40 Years After Stonewall: No Progress on Gay Rights

"Why should we have to wait one more day?" asks Steve Hildebrand, former deputy national campaign adviser for President Obama, addressing the lack of progress on gay rights in America.

Hildebrand was speaking about two weeks ago -- before the hate crimes legislation was passed and before the President's weekend statement about ending "Don't ask, don't tell."

Some forty years after the Stonewall Riots in New York city, Hildebrand contends, "Congress has done almost nothing to further equality." He cites the failure of anti-discrimination employment laws, the slow passage of the hate crime bill, the defense of marriage act, and "Don't ask, don't tell."

Obama's refusal to say when he'll repeal the military's discrimination against homosexuals suggests little has changed. More than 13,000 service personnel have been forced out of the armed forces including two West Point graduates.

Watch the full program at FORA.tv.

Follow Blaise Zerega on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BeeZee

Comments

[heydavemaine]

I agree with Steve Hildebrand's complaint about the lack of progress by Obama, but I am surprised he doesn't recognize or acknowledge how his own failure contributed to it.

Why didn't Hildebrand, Tobias Wolff and other lgbts who played important roles in Obama's campaign have any influence post-campaign? Where were the prominent gay politicos in the Obama transition team when everyone was jockeying to get their agendas scheduled? The need to get attention for our issues and to extract promises from the candidate didn't stop with the election.

It would seem to me that this should have been obvious to someone of Steve's stature. This isn't the first presidential campaign in which he has had a senior position. It's a shame he didn't get tough with Obama long before now, but if he really wants to light a fire under the administration, I'm sure he has the inside sources to find out who is holding us back and why.

Unfortunately, the fact that he is reduced to communicated with the prez via the media is an even more troubling about our standing in the White House.

[anticapitalist1983]

i'm sick of the world gay bashing through policy and personal assault!

i bash back, you should too. find a local group:
http://bashbacknews.wordpress.com/

[wdw505]

you're kidding right?

[wdw505]

wow very scary .........anyone can make a website

laughing

[LintLass]

A lot of change has happened. A lot of rights simply have not been secured. Certain parties and churches find it useful to kick us all around the parking lot for as long as they can.

Yes, there's been change. Socially.

Time to pony up with the John Hancock.

[Aplace4everyone]

Of course there has been progress since Stonewall. It was a defining moment. But it should not be regarded as a point of arrival but a point of departure. The real work still lies ahead.

All these years later sometimes I still ask myself, are LBGT people so damaged that they are incapable of really standing up for themselves?

I just got through reading this speech by Janice Langbehn at http://dancingbear.vox.com/library/post/imagine-having-to-tell-this-storythe-words-of-janice-langbehn.html

It made me want to fly a plane into a building.

How much do LGBT people have to put up with before they say, "enough, things have to change now"?

I do not refer to Ms Langben here - tragically, she has made her contribution - but where is the outrage on her behalf?

Just how many Matthew Shepherds and Lisa Ponds will it take before it is enough?

I think it is pathetic that the LGBT community sees progress in a pie-in-the-sky promise to be allowed, one day, to be sent off to war reassured that if they are blown to bits their same sex partner will be notified.

[Chris1962]

>>>How much do LGBT people have to put up with before they say, "enough, things have to change now"?>>>

Why hasn't Obama made a firm, public demand of his uniquely powerful majority-Dem congress to get a DADT repeal on his desk? It's been nine months, and he still won't even publicly commit to a time table. It smells, to me, like he's running out the clock with THIS congress, because a weaker one (a majority-R­epublican, or majority-split or even a significantly weaker majority-Dem congress) would provide "cover." Don't anyone be too quick to discount that possibility. The time is now to pass a repeal with THIS congress. This golden opportunity may never roll around again.

[Chris1962]

>>>Op-ed from the Washington Post, "The Next Step on Gay Rights":

...It should also be a reminder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They've done a good job of letting Obama take all the heat from the gay community for inaction in Washington. But if the shameful ban on gays serving openly in the military is to end, if gay and lesbian couples are to share in the rights and responsibilities of marriage that would come with the demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress must overturn them, sending bills to Obama. The president has made it clear that he would sign them. It's time for Pelosi and Reid to follow through.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/10/the_next_step_on_gay_rights.html

[Philip N. Cohen - Huffpost Blogger]

Much of the progress is not legal or political, but personal and cultural. Hard to quantify, but impossible to deny. The opening of the door to same-sex marriage has the potential to institutionalize equal rights in important, though limited, ways. It's amazing that just 50,000 married couples can provoke serious changes in official and scientific conceptions of families. That's change, too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-n-cohen/demographic-science-and-g_b_316760.html.

[seatea1967]

Saying there has been "No progress on gay rights" is insulting to all those who have fought so hard for the amazing progress we've seen in the last 40 years. Undoubtedly there is still a long way to go, but let's not be insulting.

[QueenMaedb]

Sign seen at Sunday's Equality Rally in DC:

"I can't believe I'm still having to protest this crap!"