May 2, 2008

Elaine Donnelly: One Nasty, Anti-Gay, Misogynistic Piece of Work

The puckered face of misogyny.

Just received this press release from PFLAG…

PFLAG Condemns Misleading, Anti-Gay Campaign in Support of Military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Law; Calls New Web Advocacy Site More of Same Tired & Disproven Rhetoric

Washington, DC — Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) today called a new campaign in support of the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law misleading, offensive and disrespectful to America’s military personnel. The online advocacy website, www.americansforthemilitary.com, was launched by the conservative Center for Military Readiness and urges voters to sign a Congressional petition to continue dismissing lesbian, gay and bisexual service personnel from the armed forces.

“It is outrageous that some in our country would answer the service and sacrifice of their fellow citizens by calling for them to be fired simply because of who they are,” said PFLAG executive director Jody M. Huckaby. “Ms. Donnelly has recycled the same tired, misleading and disproven rhetoric that has been used for years to keep too many qualified Americans out of our armed forces. All the while, an estimated 65,000 LGBT Americans continue to proudly report for duty in our nation’s military and keep Americans, including Ms. Donnelly, safe and secure. PFLAG supports all of America’s military and their families, including LGBT service members. No amount of shrill fear-mongering will ever change the fact that our country is better because of their service.”

Calling efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” an “attack” on the armed forces, Donnelly calls for an “online Army” to support a continuation of the federal law, which results in at least two service personnel being dismissed every day. Despite polls showing that 79% of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, the Michigan-based activist also claims voters have “insisted” the armed forces keep gays out of its ranks.

Meanwhile, retired, high-ranking military leaders, such as retired Joint Chiefs Chairman John Shalikashvili and Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, USA (Ret.) have called for an end to the law, which is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $364 million since its inception.

“Our national priority should be on the qualification of potential service members, not on discriminating against them because of who they are,” Colonel Daniel Tepfer, USAF (Ret.), a 23-year veteran who serves on PFLAG’s national board, said in a recent statement. “I know many stellar lesbian and gay troops who also served proudly, but who could not serve openly about their lives and their loved ones. Our national priority should be on the qualification of potential service members, not on discriminating against them because of who they are.”

“The best way to show pride in our troops is by saluting their service, not signing their pink slips,” Huckaby added. “This new campaign is not only disrespectful to our men and women in uniform, but it is also a disservice to their families, who also continue to be impacted by this unconscionable law.”

Now we’ll tell you who this Elaine Donnelly is, and why she’s one nasty, anti-gay, misogynistic piece of work — beginning with this barf-making excerpt from the far-right corner of Donnelly’s sad little world in which women hate women:

The globally distributed photo of a U.S. servicewoman holding a naked Iraqi prisoner by a leash “is exactly what feminists have dreamed of for years,” according to a military expert and frequent critic of attempts to integrate all aspects of the U.S. armed forces.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, also believes social-engineering in the military and the degradation of American culture are to blame for the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility near Baghdad.

“That demeaning photo of a female soldier with an Iraqi man on a leash — a woman had to have taken that picture,” Donnelly said. “And I understand the other woman soldier has admitted that she did.” …

Although certain feminists would not admit it publicly, “they’re probably quite fond” of the photo showing the Iraqi prisoner being held on a leash, said Donnelly. That’s “because it is demeaning to a man — any man.”

The feminists to whom Donnelly refers are “the ones who like to buy man-hating greeting cards and have this kind of attitude that all men abused all women. It’s a subculture of the feminist movement, but the driving force in it in many cases, certainly in academia,” she said. …

Abu Ghraib Abuse is a Feminist’s Dream, Says Military Expert
CNSNews.com, May 10, 2004

And now, the truth from the reality-based world:

Elaine Donnelly seemingly has no actual experience serving in the military, but that hasn’t stopped her from establishing a career as president of the Center for Military Readiness through which she crusades against women and gays in the military.

The Detroit News profiled Donnelly back in November 2006 and explained that she initially got her start in politics working alongside Phyllis Schlafly in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment…

Since then, Donnelly has made it her mission to ensure that women do not serve in combat and that gays do not serve at all while making outrageous statements, such as her suggestion that retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili recent call for the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was somehow tied to a stoke he had suffered. …

Huckabee Stands Alone
PFAW, December 27, 2007

In 1993, Lt. Carey Lohrenz was one of the first women to become a Navy combat pilot. In October 1994, after Lohrenz had entered the F-14 program, and received her commission on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Pacific Fleet, another woman who had joined her in this military assignment, Lt. Kara Hultgreen, was killed during a “combat readiness” training flight, because — and through no fault of hers — her engine failed as she was landing.

As it happens, Carey Lohrenz’s record shows she was a skilled pilot. She had received “first place honors” in her primary flight training. Her superior performance as a student entitled her the preference she wished, and she selected jets. Upon completion of her jet training, however, she was told there was no place for female jet pilots at that time, so she could serve as a flight instructor or leave the Navy. Then the Navy changed its policy, and she chose combat jets, for which she was qualified.

Hultgreen’s death brought new attention to female combat pilots. Among those interested was Elaine Donnelly, who heads an organization called the Center for Military Readiness. The Center says it is an independent, non-partisan, educational organization formed to take a leadership role in promoting sound military personnel policies in the armed forces. The organization is composed of hard-right civilians (for example, David Horowitz, Beverly LaHaye, and Phyllis Schlafly), along with a long list of retired military officers.

In fact, the Center is highly political. Elaine Donnelly’s agenda is keeping gays out of the military, keeping Hillary Clinton off the Senate Armed Services Committee, ensuring gender segregation in the military, and preventing women from engaging in combat. Or as one report summarizes it, Ms. Donnelly’s mission is to “monitor and measure [read: resist] the impact of new social policies that were imposed on the military to satisfy the demands of feminist and homosexual interest groups.”

In early 1995, Donnelly sent a letter to Senator Strom Thurmond, then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the Navy was promoting unqualified women in “the demanding and dangerous field of carrier aviation in the F-14 community.” In her letter, Donnelly quoted at length a Lieutenant Burns who had briefly been the flight instructor of both Lohrenz and Hultgreen. He sounds like a fellow who was not happy that the ladies got into the boys’ club.

In April 1995, Donnelly issued a special report from the Center for Military Readiness, publishing the letter to Thurmond - as well as Carey Lohrenz’s confidential training record, thinly disguised as the record of “Pilot B,” but clearly identifiable as Lohrenz, who was the only carrier-qualified female pilot in the Navy, not to mention on the USS Lincoln.

In May, 1995, Lt Carey Lohrenz lost her flight status — apparently as a result of Donnelly’s work. …

John Dean
Justice Scalia’s Thoughts, And A Few Of
My Own, on New York Times v. Sullivan
FindLaw, December 2, 2005

In recent years all the military services, except the Marine Corps, have eliminated separate training for male and female recruits. But the rape trial of army drill Sgt. Delmar Simpson, which ended yesterday in 18 convictions and scores of allegations against other instructors, have reignited debate about the wisdom of gender integrated training. Margaret Warner takes up the debate.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the joint gender training issue that has emerged from the army’s sex scandal. Margaret Warner takes up the debate.

MARGARET WARNER: In recent years all the military services, except the Marine Corps, have eliminated separate training for male and female recruits, but the rape trial of army drill Sgt. Delmar Simpson, which ended yesterday in 18 convictions and scores of allegations against other instructors, have reignited debate about the wisdom of gender integrated training. We get two views on the issue now. Andrea Hollen was the first female graduate of West Point in 1980. She served in the army until 1992, when she retired with the rank of major. She is now a software consultant in Denver. Elaine Donnelly is president of the Center for Military Readiness, a public policy group on military personnel issues. A longtime Republican activist in Michigan, she was named by President Bush to the Presidential Commission on Women in the Armed Forces in 1992. Welcome, both of you. Elaine Donnelly, what does the case involving Sgt. Simpson say about whether men and women should train together in the military?

ELAINE DONNELLY, Center for Military Readiness: Well, it sounds like perhaps justice was done. There were some victims at Aberdeen; however, the larger question is: Should we have coed basic training? …

Marching Side By Side
Online NewsHour (PBS), April 30, 1997

Permalink  |  Trackback  |  Category: Concerned Women, Homophobia, Military/DADT, Press Releases, Radical Religious Right, Republicans, Women

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April 22, 2008

It Was My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To, or: How the Left Lost the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party Lost Me

While scanning today’s headlines, two op/eds jumped out at me; seemingly unrelated, they say exactly the same thing: We — The Left — have lost control of the Democratic Party to the “liberal elites,” the rich, triangulating Third Way DLCers who talk a great talk, but have never walked the walk — and really don’t give a damn about your walk.

The first piece, by Dana Milbank at WaPo, profiles an impoverished Pennsylvania couple who are voting for Hillary Clinton today, and — despite the silly notion that they may not “even think [Barack Obama is] American,” and the extremely disturbing racism prevalent among a few other vocal locals) — their practical, economically-based reasons for refusing to vote for Obama, even if he gets the Democratic nomination (and this couple are Democrats).

The second piece is by Chris Hedges, about whom I’ve written before in these pages; Hedges is the author of one of my favorite and most dog-eared books, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, which explains in clear, if excruciating, detail just how the Radical Religious Right has managed to embed itself into U.S. politics — and, most importantly, why religious fundamentalists of all stripes believe what they believe, and do what they do.

Make no mistake: Hedges is not the radical leftist secularist of the Right’s worst nightmares. The son of a minister and seminary graduate himself, Hedges is equally critical of atheists as he is of religionists; in his newest book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, he makes it clear that his belief in God and conviction that sin is real, and the barometer of morality, is steadfast:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. …

We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. …

The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction.

Hedges’ credibility established, let’s turn our attention to the first op/ed that caught my eye today, by Dana Milbank:

In This Forgotten Town, Obama Can Forget About It

The Monongahela River Valley lost its steel mills in the ’80s and, a quarter-century later, this sad town in the heart of the Mon Valley still hasn’t recovered. Its downtown is a collage of crumbling buildings, and its once-proud landmark, the 102-year-old People’s Union Bank Building, has signs in the window: “Bank Repo Sale. Excellent Deal. Eight stories. Priced to sell!”

It is, in short, just the sort of place Barack Obama was talking about when he said he wasn’t getting the support of blue-collar workers of the industrial heartland because they “cling” to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It is also the place Obama chose to visit on Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday’s primary — and the reception here explains why Obama, the national front-runner, is expected to lose Pennsylvania. …

The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they’ll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.

If Hillary Clinton wins Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — and polls forecast that she will do just that — it will be because of white, working-class voters like the Norgrens. Yet the blue-collar voters poised to keep Clinton’s candidacy alive are also the reason she is losing the national race to Obama: Though still in charge here, they have lost control of the Democratic Party to the wealthy and better-educated. …

The average household in McKeesport earns less than $30,000 a year, barely half the U.S. average. Its population has shrunk and aged with the loss of the mills, and the average home here sells for a mere $45,000. …

The antipathy toward Obama isn’t necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle … Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton’s ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama’s suggestion that she hadn’t been “proud” of her country; Obama’s provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the “bitter” remark. …

Now, on to Chris Hedges:

The left has lost its nerve and its direction

The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.

Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves. …

The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us. …

The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. … Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope. …

The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. … The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites. …

Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.

The message is the same — the Democratic Party has forgotten its core values, and we, the left wing of the (formerly-)left wing, have let the party get away with it. Of course, they’ve got the money — but we have the votes. The party can spend all the money in the world trying to schmooze us, but at the end of the day, when it’s your job that’s disappeared, and your kid who goes to school without breakfast, you have to decide what your loyalty to the party has gotten you.

The answer lies within the Democratic Party itself, in both its official platform (for which DNC has deemed the top three “key Democratic Party ideals” as prosperity, peace, and progress), and, more telling, in its simple, clear mission statement, “The Democratic Vision“:

The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.

What’s telling is that, in this statement, national security comes first — and is the first issue mentioned, again, at the beginning of the second sentence — and civil rights comes last, with the economy and vague, imprecise language about “expanding opportunity for every American” and “strong economic growth” jammed in between.

But you have to ask: What do those things mean? What do they mean, in practical terms, to you and your family?

If you take the time to read the full Democratic Party platform, you’ll see that “prosperity, peace, and progress” still take a backseat to more than 18 pages’ worth of discussion about defeating terrorism and strengthening our military.

As essential as it is to prevent another 9/11, the fact remains: If you’re hungry or homeless, you’re not going to give a damn about anything except food and shelter. That’s why the economy is the number-one issue on voters’ minds: We’re talking survival. And a whole lot of us aren’t surviving.

The latest Hightower Lowdown arrived in my mailbox yesterday; the entire issue is dedicated to spelling out, in many simple but terrifying tables, “What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy.” I won’t get into the whole thing here; it deserves to be read, and digested, in full. Suffice to say, if you’re not rich, you’re in trouble.

Nevertheless, you may be surprised to learn that economic fears are apparently not affecting votes:

With growing layoffs, tight credit and an ailing housing market, 67 percent say the economy is an extremely important issue, up from 46 percent in November. Gasoline prices follow close behind at 59 percent.

The war in Iraq — the dominant issue for several years — stands at 48 percent. …

Yet those who have become extremely concerned about the economy since last fall show no significant difference from everyone else in backing a presidential candidate. Both groups divide about evenly between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, and between McCain and the other Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. …

People calling the economy extremely important lean toward the two Democratic presidential contenders, while those less concerned prefer McCain. The partisan divide helps explain that, as does income. Of those most worried about the economy, people earning under $50,000 a year prefer the two Democrats over McCain, middle-income earners are divided evenly, and McCain wins the most affluent.

Democrats divide between Obama and Clinton about the same whether or not they are extremely concerned about the economy.

While I’ve long believed (and still do) that a Hillary Clinton administration stands a far greater chance of restoring economic health in the U.S., it appears that voters see so little difference between A) the two Democratic candidates, and/or B) the two parties, that the most pressing issue — the economy — isn’t having much effect on voters who were going to vote Democratic (or Republican) anyway.

And that begs the question: Is there any longer a truly significant difference between the parties, on this or any other urgent issue on which the very survival of our people, and thus our nation, hinges?

Not that I’m advocating anyone vote Republican, mind you — that would be utter insanity. No; what I’m asking you to think about is just how far to the right the Democratic Party has shifted (on every issue, not just the economy), and, more importantly, what you are going to do about it.

Can the Democratic Party be fixed from within? That’s one option. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along, isn’t it? We’ve been holding our noses and voting a straight Democratic ticket, because we have no other choice — or so we’ve been told. And while we’ve been gritting our teeth and waiting for our party to return to the core values that made this country great, the big-money types keep dragging the party further and further to the right — and us along with it.

You know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results every time.

I just can’t do the insanity thing anymore. Where I go from here, I don’t know. The Greens, God love ‘em, cling too stubbornly to the idea that they can run a presidential candidate every term before building the party from the local and state level up (like the Republicans did — quite successfully, if you’ve noticed). I’m not a Libertarian (although, honestly, if Mike Gravel wins the LP nomination, I will be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life). What about the Socialist Party? As noble as Socialist goals are, no, I’m not so idealistic as to believe society can be rebuilt from scratch.

All I know is that I never left the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me.

Permalink  |  Trackback  |  Category: Atheism/Agnosticism, Barack Obama, Business/Economy, Democrats, Election 2008, Employment/ENDA, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Insecurity, Libertarian Party, Mike Gravel, Military/DADT, Pennsylvania, Radical Religious Right, Republicans

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April 10, 2008

Oh, So NOW Obama Wants to Talk to Us!

Backstory:

• I take back everything I said about Barack Obama…

• Eric Stern, How Do You Live With Yourself?

From Pinknews.co.uk:

US Presidential candidate Barack Obama has given an interview with leading gay publication The Advocate, just a week after being criticised for “disrespecting” the LGBT media.

The interview is due to be published tomorrow, but AP were given excerpts.

Mr Obama, a US Senator from Illinois, said he supports a repeal of a law that bars openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from serving in the country’s Armed Forces and is hopeful it can be achieved. …

Senator Obama also told the magazine that he would sign into law workplace protections for LGB people and would like to include trans protections, though he acknowledged that might be more difficult to get through Congress.

“Obama also said he’s interested in ensuring that same-sex couples in civil unions get federal benefits,” reports AP.

Last week Philadelphia Gay News published an wide-ranging interview with his rival for the Democratic nomination Senator Clinton, ahead of the Pennsylvania primary later this month. …

How transparent. Pander, pander, pander.

Oh, and Barry? Civil unions still aren’t good enough.

Permalink  |  Trackback  |  Category: Barack Obama, Employment/ENDA, Marriage Equality, Media, Military/DADT

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March 19, 2008

From the Mail Bag

From someone who ID’s as “rousta bout”:

I first saw you Monday; it was the closing of “Pennsylvania On Verge of Regressing to Dark Ages; Marriage Ban Vote Today” that I’m writing about.

You really have it in for Obama; I’m not clear on why you think Clinton is a better pick (especially after your early faves in Demo-land were Kucinich and Edwards)

Don’t assume I made the leap from Kucinich to Edwards to Clinton without a lot of “help” from Obama.

Until the Donnie McClurkin fiasco last fall, Obama seemed a perfectly acceptable candidate to me. I was, frankly, ambivalent about him; I had planned on voting for Kucinich in the primary, and, knowing Dennis would never get the nomination, lining up to vote in the general for whichever Democrat did. I assumed that would be Edwards or Clinton or Obama, and I was fine with any of them (as fine as I could be, that is, since I know I’ll never really get the president I want).

But then came McClurkin, and— and, honestly, I’m so tired of writing about Obama and McClurkin (and at the moment, I can’t think of anything I want to say that I haven’t already), I strongly suggest you read all my entries on McClurkin, as well as Kirbyjon Caldwell (here and here).

Mind you, it was not solely the McClurkin issue that turned me off to Obama; it was (and is) a huge issue, yes, but it served more to open my eyes to everything else that is Barack Obama.

I discussed my revulsion at the way Obama mishandled the McClurkin flap with my better half. My question to her was: “Are his supporters right? Am I just piling on the guy because he used us to get the bigot vote in South Carolina, so I’ll never be able to see him in a positive light?”

The answer, we both decided, was no. The McClurkin issue forced me to take a harder look at Obama — his slim record, his flip-flopping (on issues having nothing to do with The Gay Thing), his convenient memory losses, his sucking up to the GOP, his whiney-ass schoolyard games, the vast emptiness of his rhetoric — and I didn’t like what I saw. And, as time went on, I began to see a very clear pattern in Obama: He was (and is) exposing his own feet of clay with each and every new incident.

You also need to understand that my support for Clinton is lukewarm, at best, and I’m not afraid to point out her missteps (although, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved). Because Kucinich and Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday, the only choices left on my ballot were Clinton and Obama — and by the time the California primary rolled around, I knew far too much about Obama to even entertain the thought of voting for him.

I gather that Clinton is someone you trust more on gay issues in particular. No one in my family has flagged Obama as weaker on these issues than Clinton; Obama may in fact be, but it hadn’t been brought up as a concern before I read your pieces.

Let’s say I dis-trust Clinton less than I distrust Obama on gay issues. In reality, their positions are very similar; the difference (on the gay angle alone) is that Clinton didn’t exploit raging, religion-based homophobia to win votes at the expense of gay and lesbian Americans, and then pretend she didn’t do it, and didn’t do it deliberately.

I’m thinking no one’s brought it up because during her Senate run she said she opposed same-sex marriage and would have voted for DOMA and apparently she remains opposed to gay marriage.

Obama remains opposed to marriage equality, too; again, their positions are very similar: pro-civil unions, anti-same-sex marriage.

As DOMA goes (and she didn’t vote for it, as she wasn’t a Senator at the time), Hillary was wrong to support it when it was passed, and she’s wrong not to support its complete repeal now. (There is a “but” in that, which I’ll get to in a second.)

If you wanted a fight out of me on that, you won’t get it; I’m well aware of Hillary’s flaw here (she wants to overturn only one part of DOMA), and Obama’s strength (he wants to repeal the whole thing). I also recognize that Clinton has attempted to compensate for her earlier support of DOMA by striking a middle ground: retaining the part of DOMA that continues to leave marriage equality to the states, while overturning the part that would prohibit federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

While that would leave the possibility of federal recognition open, that’s not good enough for me. But (and here’s the “but” I warned you about a moment ago) — as much as I rail about having to take “baby steps,” especially when it comes to issues of full equality — I’m pragmatic enough to understand that Clinton’s approach is more likely to succeed, thus staving off another attempt by the Hard Right to write a federal marriage ban into the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, I understand very well that a constitutional amendment is a massive undertaking than can span decades, even generations — I cheered and pumped my fist in the air at ERA rallies in the 1970s, you know — but I also know that a wholesale threat to strip individual states of their so-called “right” to deny us equality would result in a backlash that would plunge the fight for equality back into the Dark Ages.

As much as I want federal recognition, and as much as I detest the “states’ rights” argument, I’m not above setting my emotions aside long enough to consider — and admit — that perhaps the “baby steps” strategy really is the most workable plan. I could be wrong either way, but as I often say, if you keep doing something one way, and it’s not working, it’s time to think about doing something else. That “something else” in this case, as it is fomenting in my thoughts these days, is to take the same path as that of anti-miscegenation: Go ahead, leave it up to the states — and then challenge each state, through the court system, to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.

That’s a hard road, a longer road, and one that promises to clog our already-overburdened court system. But I think, at least today, that a constant chip-chip-chipping away, state by state, may be the only practical way of getting there. Plainly put, the bigger a headache it becomes — i.e., the more time, money, and resources that are wasted — for each state to defend its archaic anti-marriage laws, the more likely… How does that Confucian (or perhaps Zen) saying go? “Water continually dropping wears hard rocks hollow.”

Now, it’s fine, even commendable, that Obama intends to overturn all of DOMA — and if he can manage to do it, I’ll be the first to thank him, praise him, and re-evaluate everything I’ve ever said about his commitment to equality. (Re-evaluate, mind you, not retract; he’s got a lot to make up for, and I will never accept the rubbish that he is a true ally as long as he remains opposed to full marriage equality — and until he completely repudiates all his “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric, and patently ignorant and offensive remarks about giving us a “set of basic rights,” to “allow” us to live our lives “in a way that doesn’t cause discrimination” — for starters.)

But can he do it? Will he do it? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, generously, that he is sincere; after all, Bill Clinton was sincere about allowing gay people to serve openly in the military (he even made it his first priority, just days after taking the oath of office) — but look what that got us: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Bill, for all his good intentions, was forced into that compromise.

And that is how, in retrospect, I perceive DOMA: It was a rotten compromise. It sucked. It sucks now. I hate it. But it did serve one purpose: as a stop-gap measure to stave off a major backlash, and at least delay the push for a U.S. constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Bill handled both DOMA and DADT badly, due to his underestimation of the anti-gay forces against us, and we’re still suffering for his lack of judgment. I don’t want anything like DOMA or DADT (or something worse that I haven’t even imagined yet) to happen again. And yet I am told, repeatedly, by Obama supporters, that as a gay person I’m a fool not to support Obama on his promise to repeal DOMA alone — whereas I see Obama ignoring the outcome of Bill’s promise to us, and the resulting DADT policy. Obama is taking a gamble on our lives in a way that’s already been proven reckless. And that in itself is reckless.

Since that seems that’s largely the raison d’etre of your site…

It depends how you look at it. The raison d’etre is to point out injustices and hypocrisy (legal and otherwise), in the hope it will open a few eyes and effect change, through the “water continually dropping” effect.

Marriage equality, of course, is a huge issue, but if we were granted full federal recognition tomorrow, I wouldn’t go away. (Sorry! LOL) I want to reiterate something I don’t think I say enough: Marriage equality is not a single, narrow lens through which I view life; it is a wide-angle lens which offers a nearly 360-degree view of countless life issues lost on those lacking the same peripheral vision.

I suggest you read what my better half (who is far more direct and succinct than I could ever hope to be) had to say about it recently, from the perspective of LGBTs being thought of as “one-issue voters.” In short, we’re not just fighting for the right to say “I do”; we’re fighting for a plethora of rights and protections that we would have automatically through federally-recognized marriage. As it stands (and by leaving it all “to the states”), we have to fight for each of those rights and protections, one at a time.

So, yes, marriage equality is a major reason for this blog, but not the only one. Frankly, I wish I never had to write about marriage equality again; I’d rather concentrate on eradicating homophobia on a social (instead of legal) level, through education, interfaith networks, whatever works through peaceful, nonviolent means.

I’d also like to spend more time celebrating gay culture, art, film, literature, and recognizing people (especially young people) and programs making a positive difference in the world.

But until we do get those “I do’s” and everything that goes along with them, I can’t.

…I’m surprised by just how much the Church Lady you can sound on the topic “Obama does not make me happy.”

Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever sounded churchy to anyone. LOL

Monday’s guilt-by-association-with-Wright-rant was great. You slam Wright for brining up Lewinsky; you talk about how astonishing it is to see a Democrat mention that scandal…. and then you use Fox as one of your primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements?

I’m hard-pressed to find where I used Fox as one of my “primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements,” unless you mean the quote I cited from Fox recounting Wright’s Christmas and January 13th sermons from this article — in which case I don’t see a conflict; everything in that article appears to be factually correct, with little if any editorializing.

In the end, it was Fox that broke the story the MSM had been ignoring up to now; if you’d rather I’d quoted ABC or MSNBC (or even CNN, which came into the game last), well, I could, but as the other networks piggybacking on Fox have only supported Fox, why bother?

Following on that, your use of the term ‘heterosexual privilege’ in today’s leader was jolting.

One of the things you accuse Wright of is being racially divisive by pointing out the racism inherent in our culture; I have not heard him speak, but that sounds very much like a man pointing out white privilege to me.

Then you should hear him speak — and you should do a little reading about the particular flavor of “liberation theology” that fuels Wright’s preaching.

I have no problem with pointing out white privilege — I’ve never once pretended I’m not automatically privileged by my white skin — but there’s a big difference between pointing out white privilege and 1) blasting all whites for black oppression in the 21st century, and 2) preaching a theology that seems to have no goal other than the endless perpetuation of anti-white hate.

The difference between Jeremiah Wright and me is this: I don’t blame all heterosexuals for my oppression.

And the difference between Barack Obama and me is this: If my “spiritual advisor” — since I don’t have one, let’s say Harvey Milk — had ever “preached” against straight society, and fired up the gay masses against straight society as a whole, I’d condemn Harvey faster than you could say “Anita Bryant.”

Pointing out white privilege can indeed make white folks very flinchy; we don’t like to admit how much of a pass we get.

Not this white woman. I do recognize my free pass, and I don’t like it one bit.

But I also don’t like being lumped in with every ignorant jackass who happens to share my skin tone. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, or to anyone else, that not all of us deserve to be the target of Wright’s harpoon, since all white people cry, “But I’m not a racist! Some of my best friends are…”

But I do recognize it, and I do fight racism, with the same angry passion as I fight homophobia. Without looking, I can tell you from memory that since I started blogging in 2003 (one of these days, I’ll have to move the old stuff over here, but if you want to find it, go Google the long-dormant “doublethink” blog at Salon.com; that was mine), I’ve blasted fark through George W. Bush for his Pickering nominating because I recognized the racism; I blasted some idiot Florida state rep (whose name escapes me) for making a joke about blacks and basketball because I recognized the racism; I’ve spilled tons of pixels attacking first-class jerks like Trent Lott and Ted Nugent and Toby Keith and that spawn of Satan Michael Savage because I recognized the racism.

I do see it, and I do scream about it. Loudly. Being white, it’s my responsibility to scream about it — precisely because I recognize how much more weight the words of heterosexual allies carry when speaking out about homophobia — and it is a responsibility I welcome.

It just pisses me off when everything I’ve tried to do is tossed aside because I’m white.

I guess some of us have never lived in a big city and seen a driving while black checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen an interracial couple getting harassed by local cops.

Wrong-O. I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived and worked amidst it. In my long entry about Michelle Obama, I mentioned that for a couple of years I worked as a photographer in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Who do you think attended those schools, the Waltons? Years before that, I lived near the corner of Wilshire and Crenshaw in L.A.; from the moment the news started covering the Rodney King riots live, I didn’t have to look at a map to see where Reginald Denny was getting his head bashed in — I could name every fast-food joint around the intersection of Florence and Normandie.

The only new thought that came to my mind was: “Denny is white… I am white… I would be killed without anyone stopping for one second to consider whether I was on their side or not.”

On the flip side, I could say: “I guess some of us have never lived in a big city” — or a small town — “and seen a driving while queer checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen a gay couple getting harrassed by local cops.” Or a straight person bashed because he was mistaken for being gay. Or a transgendered woman sentenced to a cruel death because of the paramedic who was supposed to be treating her after an auto wreck but wouldn’t touch the “chick with the dick,” the doctor who denied her treatment, and the host of other “care” givers who finally performed only the most perfunctory (read: half-assed) procedures after she lay unattended for half an hour, in a state of what was probably “sheer terror.”

As I wrote at Democratic Underground (ironically, regarding the way people gloss over homophobia yet go insane when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, etc.) nearly two years ago:

Now, listen: I am not playing the “my persecution is worse than yours” victim game. As far as I’m concerned, all persecution is equal; when you’re the one getting lynched, or burned at the stake, or herded into a gas chamber, your victimhood is 100%. And it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or Jewish, or black, or even an Australian in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb goes off in an Indonesian pub. You’re just as dead as everyone else, and your family is just as destroyed as any other.

You could argue that Jewish persecution has occurred on a larger scale, and you’d be right; e.g., the Nazis gassed some 6 million Jews, and “only” about a million male homosexuals. But persecution is persecution, and dead is dead is dead.

Matt Shepard is just as dead as Anne Frank.

Anne Frank is just as dead as Emmett Till.

Emmett Till is just as dead as Brandon Teena.

And only by the grace of God (or providence) is that 17-year-old Texas boy not as dead as any of them.

Dead is dead is dead.

And hate is hate is hate. And while I can fathom the many reasons for it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept the fact that the general public just doesn’t care much (or at all) when it’s the queers who are being bashed, murdered, or verbally assaulted.

Don’t you see? I don’t see any difference between homophobia and racism. They both destroy lives — whether we’re talking about the life of the gay man or the black man, or about the pervasive hate and fear that drive homophobes and racists to oppress, and beat, and kill.

But okay, so that’s racially divisive, a rhetoric that aggregates all members of a group into a group eligible for privilege.

And then today, you’re using heterosexual privilge, which is an idea that derives directly from white privilege? And in the following sentence, you lump all of your opponents into kinky Jesoids who want piss on you?

If by “all my opponents,” you mean people who use their religion as an excuse to maintain both my second-class citizenship and their privilege, then yes, I do.

Yes, I do lump my “opponents” together — but only not only into one big “Jesoid,” because there are plenty of non-Christian religionists who oppose my equality, too. However, it is only those who base their anti-gay crusades on their “deeply held religious beliefs” who oppose me at all. I have never once heard a secular argument against same-sex equality. If you’ve ever heard one, please clue me in; I’d be fascinated to hear a compelling argument that has nothing to do with religious beliefs.

Randall Terry — founder of Operation Rescue and absolutely maniacal anti-gay crusader — unknowingly made this point crystal clear (in part 2 of an essay he wrote bemoaning his son Jamiel’s homosexuality); bold emphasis mine:

But more simply put: Homosexual behavior is wrong because it violates the way our Creator made the world, and the Laws He gave us. This brings me to the most important part of this article: The Name, the Person, and the Standards of God.

If you have followed the fight over homosexual marriage, there has been a steady drumbeat to keep the Name and the Standards of The Almighty out of the debate. This, of course, is not new. Whether it is the debate around abortion, or over prayer in schools, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, there is a blatant, unashamed effort to drive the Name and the Laws of our Maker from the public square.

Tragically, many well meaning people in our camp have decided to go along with these rules. I tell you plainly: If we surrender on this point, we will lose the war. We will not win. We cannot win.

Why? Because absent the Created order and standards of the Almighty, there is no reason to oppose same-sex-marriage. Why should we deny two consenting people who love each other the right to be married?

The arguments against homosexual marriage involving children (having or raising them) won’t hold up. Older couples who marry cannot have children. And children are raised in homes without two natural parents every day. Sometimes a grandparent raises a child. These scenarios might not be optimum, but it is done by millions every day.

Arguments over “traditional marriage” are also of little value. We’ve had a lot of traditions that needed changing. This could be another one. Traditions are important, unless they stand in the way of liberty. Moreover, who is to say which tradition is the best? America’s, or ancient Greece’s or ancient Rome’s, where they openly practiced homosexuality?

The reason we oppose homosexual marriage is because it violates the way God made the world — it attacks the institution He created; it betrays and defies the Laws He gave us.

If there is no God; if we are the chance arrangement of molecules that happened to evolve from some primal swamp; if we are merely animals and there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right and wrong — defined by the Ultimate Lawgiver — then anything goes. Let the homosexuals do what they want. Who are we to impose our morality on them?

But if there is a God who makes the rules, then He has imposed His morals on all of us, and we are obliged to obey and defend those ethics in the public square.

Here, for comparison, is a short discussion of the same subject by two atheists; the argument is essentially the same as Randall Terry’s!

Bottom line: There is no compelling secular argument against same-sex equality. It is always based on religion. Always.

That’s not to say I lump all religious people in with the bigots. I have only one complaint about the religious left: They won’t take the religious right to task. But then, that is an integral part of being a Christian: not judging others, but simply emulating Christ, turning the other cheek, being meek, that sort of thing.

Still, even Jesus got angry enough to turn over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. I wish the meek-and-mild religious left would turn over a few more tables.

Ah well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, right?

Talk about damning with faint praise.

But you know what? I’ll take the faint praise; it’s one of the small benefits of refusing to march in lockstep with any group to which I belong, be it by default (women, gay people, Caucasians, Italian-Americans) or by choice (Democrats — and that’s subject to change at any moment).

Permalink  |  Trackback  |  Category: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Election 2008, Harvey Milk, Hillary Clinton, Homophobia, John Edwards, Marriage Equality, Media, Military/DADT, Pennsylvania, Race/Ethnic Issues, Radical Religious Right, Republicans

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March 1, 2008

Open Letter from Barack Obama to the LGBT community

Point by point, let’s look at Barack Obama’s statement, released February 28, 2008:

I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all — a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.

So, Barry, where was this appeal before Camp Obama realized how badly they’ve been screwing over the LGBT community? Why didn’t you make this statement before the South Carolina primary, instead of handing an “ex-gay” bigot a microphone so he could tap into the raging homophobia of throngs of religious bigots at the expense of the LGBT community you’re suddenly sucking up to now? Why wait until just before the Ohio and Texas primaries to cozy up to the queers — because you just realized Ohio and Texas are full of queers who don’t go in for that “love the sinner, hate the sin” sermonizing you do so well?

Equality is a moral imperative.

Then why don’t you support marriage equality, Barry?

That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

If these issues are so important to you, then why wait until you’re president to “place your weight” behind them? Why haven’t you introduced any domestic-partnership bills as a U.S. Senator? You’re allowed to do that, you know.

As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.

Not good enough, Barry. You can “urge states” all you like, but when you leave equality to the states, you get separate but equal — just like the validity of your parents‘ marriage was “left to the states” when you were born.

That’s not good enough. You can’t claim your intention to push through “equal treatment” of LGBT Americans on a federal level, while leaving “family and adoption laws” to the states.

Only federally-recognized marriage equality will do.

I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment.

Every married same-sex couple in New Jersey would disagree with you.

But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.

Again, with the “states’ rights” argument. You’re just wrong, Barry. You’re misinformed, deluded, and just plain wrong.

Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate.

You can promise “the complete repeal” of DOMA — in fact, you can promise anything you want — before you’re president. Bill Clinton did; he promised to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly in the military, and look what happened to him: He was blindsided by Congress, and forced to compromise with DADT.

So, you can promise us anything you want, Barry — or you can be realistic about DOMA, like Hillary Clinton has been: She’s promising to overturn the part of DOMA she believes she can overturn — she’s not making a promise that is absolutely impossible to keep.

Now, you could say that your eagerness to compromise on marriage equality via the baby step of civil unions is based on political expediency, but I won’t believe it for a second. Your aversion to full marriage equality is based on your religious beliefs, and nothing else — which we’ll address further in just a moment.

While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether.

So do I, but I have no confidence whatsoever in your ability to get rid of it altogether. If you can, great — I’ll praise you for it — but I’m not holding my breath.

And let’s not forget that you can’t do it alone, Barry. It’s going to be up to Congress to overturn DOMA; you’re just the guy who’ll get to sign the bill, if it ever gets to your desk.

Finally, don’t think for a minute that I believe you’re going to go to work on repealing DOMA right away; LGBT equality has never been a priority for you in the past; especially with the mess left to you by the Bush administration, LGBT equality is going to be further down on your to-do list than you’d like to admit.

Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does.

Then why aren’t you pushing for federally-recognized civil marriage — not civil “unions,” but civil marriage — right now?

I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.

Oh? Since when did this issue hit your radar? Last I heard, your position on the UAFA was identical to Senator Clinton’s: You have both been withholding your support for the UAFA, citing concerns about immigration fraud.

Well, here’s my question to you, Barry: If immigration reform is such a big issue to you, why not propose a moratorium on all immigration-by-marriage until you’ve got it sorted out? By holding up passage of the UAFA, you are denying only same-sex couples immigration rights. Either open immigration to everyone, now, or deny immigration to everyone, now, until you figure out how to deal with fraud.

Or, as Immigration Equality noted: “The fraud protections in the UAFA are exactly the same as they are for married (opposite-sex) couples. I perhaps haven’t pushed this point hard enough in previous exchanges, but the fraud protections in the UAFA are not the problem. The problem is that politicians do not understand LGBT relationships and do not consider them bona fide. Whether it is because a marriage certificate cannot be issued, or some deeper discomfort with LGBT marriages we do not know, but to deny LGBT couples a marriage certificate and then say that because there is no marriage certificate you must be subjected to more intense scrutiny is discriminatory, and wrong. Let’s not forget that Obama does not support gay marriage while at the same time claims civil unions extend exactly the same rights as does a marriage certificate.

“The fraud protections in the UAFA are no more loose or no more strict [than] current fraud provisions for opposite-sex couples. It is unfortunate that Sen. Obama, the child of a binational couple whose marriage was once as frowned upon as LGBT relationships does not see this double standard for what it is. We are continuing to work with the Obama camp to bring them onto the UAFA but we will not let them off the hook so easily.”

The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

And this issue is specific to an “open letter to the LGBT community” why, exactly?

Did you mention HIV/AIDS because you’re so accustomed to associating HIV/AIDS with gay men — and “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth” and other “sinners” — the way you did in your 2006 World AIDS Day Speech at your “friend” Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church?

“Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes — to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say ‘This is your fault. You have sinned.’

“I don’t think that’s a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.”

Are you so compelled to distance yourself from the AIDS epidemic by asserting your heterosexuality that you must, again, compartmentalize HIV/AIDS as a “gay issue”?

When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception.

Can’t find a thing wrong here. But then, there’s a first time for everything.

We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.

Fine, but: Why are you bringing the issue of HIV/AIDS and prison inmates and intravenous drug users into an “open letter to the LGBT community”? Are you lumping felons and heroin addicts in with “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man,” too?

We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma — too often tied to homophobia — that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day.

I’m glad you brought up your visit to Warren’s church. You pissed off a lot of left-wingers — and Warren pissed off a lot of right-wingers — by “consorting with the enemy.”

Oh, I know it by heart: These are the people you want to “reach out” to — this is your attempt to make “post-partisan unity” a reality. But you shouldn’t be consorting with them, Barry; these are the people who want no middle ground. Surely, you’re not stupid enough to think they are going to compromise with us — the “us” being the Americans “they” have built successful careers of demonizing, and at best want to run out out of the nation on a rail: the gays, the pro-choicers, the atheists, the evolutionary scientists and teachers, the Muslims… anyone who isn’t a heterosexual, anti-choice Christian opposed to full marriage equality.

They are not going to compromise their core values, Barack — and those of us whose rights hang in the balance (where our rights exist at all) will be damned if we compromise our core values for theirs.

The Christofascists are not going to budge an inch. You may get their votes, but you’re a damned fool if you actually believe you’re going to bring them around to any mode of rational thinking.

As my friend David G (whose nail-it-to-the-wall observations I’ll be quoting again soon) remarked regarding your “gay ad”: Like Donnie McClurkin and Kirbyjon Caldwell and Hezekiah Walker and all the rest of the religionists you call your “friends,” they are in fact “fundamentalist activists, anti-choice, anti-science… They are the same as Robertson or Dobson. Not ‘good folk who haven’t accepted gays,’ but dogmatic, rigid fundies. …

“Those of you who think these members of the Religious Right are only ‘a tad homophobic’ are living in denial. They are the clinic blockers, the school boards who sue over evolution. And you are voting them to power in our party.”

Which begs the question: Is that really your intention, Barack, to bring these bigots around? You pay a lot of lip service to maintaining the separation of church and state — even a few atheists positively swooned over your remark that “we are not a Christian nation; we are a nation of Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. We are also a nation of non-believers and non-church going folk who may not have ‘Sunday-best’ hanging in their closets but who most assuredly carry the best of intentions within their hearts.”

Yet you continue to infuse your rhetoric with religious buzz phrases — yes, I’ll say it: “code words” — that seem contrived as a “dog whistle” for the religionists, but are more than familiar to those of us against whom your Bible has been used as a bludgeon. I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, Barry; it’s tempting to think your own religiosity is so deeply ingrained, you don’t even know you’re doing it (which, to be honest, isn’t much comfort either). But I am convinced you are doing it deliberately.

In the same speech that wooed a few atheists, you also said:

My religious upbringing taught me that homosexuality was sinful and that gay unions should not be allowed. But my political belief is that all people are created equal and thus should be treated as such, homosexual couples being given the same civil rights as their heterosexual counterparts.

I’m not so sure about that, Barack. In fact, I’m dead certain your political belief is informed, and formed, solely by your religious belief. Remember what you said in Iowa (and have repeated in one form or another ever since you started stumping in churches)?

“Doing the Lord’s work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.”

And:

“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

I can think of another president who was convinced that he was doing “the Lord’s work” by merging religion with politics: George W. Bush.

That is not a comforting thought.

And, as David Domke and Kevin Coe observed: Since the Saddleback sermon, “Obama’s religious politics have only grown. He often begins speeches — including his address in February 2007 in which he announced his intention to seek the presidency — by giving ‘all praise and honor to God,’ and regularly cites the biblical story of Joshua.”

To those of us not swayed by biblical ecstasy, that’s pretty chilling stuff.

But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones — and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.

I’ll give you credit for your 2004 DNC speech, Barry. I was stunned with delight to see this kid with the funny ears even mention “gay friends in the red states.”

What’s sad is how inspired I felt at the time — and how small a bone you threw to me, and how I jumped at it, with nearly feverish hope.

What’s sad is how much my opinion of you has changed in less than four years.

I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign — from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.

Don’t bring Dr. King into this, Barry. Not when your campaign and your supporters virtually slit Hillary Clinton’s throat for making a historically accurate remark about what it took to get the Civil Rights Act passed. You don’t have a monopoly on Dr. King’s message or legacy — and, frankly, Dr. King was far more evolved on the issue of true equality than you are.

And as far as your appearance at Ebenezer Baptist Church, do you remember what you told BeliefNet after that?

“The prayer that I tell myself every night is a fairly simple one: I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that my sins are forgiven, that my family is protected and that I am an instrument of God’s will.”

I don’t want “an instrument of God’s will” in the White House, Barry. I want an employee who doesn’t drag his religious beliefs to the office every morning.

Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans.

Barry, until you commit to marriage equality, you are not committing to full equal rights for all LGBT Americans. Period.

But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.

Why? Your stubborn refusal to “close your ears” to homophobes is impossible to defend in light of your swift and unyielding condemnation of racists.

Or have you forgotten the names Don Imus and John Tanner?

Finally, what rankles me, Barry, is that you presume to speak for the LGBT community, when you don’t “get” the LGBT community. Your intentions may be (may be) good, but you lack an innate understanding of us, what we’re about, what motivates us, and — yes — why we can’t pretend the McClurkin issue was an isolated incident and just let it go.

You are not our “voice,” Barack. You may think you’re listening to us — and this letter of yours, and your “gay ad” show you’re at least vaguely aware that many of us queers are none too pleased with you — but you’re not hearing us. You don’t have the authority to speak for us, as a genuine ally.

Which is yet another reason I say you need some more “seasoning” before you’ll be anywhere near ready to lead us all, as a nation.

Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country.

Again, “full equality” means marriage equality. Not some “set of basic rights,” as if we were children, or animals, who must prove we can be trusted indoors without piddling on the rug before you give us a set of grown-up rights.

“Full equality” means exactly equal with what you aready have, Barry. And as long as you have what we don’t, you have privileges, while we have merely second-class citizenship.

“Separate but equal” is not equal.

To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

I don’t think so, Barry. I don’t believe in you, because you don’t understand what you’re promising us — and yet simultaneously denying us.

You’re not ready, Barry. You’re nowhere near ready.

And you don’t understand who we are.

Permalink  |  Trackback  |  Category: "Ex-Gays", Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Christianity, Donnie McClurkin, Election 2008, Employment/ENDA, George W. Bush, HIV/AIDS, Hillary Clinton, Homophobia, Immigration, Marriage Equality, Military/DADT, Race/Ethnic Issues, Radical Religious Right, Religion & Spirituality

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January 31, 2008

GayWired.com Endorses Hillary Clinton… and Ron Paul?!

In explaining its reasons (experience, we agree, is a major one) for endorsing Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, GayWired Media takes a fresh approach:

As LGBT people fighting for the right to marry—the right to a legal recognition of partnership—no one knows better what Hillary Clinton has faced in her fight to be treated as her husband’s equal. With the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady’s position was always that of loyal “spouse” whose job it was to smile, nod and support her husband. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to step into the role of first lady ready to fight in a public forum… for better or worse, and as anyone who read headlines during her eight years in the White House knows, the press and the right-wing made her fight tooth and nail for the respect she earned.

Well done. And equally well done is this succinct summary of Barack Obama’s liabilities in the area of equality:

But whereas Clinton’s support of LGBT issues is consistent — in her autobiography Living History, she calls “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a terrible “compromise” of her husband’s presidency — we get the sense much of Obama’s support is merely PR. The omission of the word gay from his South Carolina victory speech and refusal to remove openly homophobic gospel singer Donnie McClurkin from a performing engagement on his campaign trail