The Fierce Urgency of... I always forget... what was it again?
Not "wow". Was it "pow"? No, wait: "sow"! Hmph, that's not it. "Don't have a cow"?... It's on the tip of my tongue...
While I try and remember, check out this article in Newsweek: "Is Obama’s Excuse for Not Repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Legitimate?"
Obama may be playing politics with The Gays (what's new, right?), but DADT is not a "gay" issue — the policy is increasingly seen by a wide majority of Americans — civilians and soldiers — as a national security liability and a civil rights outrage.
Many constitutional scholars also say that there is no requirement for Obama to appeal — “The president has complete authority not to appeal the decision in these cases,” the article quotes Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, "who in 1989 successfully argued in federal appeals court for overturning a law and saw the George H.W. Bush administration choose not to ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of that decision. 'The appeal is completely discretionary. Whatever duty the president has to defend the existing statute was satisfied before the trial court.'”
Which means it really cuts to the core of the question of this President's character.
Oh, yeah, I remember. It was "now". "The Fierce Urgency of Now."
It's not a gay issue, it's an Obama issue.
How has he disappointed me; let me count the ways.
OK, I'm a gay man and I bought his pitch about supporting gay marriage (which he DID say during the campaign) and gay rights. And a miniscule amount of that has happened, some of it merely symbolic.
But more seriously, I see him as a man seemingly incapable of seizing the initiative, even when opportunities are handed to him on a silver platter. Bush's Katrina disaster should have taught him to head for the Gulf long before he actually got there; he could have scored hugely if he had. He never hit hard and fast on the Kenyan birth issue as an outright lie any time it surfaced. When Laura Bush came out strongly for gay rights, and when Secretary Gates came out on national TV calling for an immediate end to DADT, he did not use those opportunities to build momentum. As a result, the recent moves for gay rights have come from Republicans, of all people, and they're taking the issue away from Obama and possibly from the democratic party.
OK, he's a very intelligent man as opposed to the red-neck ignoramus who preceded him, OK, we're told he thinks he should move at a supposedly orderly and proper procedural pace about DADT. At some point he has to get up off his ass and DO SOMETHING.
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Agreed, however, maybe it's up to US to get up and DO SOMETHING too. I don't know how best to act, and I'm afraid we are struggling from a lack of real leadership from the GLBT community, but seriously. If that man in the White House won't act for us, we need to act for ourselves. And define a movement he can't ignore, or speechify away.
Just my two pence.
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I hear you, Thom, but I'm more of the Keep Calm and Carry On school than the Now Panic and Freak Out school. By doing the former more consistently than the latter we have made tremendous strides in a very short time.
When seventy percent of the American people believe that a policy like DADT is not only costly and unproductive but morally wrong and should be repealed we've done a good job of making the case to our friends and neighbors. And we have reason to expect that our leaders will follow our lead on this.
And if you think about the nature of the battles --marriage equality, the repeal of DADT, bullying -- they aren't the same as the ones the ACT UP generation, with their shock tactics, were fighting. And they call for a very different approach. Very much the one our representative "community" has been taking.
I don't know if you're alluding to HRC when you say there's been "a lack of real leadership", but youi're right that they have often given this President a pass. I think there's been a lot of leadership, though, from the grassroots, and I reject the notion that people speaking out and making a clear and cogent case for equality is nothing.
You're a bit younger than me, so you may take for granted the courage it takes to stand up and speak out as an invisible minority, when it's easier to hide in plain sight. I don't.
No matter if it's on the dais at a fundraiser, on the op-ed or letters page of the local newspaper, at a city council meeting, or on a blog, it is not nothing to stand up and tell your story, human to human. In fact, it is arguably the most powerful act we as humans can undertake. Don't underestimate the courage and the power of that act, or the impact it can have. We may not have a march on Washington a million strong (although I'm sure we could), but acts of individual courage in our daily lives are powerful enough to change hearts and minds, and laws and lives. Trust me.
So, yes, WE are DOING SOMETHING. WE'RE WINNING. We are challenging wrong in our cities and towns, in our lives and in court. And we are winning. Hearts, minds, and court battles.
We've been doing our part, and acting in good faith. The President: not so much. But I doubt that spattering fake blood on him at his next town hall and screaming a slogan is going to help him along much. The truth is, as subtle as it is, his empty promises to the gay community have registered with the broader community of voters who took him at his word.
His behavior on this issue, about which so many Americans agree, is an insight to his character for a broader community that values fairness and equality (and it's an even broader community than you think).
So, as I said, it's not so much a gay issue at this point as an Obama issue. Hopefully he'll see that, and change.
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