rights and has given no substantive, verifiable pledges or deadlines by which he can be held accountable. What that means, I'm afraid, is that this speech was highfalutin bullshit. There were no meaningful commitments within a time certain, not even a commitment to fulfilling them in his first term; just meaningless, feel-good commitments that we have no way of holding him to. Once the dust settles, ask yourself. What did he promise to achieve in the next year? Or two years? Or four years? The answer is: nothing.

HRC, of course, is putting no pressure on him; Joe Solmonese's disgraceful email actually took all pressure off him by saying he'd be happy to wait till 2017 for HRC to hold Obama accountable. HRC are putting pressure, as they always have, on gay people to go to the back of the line and be grateful a president attends their fundraising event. The only word for this is a racket. And if gay people do not rise up and demand change from this organization and stop funding a group whose goal has always been to sell the Democrats to gay people rather than secure civil rights, then they will continue to suffer the discrimination they live under day after day.

And he has a point: We've heard this before from Obama, just like we heard promises of turning around the Bush record on civil liberties and the wars overseas. The actions so far do not match the words.