There is no shortage of excellent commentary on President Obama's speech to HRC. Andrew Sullivan, Jim Burroway and Jeremy Hooper are all great. I only have a few thoughts to add.
(1) For those who want action from Obama, it's good to remember a speech by the President of the United States is action. We talk a lot about "war," but that is just a metaphor for what we are doing: changing a cultural prejudice that has existed for centuries. Signing bills is only one kind of action in that kind of struggle, and that's an end, not a means. Finding heterosexual leaders to join us has been the hardest part of our effort. This was a speech inconceivable from any prior President. It will be helpful in moving toward equality, and may stand as a landmark.
(2) This speech incorporated exactly the incoherence we are fighting in the culture. Obama did promise to sign bills that would punish anti-gay prejudice -- hate crimes and employment discrimination. But whatever political value those laws will have is undermined -- powerfully -- by the federal government's own explicit discrimination against gays in DOMA and DADT. Until those laws are changed, the government Obama presides over remains the country's dominant source of anti-gay discrimination. Those who oppose us will certainly have those two pillars of discrimination to support their own feelings about our inferiority.
(3) The President's failure to mention either Maine or Washington is unforgivable, and Obama has compromised, if not forfeited, any claim to be a fierce advocate of our equality in leaving them out. His ambiguous language about equality for our relationships will be used in Maine, as it was in California, to reinforce his opposition to same-sex marriage -- which is a fact. That fact will be used against us, and Obama is the only person that can prevent that, if he chooses. But the election in Washington state is one where even his lack of conviction about our equality would have been no bar to supporting us. The Washington referendum is not about marriage, it is only about domestic partnership rights. That is exactly the qualified equality he said he supports for us. There was not a person in that room last night who did not know about these two elections, and their cheers for the President's waffling on this central issue were inexplicable. Washington's legislature finally moved same-sex couples in that state to the nominal equality the President believes we are entitled to, and some in that state want to take it away, leaving same-sex couples in Washington with scraps (though not "nothing" as I incorrectly asserted in an earlier post). How could the President possibly be silent about that and be celebrated?
One Comment for “Unfierce Advocate”
posted by TS on
Nice BALANCED article! Way to remind people to come at these events from as many perspectives as they can.
Me, it doesn’t change my notion that Obama is no fierce advocate. He, or someone on his staff, merely got sensitive all the sudden to the LGBT community’s wrath. But he has his priorities: health care, education, programs, and de-Republicanizing foreign policy. We are a mere distraction to those priorities, and a threat to the durability of his coalition.
Which, as I have also been saying, is fine with me. The symbolism of it now being okay for the head of state to say he supports us is plenty. The federal government needs to repeal DOMA, a legislative task, and DADT, a combined Leg-Exec-Mil task. I am opposed to END as long as government continues to be unable to tell the difference between public and private. And I am a fierce opponent of hate crimes legislation of any kind. I don’t care if someone kills my friend because he’s gay or to steal his wallet; both reasons for killing are equally atrocious in my view.
Which about does it for Obama. Marriage is for the states, and I personally would like to see an end to civil marriage, replacing it with personal religious (or secular custom) marriage and civil unions. And as the Constitution says, all the other work is “for the states, or the people.”