When President Obama signed legislation repealing Don't Ask/Don't Tell (DADT), he fulfilled one of his key campaign promises to both the LGBT community and the entire nation. Yet while high-profile gay and lesbian pundits such as Rachel Maddow and Andrew Sullivan are roundly declaring the repeal "Obama's victory," there remains a segment of the LGBT community for whom this president can do little or no good.
Indeed, despite the president's monthslong maneuvering to end DADT's 17-year reign of terror, many LGBT voices are reducing his role to marginal, 11th-hour efforts to appease angry activists. And some are simply leaving President Obama out of the picture entirely.
Writing for The Daily Beast, feminist author Linda Hirshman offered gratitude to soldier groups like the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network but made no mention of the White House. Influential lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding thanked Senators Kay Hagen and Richard Burr along with Congressman Patrick Murphy, but had no appreciative words for the president.
Over at progressive site AmericaBlog, writer John Aravosis does thank Obama at the end of a long screed, but only with a tepid, "And even the "President, who finally got into gear (albeit a tad late) and made the calls necessary to make this happen." Long-time LGBT leader David Mixner offered little more than a lukewarm "the repeal of DADT would not have happened without Pres. Obama... he was clearly on our side." While Jim Burroway cleanly quips: "In the end, President Obama's strategy worked after all. But it worked not so much because it was a brilliant strategy but because he was lucky."
While a few individual writers hardly speak for the entire LGBT community, there's little doubt that the president has been vilified by many gay-stream leaders since his election two years ago. Yet considering the president's impressive record on LGBT issues -- from enacting hate-crimes legislation to extending benefits to federal employees and ending the ban on HIV-positive visitors entering the United States -- that anger seems confoundingly misdirected. After all, wasn't it President Clinton who approved both DADT in 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) three years later -- two of the most regressive laws in the history of civil rights legislation. And weren't LGBT rights further imperiled under George Bush -- who infamously opposed extending hate-crimes legislation to protect LGBTs and promoted a constitutional amendment defining marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution?
True, President Obama must still undo DOMA as well as pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to meet all of his LGBT campaign pledge. But considering he's two-for-two in less than two years, isn't it time Obama's gay-haters began showing him some love? Or at least move on from the notion that Obama is a "homophobe," a "bigot," an "enemy of the gays" -- and any of the other epithets routinely hurled against him.
"The president is obviously not a homophobe, but he is a pragmatist, someone who governs from the center," observes Jillian T. Weiss, a professor of law and society at Ramapo College of New Jersey who regularly writes about LGBT topics. "This drives people crazy, particularly folks at the margins, like activists solely focused on marriage equality," she adds. "For them anything less than this 'holy grail' could be construed as homophobia."
Although Pres. Obama once favored same-sex marriage, he now supports civil unions -- a position shared by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the LGBT favorite during the 2008 presidential campaign. Activists such as Spaulding regularly deride Obama's faith-based opposition to marriage-equality and his now infamous quote: "For me as a Christian, (marriage) is a sacred union. You know. God is in the mix." Indeed, that Obama is religious at all is often used by critics as proof of his anti-gay sentiments.
Yet with the Obamas clearly no more churchgoing than the Clintons before them, why has Bill and Hill's Christian faith escaped the same kind of scrutiny? It's simple, says Americablog's Aravosis: "Obama is the president, Hillary is not." Yet Aravosis also offers a more alarming explanation -- one echoed by fellow LGBT bloggers from Spaulding to Mixner: Obama is black -- or at least biracial. And Obama's race should not only make him sensitive to LGBT issue, but more sensitive than the white presidents before him. And this includes white presidents like Clinton responsible for the very regressive legislation our black president is currently saddled with repealing.
"Well-educated minorities (like Obama)... one would hope they would be more sensitive to other minorities, that is the expectation," Aravosis explains. "He should be trying harder because he is a minority."
Aravosis may merely be expressing a popular (yet unspoken) sentiment, but the notion that African-Americans should be held to a higher standard than their white counterparts is the very definition of racism itself. What's more, like most race(racist)-based ideologies, it places the president in a position where even his greatest pro-gay achievements will -- like the repeal of DADT -- never fully satisfy his critics. At best, Obama's victories will be rendered pyrrhic; at worst, repackaged as an act of generosity by his (mostly white) naysayers. "All of the activist heat (to repeal DADT) may actually have saved Obama's presidency," Aravosis says. "The repeal could still blow up in his face, but if implemented right it really might save him."
Despite the strong anti-Obama current among many in the LGBT chattering classes, the good news is that the LGBT masses clearly support the president. An October poll of almost 4,500 LGBTs by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR) found that 64 percent of respondees "strongly" or "somewhat" approved of President Obama's performance on LGBT issues. What's more, a similar figure want to "work with" rather than "protest" the White House on the path toward LGBT equality.
Perhaps, most telling of all, bloggers like Aravosis and Spaulding have virtually no impact on mainstream LGBT politics or thinking. As the GQR report noted, even the most well-followed LGBT blogs like Towleroad or Queerty were read by a mere three percent of respondents; Americablog by two percent, Spaulding's Pam's House Blend by a scant one percent.
The disconnect between the bloggers' perspectives and that of the LGBT masses is not necessarily surprising. After all, "there are multiple communities within the LGBT 'community'," says Juan Battle, professor of sociology, public health and urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "Some gay people approve of the president and some don't -- just like in the larger society."
Despite the disconnect, one person who certainly is reading Aravosis, Spaulding and Towle is Obama himself. He invited them to the White House for the DADT-repeal signing, along with activists such as former Lt. Dan Choi and GetEQUAL's Robin McGehee. As some of his harshest critics, the bloggers and activists are certain to continue demanding that Obama live up to the rest of his "fierce advocate" campaign pledges. Nonetheless, the invites confirm that the Obama White House has -- at least for this week -- reached a much needed détente in the battle to sway LGBT public opinion.
This article originally on The Root.
Follow David Kaufman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/transracial
Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.: New York State of Mind: Bush's Daughter, Catholics Support Same-Sex Marriage
Tracy Baim: Obama and Marriage: Do We Need a Secret Gay-Decoder Ring?
The argumement has never been that Obama didn't care; it was that Obama didn't care enough. While Obama's mind, which is, indeed, a brilliant mind, has calculated how best to accomplish this end (with as little damage as possible to his re-election) I am not one of those who has understood our President as some sort of brainiac playing "11-dimensional chess" with this issue. Frankly, I think he and all of us who wanted DADT to finally be brought to an end, were merely, lucky.
Obama does has a problem with gay people, and that problem is that so many of his ardent supporters come from churches that have enshrined homophobia on their altars. How will "our" President deal with that?
Well, he did describe himself as OUR "fierce advocate."
Ergo, if you ascribe to this sentiment, then it's time for you to do some serious soul-searching on
your own -- and not so internalized -- racism!
I do not care if you believe that I am a racist. If my belief that the oppressed should have a finer sense of justice than those who have lived happily within a cocoon of ignorance, then I guess I am a racist. I believe that people who have suffered from racism, or homophobia, should feel especially challenged to rid themselves of their own hatreds. If you believe that's wrong, I'm sorry to hear it.
During the civil rights movement, many of the young men and women who headed south to help African Americans in their struggle to achieve civil equality were Jews. Only decades after the Holocaust, many Jews saw something in the civil rights movement that struck a chord with them. No doubt, the connection was a sense of shared oppression and shared responsibility. Some of them were even gay. I
Those who have never had to be concerned about the color of their skin, or whether or not they are gender-conforming in appearance are the losers in this, as are those who have suffered oppression, but think that their oppression of others is perfectly okay.
I guess I just expect more out of people who should know better.
I'm sorry you didn't like what I had to say, but hey, it's still a free country
NOW with DADT behind us let us to make the argument that DADT repeal strengthens the case for repeal of DOMA. Because of DOMA gay men and lesbians serving openly can not receive the same benefits that their heterosexual married counterparts can, even if they are in a state recognized marriage or civil union. This underlines the inherent discrimination in the DOMA law, and strengthens the case for repeal of DOMA. Why should we allow our LGB soldiers to serve openly yet deny them equal access to benefits and other provisions marriage provides while doing so. It can not be justified, and it is now our responsibility to make the case. I regret to acknowledge we won't see LGBT legislation in the next 2 years with the Republican congress; so lets focus on building logically the case for marriage, spend the two years talking with our friends our neighbors. Thank You Obama and WE ARE NOT DONE!!
That will not happen. Obama is an establishment Wall Street lovin' Republican in a Democrat's clothes.
What's it like to only care about your own civil rights, and about nothing else the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for?
Faved btw.
Check out this link to the Hardball, and listen to Aubrey Sarvis explain how repeal of DADT came about.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#40798026
That's all this is all about - do som grandstanding at the last minute to hit one out of the ballpark at the end of the legislative year after his slap in the face in November. This way he figures he closes the year right and locks in a gay vote in Nov. 2012 because he learned his "strategic" lesson last month about the insufficiency of the black vote? Uh-huuuuuuuh.
If they had an inkling of history they'd know that what's happened in the last 2 years, in total, has been phenomenal to say the least. Yet people act like we've had presidents like Obama all along and he's somehow not matching up to history. All while he's freaking blowing historic presidential "norms" out of the water!
Most importantly the law would have been dead many weeks ago if the Obama administration had simply refused to appeal the decision in the Log Cabin Republican case. The only justification for appealing the case is that the president disagrees with the judge and does not believe that lesbian and gay people enjoy rights protected by the Constitution. The administration spokespeople argue that the president has an obligation to defend the existing laws. This is not true. He first has the obligation of the oath he took to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution". That obligation extends to intervening in court against unconstitutional laws, not defend them. The law allows the administration to do this as long as Congress is notified (28 USC §530D).
I thank him for leading on the historic congressional repeal of DADT and a host of other legislation that directly affects our LGBT community. And I am certain that he will continue to do the right thing. For any moment of uncertainty, I continue to be active. Even though you are not so sure, I hope that at some point you will see fit to give him credit for the work that he has done on our behalf and, by extension, on behalf of our national/human spirit.
In the meantime, please do not try to speak for all LGBT people. I do not subscribe to your sentiments here---at all. And I am not alone. President Obama is my president. I am thankful that he is here.
When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he had been rated the most liberal member of the Senate. He could have waltzed up to that podium oozing liberalism. If he had, he would have walked into a propeller blade. He made nice with the religious leaders who would make nice, and put one of them on the podium. In football that’s called a fake hand-off to the half-back in order to freeze and confuse the defense giving the quarter back time to complete the pass. Not only did Obama complete his passes, he completed lots of touchdown. I’m in my 60’s, black and gay. If you looked up paranoid in the dictionary 40 years ago, my picture would have been there. I’m still a little paranoid, but my picture has been removed. Your own paranoia is coloring your judgment. You accuse people of not liking you on little or no evidence.
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/12/21/White_House_Staff_It_Gets_Better/
Ever heard of Matthew Shepherd? You survived, he didn't.
It's not a matter of not liking. Who cares what or who he or you like? I don't. It's a matter of what he claims to care about. Words are cheap for those who make nice wth anyone and everyone.
How happy should we be? This was merely one law out of the thousands that affect our daily lives. This one discriminatory law has an impact on 100,000 or so lives at present. Sure, it's the right answer. But ultimately, it's merely great symbolism for the LGBT community at large.
Last night, Chris Matthews said that this will be the start to the rest of the civil rights movement for the LGBT community, because now that we can die for our country, there is no excuse for law to be applied differently to our community and our families.
Which is why I'm really proud of our LGBT active service and vets - especially those who worked against DADT. In addition to their careers, their lives, safety and security have all been at stake for me. Those colors didn't run.
But let's not forget, until we have complete Federal Civil Rights equality, covering all matter of civil law, in all 50 states for the LGBT community, we're not done. It's going to take an amendment to the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity.