IGF CultureWatch

Hendrik Hertzberg has an excellent Talk of the Town piece in the June 22 edition of The New Yorker about the effect of Barack Obama's Cairo speech on the Middle East. As I was reading it, I kept thinking how much I wish that was the Barack Obama addressing gay equality.

Here is Hertzberg:

. . . he offered his audience not only ordered information, argument and context but also the catharsis of saying aloud things long unsaid. He wished, he said, to speak clearly and plainly, and that is what he did.

Compare that to the Obama who has been assigned to deal with our issues. He has said he supports equality - is, in fact, a "fierce advocate" of it - but has also said that he believes marriage is only between a man and a woman because of his religious beliefs. In fact, he has never offered anything other than religious beliefs to support this statement.

That is entirely respectable as a declaration of faith, but it is not a policy argument, except for those Christianists who believe that, like Iran's theocracy, religious leaders are capable of using scripture to determine public policy in a 21st Century nation that is composed of various sects, religions and even non-believers. We do not have a religious Supreme Leader, or a Guardian Council, and I, at least, am skeptical that this is the model most Americans would want for the United States.

Obama opposed California's Prop. 8, which suggests he is open to public policies that conflict with his religious belief. And that is of paramount importance.

But compare Obama's performance on gay equality to his performance in Cairo. He has yet to articulate any ordered information, argument and/or context, and if anyone has heard him speak clearly or plainly on homosexual equality or same-sex marriage, they're keeping it to themselves.

Is it possible that homosexual equality is harder than dealing with the Middle East? The talent this President has - of "saying aloud things long unsaid" - is exactly what this discussion has long needed from a President. Our frustration, I think, is in the fact that we elected exactly that President, and now he seems to be more afraid of dealing with us than he is of dealing with the most intense religious and political conflict in the modern world.

Jonathan Capehart makes the good argument that Congress is where the laws are made and, in the case of DADT and DOMA must be unmade - and that we should focus our efforts there. And he is surely right about that.

But what we need is leadership, and when it comes to that, Congress is no match for the President. As an institution, Congress follows, it does not lead. Nancy Pelosi and particularly Harry Reid are cautious administrators of their party's interests, and neither is in a league with the President when it comes to sheer political oratory.

But as the world could see from the Cairo speech, oratory comes from understanding, and I am not convinced Obama yet has anything but rhetoric on gay equality, the glib and uncritical soundbites that go no deeper than political convenience.

If his newfound solidarity with the A-List gays goes no further than the usual political jargon, we won't have gained anything. That is, in fact, the central problem that needs to be solved. This President has shown he can get beyond the jargon in ways that most of the political establishment cannot. But he needs to hear from people who do not speak in the jargon - and jargon is the stock-in-trade of those who claim to be our (unelected) leaders.