Obama gives gay people things, gay people get mad.
Surely some people are going to be confused by this NY Times article and surrounding hooha about how Obama signed an executive memorandum (basically an executive order) that extended federal benefits to gay couples, but gay people are mad about that.
I’m one of those mad gays, and I must admit I’m a little confused too, so I think writing out a quick nonexhaustive representative recap of everything Obama and gay that has happened in the past year or so would help me get a handle on it and put it all in perspective.
Campaign season – Obama has nine campaign promises related to gay rights, declares himself as a “fierce advocate” for gays and lesbians (PS great word choice re: fierce)
- Pass hate crime legislation to include gay, transgendered people
- Pass a workplace antidiscrimination bill – ENDA
- Fully repeal DOMA, which keeps the federal government from recognizing gay relationships or states from recognizing other states’ same-sex union contracts
- Create federally recognized civil unions, an everything-but-marriage alternative to marriage
- Won’t sign a constitutional gay marriage ban
- Repeal DADT – allow gays to serve openly in the armed forces
- Protect and extend adoption rights for gay couples
- AIDS – he’s against it, supports curing it.
- Pass the Uniting American Families Act, listed here, which would allow binational same-sex couples to be treated as real life couples in immigration law, such as gaining citizenships or being approved for visas.
January, Inauguration – Invites Rick Warren, someone who compares being gay to incest and pedophilia, to give the invocation.
February – Nothing.
March – Nothing. Be patient! Recession!
April – Nothing yet! You are not important as other things!
May – Nothing yet! Quiet your grumbling! Dijon mustard, more recession!
June – Obama addresses gay rights for the first time, sort of, with an eye roll.
The Department of Justice releases a legal brief comparing gay marriage to incest and saying that a discriminatory law is okay as long as it saves the government money.
Obama, smelling the shitstorm, quickly signs yesterday’s ineffectual executive memorandum to mollify the angry queers to save a DNC fundraiser (which the White House admits). The memorandum, to review, gives gay partners some benefits, which they sometimes already had, and not healthcare or pension benefits, to some federal employees, but not if you’re in the military, in which case you get fired, and it expires when his term is up. What do gays get to do now? Use sick days to take care of spouses and children and get included in calculations for family size when determining overseas housing allocation.
More detail and background here.
***
One of my favorite consequences of being gay is that you are automatically thrust into an advanced civics class. Upon coming out, I became immensely fascinated with all of the complicated ways that discrimination can be written into law. You really get an appreciation for checks and balances and the deliberate mechanisms that make all government changes proceed at a snail’s pace, necessitating extensive and exhaustive debate on every issue before it becomes law when your personal love life, relationships, and your family are the subjects of the debate. I think a significant portion of gay activists’ frustration and anger stems from the appreciation of the system we have – we know that our best strategy to gain our legal rights is to convince people that we are real, live humans. It’s much more satisfying to have our rights acknowledged through a popular vote or legislative process than through judicial decree.
Every once in a while, though, it really becomes overwhelming and too much to handle. Shit is seriously convoluted when you need to go to a lawyer to figure out how much you’re getting fucked. “Partners will be considered in calculations for housing allotments”. Give me a fucking break. I don’t want to be a special case for HR, I don’t want to be fine print. I am not an issue. I am not an issue. I am not up for debate. You really go crazy when every day you hear things like “the gay rights debate” or “the delicate and divisive issue of gay rights”.
It’s tiresome to debate people on a false premise. Gay rights are often presented as a moral issue. It’s not. For it to be a moral issue, it would have to be a choice. It’s not a choice. Let’s not get confused here, love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin people. Gay rights are not a moral issue, other than the immorality of denying/obstructing/failing to advance (when able) civil rights. Gay sex and gay relationships are as moral and immoral as straight sex and straight relationships. Gay cheating should be as immoral as straight cheating, and gay PDA is as gross as straight PDA. If you want to crusade against sleeping around, knock yourself out, but do it fairly and do your moral grandstanding against everyone.
Here’s honesty: I’m young, healthy, unemployed, a pacifist, single and a UBT. Not one of those nine big gay rights issues or bills affect me in any way, yet I am deeply and personally involved in the outcome of all of them. DADT, DOMA, ENDA, hate crime legislation, etc. are all just a layered, codified way to express the following phenomena while in civil society and in public discourse:
6 in 10 Americans think gay marriage should be illegal.
Half of Americans think that homosexual relations are immoral.
Americans rank homosexuality in between euthanasia and abortion in terms of morality.
4 in 10 Americans believe that homosexual relations should be illegal.
4 in 10 Americans think that being gay is unacceptable.
4 in 10 Americans think that gay people should not be allowed to be elementary school teachers.
4 in 10 Americans think that homosexuality is a result of environmental factors.
4 in 10 Americans don’t even know a gay person.
I don’t have the data to look at, but I bet dollars to donuts that those four people are the same four people all the way down the list. R-squared is at least 0.9.
Please excuse me while I fagaliciously and indignantly wave my finger up and down, pop my hip, purse my lips and say “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW ME” in a serious manner.
This is where the outrage comes in – the people that we are debating about gay issues think being gay is a choice, therefore a moral question, and then that it’s immoral, yet they don’t even know any gay people. It’s absurd that it’s a public debate, and it’s more absurd that politicians need to pander to these people.
It comes down to this: We understand that people that don’t know us don’t like us. However, self-respecting gay people should have no need to persuade, compromise, or debate on civil rights. We should have full rights and recognition from our government. Failure to extend full rights, despite promises to do so at some point in the future, is the same as saying we can’t have rights. Both end in no rights. So when Mr. Fierce gives us a laundry list of expectations, but then insults us, ignores us, ignores us some more, insults us, and then signs a patronizing, nonconsequential symbolic act to salvage a fundraiser, fuck him. Get back to principled, effective leadership like he’s shown in the past and then we’ll talk about throwing you fundraisers.
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“I don’t have the data to look at, but I bet dollars to donuts that those four people are the same four people all the way down the list. R-squared is at least 0.9.”
Even for that last 40% who know a gay person?
That should be ‘4 of 10 Americans don’t know a gay person.’ This post doesn’t make sense with that kind of typo. Apologies, and it’s fixed. Alex’s comment will stay so no one is under the impression that I know how to proofread.
Those are some startling statistics, it is upsetting to know that a concept that is quintessential American,universal civil rights, is something that we put up for public speculation. It is not a matter of bestowing rights on a group of people it is a matter of recognizing their innate, or you could say inalienable rights. President Obama’s memorandum is not a sufficient first step for the administration. Here is some more on the Domestic Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009: http://www.newsy.com/videos/first_step_or_broken_promise
This is really disappointing, I had no idea about the DOMA fiasco. Do you think that this is all for the sake of republican/democrat compromise (since he did co-write the thing with Simpson) or do you think that gay rights isn’t on his agenda at all?