Shock Me Shock Me Shock Me With That Deviant Gay-Related Behavior

Earlier this week, Barbara Bush came out in support of gay marriage in New York. This was unexpected. So are all these things:

+ On Wednesday morning, Republican Sen. Allan Kittleman announced his support for marriage equality legislation in Maryland. Not only is Kittleman probably the only Senate Republican to back the legislation, he plans to testify in support of it at a hearing next week. And he’s going against a Tuesday caucus vote that opposed the bill. In a statement to the press, Kittleman said:

“I see this issue as a civil rights issue. I was raised by a gentleman who joined with others in fighting racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s. Watching him fight for civil rights instilled in me the belief that everyone, regardless of race, sex, national origin or sexual orientation, is entitled to equal rights. […] As a strong proponent of personal and economic liberty/freedom, I simply could not, in good conscience, vote against SB 116.”

He also said that while he is very religious, “our government is not a theocracy” and his spiritual life can’t be the sole basis for his decisions as a senator.

+ GOProud’s sponsorship of this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of conservatives, has drawn criticism from right-wing extremist groups. The Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the National Organization for Marriage, among others, have decided to boycott the conference because they disagree with GOProud’s inclusion. GOProud supports a traditional conservative agenda while also advocating for gay rights, which executive director Jimmy LaSalvia says is not a contradiction:

“If you look at who will be at CPAC, there are organizations across the spectrum in the conservative movement. Our country over the past 20 years or so, is talking about gay people in a different way. And conservatives aren’t any different than any other Americans.”

+ Today, Obama attended the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual networking event. However, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog/ethics group, criticized his attendance because the event was co-sponsored by a Christian evangelical network called The Fellowship, which (allegedly, but I mean for real they do) has links to the Ugandan legislation that supports the imprisonment and execution of gay people. A White House official said that Obama has spoken out against the legislation and that attendance is a tradition. In an interview in the New York Times, Melanie Sloan, the executive director for Citizens for Responsibility, said:

“It is a combination of the intolerance of the organization’s views, and the secrecy surrounding the organization. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to hold their breakfast; of course they should. The question is, Should American officials be lending legitimacy to it, giving their imprimatur by showing up.”

Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other Congressional leaders attended.

+ And finally, this year’s National Gay and Lesbian Task Force convention, which began yesterday, deals with issues of faith far more than it has in previous years. According to the L.A. Times, convention organizer Sue Hyde has said the new focus is to help counter religious activists with anti-gay opinions.

In sum:

+ A leading Republican is for gay marriage

+ Economic conservatism and social liberalism are compatible (unless you’re the FRC, in which case, good riddance)

+ Liberal values sometimes ignore huge red flags especially when it’s convenient to

+ Religion can fall on both sides of the gay marriage debate.

What does all this mean? That political positions or religion don’t necessarily translate into support or opposition of gay marriage, or anything else for that matter. And when gay marriage and equal rights aren’t lumped in with those other issues, it’s a lot easier to get things done.

Healthcare Reform Update: Well, Sh*t, I Guess We’re Going To The Supreme Court

Hey remember earlier this month when we tried to explain the current status of healthcare reform in America despite not really understanding it ourselves? If you don’t have the wherewithal to click over, here’s the basic situation:

+ Republican opposition to healthcare reform is suddenly more viable because of the new Republican majority in the House

+ Still, even that majority isn’t enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act on its own

+ The only real threat to the ACA would be if its ‘individual mandate’ clause, which requires every US citizen to have healthcare, was declared unconstitutional. This would have to be done by the Supreme Court.

Do you see where this is headed?

A Florida judge has ruled that the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, upholding a similar legal challenge from Texas and 25 other states.

Accepting a fundamental claim in the states’ lawsuit, Vinson said Congress “exceeded the bounds of its authority” by requiring Americans to have insurance by 2014. He also ruled that the “individual mandate” could not be stripped out to make the statute constitutional, thus voiding the entire law.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void,” Vinson wrote in his 78-page ruling. “This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications.”

The “indeterminable implications” he’s talking about refer to the likelihood of this case moving to the Supreme Court – as seems pretty likely. The question of whether Obama’s individual mandate that every American have health insurance by 2014 is constitutional may come to define what the healthcare industry and experience becomes in America; even more formidable, it may come to change the relationship between the government and the people in ways that we can’t predict.

Perhaps the weirdest and saddest part of this story is how reluctant Vinson himself seems about the ruling – while the left is painting this as a case of “judicial overreach,” Vinson seems genuinely regretful at having handed this decision down, like he may have acted in opposition to his personal beliefs – the opposite of an ‘activist judge. “The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Vinson said. The right is celebrating this as a validation of their longstanding opposition to the act; in reality, it seems more like a begrudging confession that the Affordable Care Act can’t fit into the framework we have for it. It sounds like he’s shaking his head and saying “I’m sorry.”

Unfortunately, once it’s in the courts it’s pretty much out of our hands and his; the only thing to do for any of us, regardless of your stance on the Affordable Care Act, is to watch and wait. So we’ll be here, watching and waiting, and we hope you’ll be here with us too, because what are friends for if not to bite their nails through high-profile Supreme Court cases together?

State of the Union Liveblog from a Stoned Gay Foreigner

HI EVERYBODY! I’m not from this land, I still don’t really understand what an “electoral college” is or how things work really but I’m gonna watch the State of the Union address and talk about it! Imagine you’re having a beer on the couch with me right now because you are. Let’s do this thing.

6:01 – I have no idea what any of these channels are. My roommates and I only have bunny ears and I’ve never actually used this tv. I just figured out that in order for the tv to turn on, the LAMP has to be on. I’m watching a channel called KRON4, which sounds like a planet in Star Trek. Nothing is making any sense.

The two KRON anchorwomen are talking about how important it is that the Republicans and Democrats are going to sit near each other. People keep talking about that and it feels like the sandbox has come full circle, you know? On the other hand have you ever seen the House of Commons in Canada? It’s like a raucous high school assembly up in there. So good for the Americans for sitting beside each other like big boys and girls.

6:05 – Wow Obama got a great Oprah-style-yelling-intro from that dude. He’s coming down the aisle like this is UFC; this would be way better if he and his entourage had silk robes on. So many minutes of hand shakes!

6:10 – Go time. His mic is a little hot.

Nice pink tie on the guy in the back. Oh it’s the Speaker, John Boehner. My bad. Now I know how to pronounce Boehner though.

6:12: First Gabrielle Giffords mention.

He’s leading with Tucson, smartly. And it’s an easy segue into how important it is we all need to get along and act like a family. His words.

“It’s not whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.” He’s good with symmetry.

Biden’s got this sort of mini-smile thing going on; he’s softened a little bit, yeah?

Wow these guys in the audience need to step up their tie games; there’s more out there than diagonal stripes, you know?

6: 20 – Unemployment. I think he’s trying to explain the world economy?

How long is this thing?

Applause for “America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world.” No country’s workers are more productive than ours. Best colleges. Best universities. So many superlatives! Um I went to Concordia University, I’ll have you know, and it has superlatively free vegan lunches. So there.

He just said “That’s how we’ll win the future”! YOU GUYS AMERICANS ARE GOING TO WIN THE FUTURE!

Why is this all about winning? He just went on about how America needs to out-whatever everybody else. What happened to being a family? I guess he’s trying to keep it IN the family.

6:23 – Facebook mention. 13 minutes in!

Omg he’s talking about the race to the moon v. the Soviets. Why is this ‘beating-the-world’ thing his angle? This feels weird.

Aw, he just said that we need to show kids that it’s just as important to celebrate the winner of the science fair as is it the winner of the Superbowl. Right on!

6:32 – Oh shit people are standing what did I miss. I had to pee. I think he’s talking about more teachers! Hooray for teachers!

Tuition tax credit. Good start, guys.

I feel like there should be a drinking game happening. How about “I will take one drink every time I get a minute.” Fun!

6:37 – It sounds like he’s trying to tiptoe around the fact that the ‘problem’ of “illegal immigrants” could easily be solved by “legalizing” said immigrants. Or maybe that’s just me idk.

OMG HE’S TALKING ABOUT HIGH-SPEED RAIL AGAIN. Can I just tell you that the one thing I remember from one State of the Union address was when he mentioned high-speed rail in like 2008? HE SOUNDS SERIOUS THIS TIME! You guys high-speed rail is a really cool thing. I’m really excited about it.

6:45 – Health care. “I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have issues with this law.” First laugh! Not as jokey as the last SOTU though. I like jokey Obama.

6:50 – Woah. Freeze domestic spending for the next five years? What does this mean, shit just got quiet.

6:53 – Back to working together as a team!

“We can’t win the future with a government of the past.”

Again with winning the future! Seriously Obama have you heard about Arctic Sovereignty? Canada’s gonna win the future. Write that down.

“No one rival superpower is alligned against us.” I swear that’s a line from a superhero movie. In fact I feel like half of this was maybe lifted from an obscure DC comic?

7:00 – Afghanistan. He’s talking about starting to remove troops by next year. I know that Canada is pulling everybody pretty soon – like this year –  and that the US has an indefinite commitment. Seriously things are really messed up over there you guys.

8:00 – “We will argue about everything” got a chuckle. I feel like he’s talking to me at the altar right now.

“I know there isn’t a person here that would trade places with any other nation on Earth.”

While that may be true, Mr. President…

7:13 – Wait a minute, he’s done. Did he talk about anything gay? I overheard something about getting the troops better equipment but I don’t recall anything about DADT. Certainly nothing about anything else. And you know that’s not that surprising, considering he’s up for re-election next year.

Okay yes, he did:

“Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us – by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation. Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.”

What the hell just happened? I feel like we just spent an hour hearing about science and American Innovation and Winning the Future. I do not feel like I am winning the present.

One of the CBS people just said “Reagan-esque.” May God have mercy on us all.

Oh My God What Just Happened With Obama’s Healthcare

Hey Americans! Remember when you had [the promise of] healthcare? Or more specifically healthcare that you could, like, afford? Yes, we remember too. The heady days of calling excitedly to schedule dentist appointments, the freedom of knowing that you could potentially break a kneecap or rupture a vital organ at any time and be optimistic about receiving lifesaving care. Well! That was nice, wasn’t it.

Unsurprisingly but still upsettingly, the Republican majority in the House does not want this to happen, or in their words, plans to “repeal Obamacare.” I will be honest from the start and admit that I am not really sure how this happens; to the extent that any of us understood what happened with healthcare before, I think we felt that something was settled. But apparently not.

Mostly, my ability to report on this subject was severely hindered by the fact that although I remembered vaguely supporting it, I could not articulate a single point of “Obamacare” or remember what it specifically entailed. So by literally typing “what is obama’s health care plan?” into Google, I was rewarded with this document helpfully titled BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN’S PLAN TO LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS AND ENSURE AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH COVERAGE FOR ALL. It’s actually only 9 pages long, and probably it would be best for everyone if you read it. But if you’re not going to, here are some highlights. The most basic explanation of all:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan strengthens employer–based coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference. Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Specifically, they planned on:

+ adopting state-of-the-art health information technology systems
+ ensuring that patients receive and providers deliver the best possible care, including prevention and chronic disease management services
+ reforming our market structure to increase competition; and offering federal reinsurance to employers to help ensure that unexpected or catastrophic illnesses do not make health insurance unaffordable or out of reach for businesses and their employees.

Some of the parts of this plan already are already in effect, like “allowing young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26, improving drug savings for the elderly on the government’s Medicare insurance program, and creating temporary high-risk pools to help people with medical conditions obtain health coverage.” Others weren’t scheduled to be implemented til 2014. I could point out that nowhere here is “creating panels to vote on the state-sponsored murder of old and infirm people,” but I won’t, because I like to pretend that we live in a world where I don’t have to. Anyways! That is a fun read, I genuinely think you should take the time to read it. Because God knows none of the Republicans in the House have. From Reuters:

“The tree is rotten, you cut it down. If we can’t cut it down and succeed doing that all at once, we’ll prune it branch by branch,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp. His is one of four committees tasked on Thursday with rewriting the healthcare law. “Today is day one of our efforts to replace Obamacare with something better,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said, using a derisive term for the healthcare law.

The House has since voted 245-189 to repeal the plan. The Senate is still Democratic by a narrow margin, and is not expected to vote in favor of the bill; even if they did, Obama would pretty much certainly veto it. So, the good news is the headline “House Passes Repeal of Obama’s Healthcare Law” isn’t actually as ominous as it seems. Also, one of the paltry silver linings of the massacre in Tucson is that Washington is still operating under an atmosphere “respectful debate” and “civility” for now, which means that no one has brought posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache or a loaded firearm into Congress yet.

So what’s the point of this repeal bill if they know it won’t pass? Well, it does look at the very least like they’ll be successful in terms of forcing some changes. House Democrats say they expect Obama to lay out modifications to his plan in his State of the Union address next week, and hearings will begin soon on changing any number of things about the law that’s currently in place. Basically, the Republicans are sending a message here, clearly demonstrating their intent to use every trick at their disposal to slow down and frustrate Democratic initiatives they disagree with.

Even if this bill doesn’t work the way Republicans would ideally like it to, that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act (as it’s officially called) is safe from repeal: Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has written an exhaustive explanation of the legal standing of the law, and how if the Republicans are committed enough, it may end up in the Supreme Court defending its constitutionality. The key issue is the mandate that every individual must be insured by either the government or a private company; the insistence by the government that everyone must have health insurance. It’s that part that many Republicans and Tea Partiers protest, and what may end up being the deciding factor in how we do healthcare in this country from now on.

But neither the Constitution nor the judges who have interpreted it ever suggested the government had the right to regulate non-activity—which is a fair description, according to these lawsuits, of a decision not to obtain health insurance. Like many good constitutional arguments, the argument can be put a lot more simply: If the government can penalize you for not buying insurance, can it also penalize you for not buying a television or a GM car?

Which, of course – and not to make this whole thing fraught with more tension than it already is – just ends up tossing the ball back into the Supreme Court’s court once again. All our eyes are turning to the Supreme Court Justices for more and more far-reaching decisions about our future – Prop 8 is likely headed there, which means DOMA could be as well. In the next few years, those nine justices could be deciding the legal status of our families, as well as whether we’re able to have any kind of support for them if they get sick. It really brings all that back-and-forth about Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan into a whole new light, huh?

The takeaway here is that we have no takeaway. We don’t know what’s happening; no one actually knows what’s happening, not the President of the United States or any of the other smartest people in the country. Everyone is very scared and loud and opinionated. We have all had a tough few years, maybe a tough decade or just tough lives, and we don’t have a lot going for us right now and are angry because we worry that someone is going to take away the few things we do have. A lot of us are poor. Some of us are sick, and the rest of us are afraid of getting sick. That’s really all we can report from the front. We hope that people will be both psychologically and emotionally sane; we hope that everyone can be cared for, by the medical community and the people in offices in Washington and by their friends and families and neighbors and that all of us can remember to take care of each other. As a Mr. Barack Hussein Obama said earlier this week:

“As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together… what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame, but rather how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

The President of the United States Reminds His People That We Are Human Beings

It’s Tuesday night and The President is in Arizona to make a speech. Something terrible has happened and people died, and so everybody wants The President to say a thing, including The President. He looks like he always does; the suit, the timeless blue background, the flags. The President has been trying to tell us this thing all this time, but we weren’t ready to listen. Today we are, and so The President, while grieving, is still authentic and still regal and so it’s not apparent that he’s eagerly unwrapping this thing he’s been clutching; instead he appears like the man who knows the right thing to say, right now.

The President opens with that Thing we all feel when someone has died and someone else has survived, and that someone else is looking to you for comfort, because they’re all torn up about that other person dying: “There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.” It’s true; Sarah Palin said something like that, too, but it’s better this time. There is nothing anyone can say to fill the sudden hole torn in anybody’s hearts. Let’s get that out there straight away.

Right away I can feel The President setting up his show firmly in the middle of the aisle or perhaps above it altogether. From his vantage point, he will preach truths to rows of monsters and saints.

The President wants to be liked / admired / appreciated. The President is a Decent Guy.

As he begins speaking, I think about how I feel personally wounded when The President says something good and the angry wo/men on the teevee throw their spiteful insultbombs at him like cranky animals. I think of how those wo/men are like internet trolls: you can do your best to appease them, deal a fair hand and respect everyone’s perspectives. You can try and listen. You can say the right thing. But at the end of the day, the point isn’t that you’re getting somewhere, it’s that you’re still talking at all.

After listening to the President’s speech, I know I’ll want to read what’s been said about it in the media. But I have to write this story that you’re reading right now before I read anybody else’s story, otherwise it’s not real and it’s time to GET REAL. [I mean you don’t have to like The President or anything. But someone gave a really good speech, Preach-in-the-Marketplace style, and he said some obvious things that we don’t say enough, so just humor him and GET REAL]

The President knows it hasn’t all been desert sunsets and flags in the wind these days and that people cope by yelling at each other. But tonight he returns to his stubborn belief that logical solutions, if explained properly and delivered perfectly, will always succeed.

giholveria.tumblr.com

I worry that this strategy works in almost every area of life except for being President of the United States.

The President quotes Scripture and cites G-d from the get-go. That’s safe — atheists don’t care when you mention G-d, but religious people are pleased as punched to hear their #1 Feeling echoed so consistently. It soothes them/us and makes them/us listen better. The President references the importance of Freedom of Speech so that the right wing knows he found a much better way of speaking about The Freedom of Speech than they did — as if “freedom of speech” is ever a compelling excuse for indecency.

The President says names like “John McCain” and “George H.W. Bush” straight away, too, and those noises soothe certain  constituents of the Old White Man Brigade.

Then The President tells us some recently-finished stories. The stories of American lives that reverberate and touch our hearts. The President is telling us to see our stories, too, as part of a greater, human story, and our lives as uniquely American and profoundly important. That might be total bullshit but also — whatever. We’ll take it.

Eleven minutes in, The President mentions that “Gaby” opened her eyes that day for the first time, just a few minutes after he left. We are warmed, not only by the news but by his seemingly genuine desire to ensure he delivers information of gravity without a shred of opportunism or exploitation.

She’s with us too, he says: “She knows we are here, she knows we love her and she knows that we are rooting for her.”

He thanks Daniel Hernandez, the gay intern who insists he’s not a hero even though the world insists that he is. In a way, Daniel has a point, though, you know? He did what everyone should do. Anyone who wouldn’t do what he did isn’t just not a hero — they’re not a human. But for Daniel and for the people who tackled the gunman, a hypothetical became a reality and they rose to the challenge.

This is what The President says about being a hero:

“Heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens. All around us, just waiting to be summoned. as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness, poses a challenge to each of us. It raises a question – what beyond prayers, expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

The President understands our silly brains and the things we try to do when unbelievably terrible things happen. He understands why we point fingers at each other. But The President knows that our discourse has been destroyed by viscous political parties that aren’t really much of a party anymore. It’s more apart than a party.

He says we need to learn to talk to each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

The President executes a flawless double-meaning there. He tells us about the Scriptures again and reminds us that G-d is in his heart —

and then The President scolds us for taking this tragic event and using it as another reason to be heartless assholes to each other. The President wants us to remember that we are all human beings, you see. Somewhere along the line this idea has gotten lost and The President knows this.

“This we cannot do,” The President tells us solemnly and sober as a judge. He repeats “That, we cannot do,” like how a stand-up comedian repeats the last few lines of a successful joke, except that it’s the opposite of a joke. Shit just got serious.

“Do you have a heart?” The President is asking the people, hiding the statement safely between the lines so nobody can hear how disappointed he is in us, but also hopeful.

Yes we do, the people say, while clapping their hands.

Well then start acting like it, The President says:

“As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“Remember?” the President asks us. Remember how it feels when you lose somebody in your family, “especially when that loss was unexpected”? I mean talk about a hole in your heart, people! A real one, not the kind you wear like a shield to protect yourself or the kind you slap on your sleeve to scare and warn other people that you mean business.

The President wants us to remember that we are all human beings and that for many of us, the sudden unexpected, tragic loss of another living, breathing, heart-and-soul-fortified human person is a feeling we have had. I have. Have you? It’s the worst. I mean it’s just the worst thing that ever happens, you know? The President knows this. The President reminds us that we need to learn how to grieve. Again, we seem to have forgotten.

This is how it’s done:

1. One is shaken out of one’s routines

2. One is forced to look inwards

3. One reflects on the past

4. One wonders, “Did we spend enough time with an aging parent?” and “Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us?”

5. One tells one’s spouse just how desperately we love him/her/hir

6. Do “5” every day.

7. One looks backwards and also forward

8. One reflects on the present and the future (+ #3)

10. One evaluates “the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us.”

11. One asks oneself if we have shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives.

12. One questions whether we’re doing right by our children and our community.

The President reminds us that we are going to die, too. The President has a thesis, served up meaning-of-life style:

“What matters is not wealth or status or power or fame, but rather how well we have loved. And what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better”

– The President of the united states, barack obama

+

The President is reminding us that this is all there is. The rest of it — the politics, the economy, the cultural institutions of our everyday lives — those are just the things we have to keep in place in order for our emotional humanity to biologically survive the universe. All there is of Gabrielle Giffords is the feelings she had that made her do the things she did, and how many feelings are there, really? We are all in the same family and we’d better get over ourselves because blood is blood and this is forever.

The President brings it back to Christina Taylor, because her story is the saddest of the year. I mean what the fucking fuck is that, you know? And born on 9-11? The term “only in America” turns bitter in our mouths, and so we have to spit it out because The President is about to get real and we are so ready:

“In Christina we see all of our children.  So curious, so trusting, so energetic, so full of magic. So deserving of our love. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.”

The President has hit it out of the ballpark and straight into our hearts now. We hug each other and he continues:

“And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

That nine-year-old girl — she wanted to be the first woman in the Major Leagues. I wanted to be the first woman in the major leagues, too. Did you, my tomboy friends?

At the end of the speech, The President says that all we need to do is just be nice to each other: we’re full of decency and goodness, and the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

The President tells us that Christina Taylor had been elected to Student Council and had gone to see a real congresswoman speak. Christina was born on 9-11 and was featured in a book called “Faces of Hope,” and now she is gone.

The President is saying ‘Stop taking your existence for granted.’ Why not be happy? I mean why not? Why the fuck not? Why not just default to happiness instead of bitterness and anger and rage. Why anything? Why not? We need to live up to our children’s expectations, he reminds us.

The President wants us to remember that we are all human beings. He pauses to let us hoot and holler like young, striving American pioneer children, united by nothing more than humanity. And humanity is enough.

I’m awake; I am in the world–
I expect
no further assurance.
No protection, no promise.

-from “Stars” by Louise Gluck

Then it’s over. I sit at my keyboard and wonder why The President’s understanding of our emotional truths doesn’t translate into bold policy decisions like outlawing discrimination.

I also realize that he didn’t mention Jared Loughner by name or really give him any time at all in that 30-minute speech. I like that choice.

I decide to have faith anyhow.

The thing is, The President said, is that America is pretty concerned about your feelings. That’s why we’re allowed to do and say whatever we want. America is pretty fucked, but there is that: this is a place where you are free to feel your feelings and you will not be punished by the government for feeling them.

You do you, The President is saying. You do you for me, and for all of us.

Jane Lynch & Dan Savage Cut the Bullsh*t with Newsweek

THE LYNCH CAN DO NO WRONG:

Jane Lynch and Dan Savage share their frustrations regarding the state of the gay union in a refreshingly bullshit-free interview with Newsweek.

On Obama:

Lynch: Yes, we thought the great hope of Obama was going to magically change all that, and it doesn’t seem to have…
Savage: …had the intended effect.
Lynch: He’s just nicely walking the middle.
Savage: And unfortunately, when you split the difference on gay and lesbian people, what you wind up with is no legislative progress. You get a lot of nice speeches, you get invited to cocktail parties, and we have shit to show for it.

On DADT (the interview was conducted before the Senate vote):

.
GLEE:

20th Century Fox’s holiday greeting card written by Glee co-creator Ian Brennan (who writes Sue Sylvester’s dialogue), directed by Ryan Murphy and starring The Lynch (and a cameo from Mr. Shoe). Of course her marriage was a publicity stunt and she’s getting the Glee kids sick kittens for Christmas.

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ANI DIFRANCO:

Are you a member of the Ani Difranco Appreciation Club? Of course you are. You’ll find this pair of interviews, Ani: Then and Now compelling as they compare her current tastes in music with the Ani of 1995. (@motherjones)

LINDSAY LOHAN:

Can’t this kid catch a break? Ugh, and right before Christmas! Lilo is under investigation for “misdemeanor battery” for allegedly attacking a female staffer at the Betty Ford Center. FYI, she’s in there because she failed a drug test after she was freed from jail. People on the inside are saying the argument started after the Betty Ford staffer yelled at LiLo for returning after curfew after hanging out at a bar. (@latimes)

LADY GAGA:

Want a State of the Gaga? It’s coming. BORN THIS WAY IS COMING (in February).

What Does The DADT Repeal Actually Mean?

Hey, remember how Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was officially approved for repeal in the House and Senate last week? I KNOW ME TOO. You may have been vaguely aware at the time that there was some fine print underneath the giant DADT REPEALED! headline, but figured that you would look into all that later. Well, I think later is roughly now, so let’s take a look at that.

If you feel like you’re a little fuzzy on the details, there’s a reason – a lot of what needs to happen is pretty vague and unsubstantiated. Basically, the repeal has passed through the House and Senate, and is waiting for the next step – certification by the President. Together with his top military advisors, Obama is supposed to declare, by the power of his signature, his belief that repealing DADT won’t affect the military’s fighting ability. Which is kind of the hundred billion dollar question.

As Senator McCain has demonstrated, there are a variety of ways to interpret the information we have on that issue, and no one knows what Obama and his advisors will come up with, or how they will draw that conclusion. Obama has definitely indicated that he plans to give the certification; the signing is on Wednesday at 9:15 am. But the full repeal won’t take place until two months after that letter of certification is signed, after the military has done their analysis. Some, like Dan Choi, have implied that this certification might come later rather than sooner. Specifically, he said “…if you drag your feet and politicize this with your theoretical calculations as you have these past two years, you will be guilty of abetting those who loudly proclaim homophobia from their platforms and pulpits.” Defense Secretary Gates has said:

“I will approach this process deliberately and will make … certification only after careful consultation with the military service chiefs and our combatant commanders and when I am satisfied that those conditions have been met for all the services, commands and units.”

And once this hurdle is passed and DADT really is over, there’s a whole other set of questions. Not to sound like a right-wing military official, but – really, how are we going to make this work? The New York Times has helpfully detailed every social barrier to full integration of open gay and lesbian servicemembers in the armed forces, and while they don’t come close to being a reason not to repeal DADT, they do give one pause about how exactly this is going to work out, at least in the short term.

“Coming from a combat unit, I know that in Afghanistan we’re packed in a sardine can,” said Cpl. Trevor Colbath, 22, a Pendleton-based Marine who returned from Afghanistan in August. “There’s no doubt in my mind that openly gay Marines can serve, it’s just different in a combat unit. Maybe they should just take the same route they take with females and stick them to noncombat units.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that gay Marines already serve in combat units and are just forced to lie about it – because everyone seems to feel like ignoring that fact, so why not? – it seems like a lot of people think that while there’s nothing wrong with gay people, some changes need to be made. NYT says that “most of the approximately two dozen Marines interviewed said they personally did not object to gay men or lesbians serving openly in the military,” and that’s actually about as statistically sound as any research the military has done, so let’s go with that.

Regardless, I can see how interacting with some of these servicemen in a combat situation could be tense; one Marine interviewed predicted that there would be “a difficult transition period during which harassment of openly gay troops would be common.” Because, as his comrade says, “Being gay means you are kind of girly. The Marines are, you know, macho.” Other thoughts, from a former Navy man who called in to NPR:

JOHN: Well, my only concern about this is when I was in the Navy in the ’80s, you would be in so much trouble as a guy if you were caught near women’s berthing quarters on a ship. They absolutely kept berthing quarters separate.

Now we’re going to have straight guys having to live with homosexual guys and straight women living with homosexual women. If a straight guy doesn’t have privacy from a homosexual guy, why are women going to have privacy from men?

CONAN: Well, some would argue…

JOHN: If we don’t, if straight guys don’t have privacy or straight women don’t have privacy, then nobody should have privacy.

CONAN: I can understand your point, but some would point out that there are a lot of lesbians and homosexual men in the military now, and the housing arrangements seem to work out OK.

JOHN: That doesn’t make it right.

CONAN: So you would advocate that there should be separation now?

JOHN: Well, yes. If – basically, in a crude way, it comes down to: If I don’t get to look at the women, then gay guys don’t get to look at the straight guys.

CONAN: All right, John, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.

I guess most simply, the problem is this: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a symptom, not the cause, of a deeply homophobic institutional attitude in the military (and rest of the country). Repealing it is undoubtedly the ethical and American thing to do, but it won’t change the homophobic and misogynistic climate, at least not overnight. Everyone seems to be in agreement that things can’t continue as usual, but what needs to change is a point of contention. Do gay people need to be housed separately, like “females,” or does the rest of the military need to attend some serious diversity training? It’s a question that I’m sure will be torturously played out in every form of media and John McCain’s press statements over the next few weeks.

Some changes are at least marginally positive; the president of Harvard notes that she’s glad she can welcome the ROTC back onto campus soon. They were originally denied access to campus because then-dean and current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had denied them; she felt that DADT was at odds with the campus’s non-discrimination policy. Now students could once again have the option of attending school with the tuition paid by the military, and not later being forced to pay all of it back if someone outs them.

On the other hand, some (Christian conservative) people are concerned that, aside from curtailing a Marine’s freedom to take a heterosexual shower, a DADT repeal might also oppress military chaplains. The Christian Post observes that “In Canada, they don’t allow chaplains to preach… about homosexuality,” and expresses fear that the same thing may come to pass here. They also write that “we know how it is going to end up according to the Bible,” which sounds excessively ominous, but their concerns are probably shared by many.

And while many of you already know, it should be acknowledged – the passing of the DADT repeal came at the same time that the DREAM Act failed, which would have allowed a generation of young people a path to citizenship. Without it, thousands of youth who are working and attending universities in this country, contributing to our nation both economically and personally, may never be allowed to experience its benefits and protections. While we’re glad that this one victory for our particular marginalized demographic could be won and we will be allowed to serve the country we call home, we’re saddened that anyone else was denied the same right, and sad that these things are left up to the debate of politicians and government officials at all.

In short, no one is really sure what’s happening or what will happen next, least of all the people in charge of making it happen. Sometimes (or arguably always,) progress is scary and confusing. But progress it is, and we’re proud and grateful that this is a moment we’re alive to witness.

This is a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Megapost In Which McCain Gets Crazier, Repeal Gets Closer, Etc.

Last week we told you that a vote on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in Congress was reasonably imminent; now, with the official results of the Defense Department’s study being released tomorrow, it’s all coming to a head.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon officials have all indicated that they’re in favor of a change, but this is a divisive enough issue that no one feels quite comfortable predicting how this vote will go. There’s some reason to be confident; even if timelines are an area of controversy, most politicians agree they want the repeal to end sooner or later.

Some people are very hopeful about the policy’s ending this month; for instance, discharged lesbian West Point cadet Katie Miller is re-applying to her school in the hopes that she will soon be a fully qualified candidate before the law.

The showdown hearings are sure to be high Washington theater, with a sprinkling of camera-loving protests possible. Each side will be marshaling whatever evidence it can pull out of the year-long Pentagon review to buttress its argument. Lawmakers will ask supporters of lifting the ban how sure they are that a change in the law wouldn’t harm unit readiness. They’ll ask opponents to justify their stance in light of President Harry Truman’s unilateral order racially-integrating the ranks and asked why the believe the world’s finest fighting force can’t handle the repeal. Sunday’s talk shows offered a preview from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We don’t have a problem,” John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has become a chief defender of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in recent months, said on CNN Sunday.

John McCain, who was re-elected this month in Arizona, has maintained his anti-repeal stance to a degree that is beginning to look excessive even to those who don’t categorically oppose him. He was originally a strong voice for the Pentagon’s ten-month review of the options for repeal, saying that it was necessary to be fully informed before making any decisions; now that that study is about to be revealed, he’s refusing to accept its findings, and calling for an entirely new study on the effects on morale and battle effectiveness before any progress can be made.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has written a letter defending the study’s finding and the future of repeal, emphasizing that further “research” on the topic may effectively result in leaving the issue up to a de facto referendum of the troops. Which would be terrible policy creation and also in defiance of basically every tenet of military administration. McCain stuck to his guns, however, and remains vocal that nothing done so far on the part of Congress of the Pentagon could make a repeal possible.

McCain has also blamed Obama’s “inexperience” for the President’s naive belief that this policy can or should be changed, which seems in particularly poor taste considering the fact that President Obama has a full two years more experience at being President than McCain ever has, because Obama was elected instead of him. Or maybe that’s what this is really all about. Either way, there are perhaps more flattering and politically expedient ways to go about this.

If you’re curious about where this mentality is coming from, or if you remain at a total loss for how this could possibly the state of affairs in this time and place and world where man can walk on the moon but not call his husband his husband and still keep his job, you might find this article on why the Marines are the branch of the military most vehemently opposed to a repeal interesting. Obviously it’s a really complex issue, but also a fascinating one: the acknowledgement that gay people currently serve in the military existing simultaneously with the vociferous refusal to recognize them personally, and the fierce commitment to intimacy within the unit alongside the complete disgust that that intimacy might ever be romantic – I don’t know, it’s just layers upon layers upon a million layers of sociocultural complexity. Some highlights: (@spokesman)

“There is nothing more intimate than combat and I want to make that point crystal clear,” Amos told reporters in San Diego recently. “There is nothing more intimate than young men and young women, and when you’re talking infantry, we’re talking our young men laying out, sleeping alongside of one another, and sharing death and fear and the loss of their brothers.”

“I just think it would complicate things,” said Trentham, 24, of Sevierville, Tenn. “If you have two homosexuals in a unit, they could have a relationship and if they broke it off, is that going to cause the mission to fail because they are having problems?

Gary Solis, a Marine combat veteran who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center, said [some] have the misconception that openly gay Marines will not be as aggressive or “gung-ho” as their comrades in arms… “Of course, we know none of that’s true about homosexuals,” Solis added. “There have always been homosexuals in the Marine Corps, but when you acknowledge it openly, that’s a different thing.”

Not sure what to make of it all? Well, here’s one more point to consider: despite the constant back-and-forth of the federal courts on the legality of DADT – which was challenged by Judge Virginia Phillips, but ultimately declared viable by superior judges – there were no discharges of gay or lesbian servicemembers for the last month. Although discharging gay soldiers is still in keeping with military policy in technical terms, Defense Secretary Gates put the official power of discharge in the hands of the service secretaries on October 21, of which there are only three for the entire military.

“Statistically, it would be extremely unlikely if we had a month in which there were no gay discharges,” Belkin said, noting that 428 gay and lesbian service members were honorably discharged under the ban in 2009. “When you require a service secretary to sign off on a discharge, you are basically saying, ‘We don’t want any people in this category discharged unless there is an exceptional situation.'”

If actions speak louder than words – and in a case where this many words have been said to little effect, they do – this is one action that maybe implies that people in power in the military actually truly don’t want to have to fire any more qualified soldiers. Let’s hope that their attitude wins out on the voting floor this week.

“Democrats Lean Towards Caving On DADT,” We Lean Towards Screaming From Our Eyeballs

You may recall from past episodes of “What The Fuck Is Happening With DADT” that the Democrats had tied the repeal to a defense authorization bill that would have given the army money it (ostensibly) needed. You may also remember that the Republicans (by which I mean John McCain) still filibustered it, because he hates thinking about gay people in uniform even more than he loves funding wars. Also, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters in Australia, “I would like to see the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ but I’m not sure what the prospects for that are. We’ll just have to see.”

This article from Salon says, among other things, that “the first instinct of your Democratic congressional leadership is to avoid accomplishing anything during the forthcoming lame duck session, so it looks increasingly like they’ll remove the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” from the bill.”

I had no real commentary on this, because it is just too discouraging and stupid and awful for me to form thoughts. Jesus Christ. I don’t know what to tell you. Take your feelings about this and multiply them by the time it took you to vote on Tuesday plus your copay per doctor’s visit (assuming you have insurance) and then divide by the number of times you can listen to Ani‘s “Hello Birmingham” or alternately “Coming Up” in one day. Then lay on your floor for a while, see if that helps.

Anyways, here’s what Salon said yesterday:

The White House, to its credit, confirmed yesterday that it would really like Democrats to repeal that horrible policy before the end of the year. Should Congress fail to act, the logical next step would be an executive order ending enforcement of the policy. Whether deliberate, process-respecting Obama would dare end a discriminatory policy by fiat is an open question. But if he doesn’t, the policy will just … remain in place, as a new Congress worries about taxes and repealing Obamacare.

However, yesterday Harry Reid and two other democratic senators pledged publicly that they remain committed to a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Today Harry Reid affirmed his support for a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ON TWITTER, saying, “I stand by commitment to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

So. There you have it.

DADT Repeal Stalled In Continued Push Towards National Mediocrity

As you may have heard by now, a US Appeals Court has decided that the military is within its rights to continue enforcing DADT. According to a three judge panel from the Ninth Circuit, the law warrants sufficient deference to postpone dramatic changes in its enforcement for three reasons:

1. Acts of Congress are presumptively constitutional.

2. The judiciary must be particularly deferential to Congress when Congress is doing military things.

3. Judge Phillips is just one federal judge, and her ruling conflicts with others who have ruled before her. (She didn’t do anything wrong in reaching her conclusions, but it does give her stance a little less authority).

We didn’t report on this instantly because it seemed entirely possible at the time, given the back-and-forth of the courts on this issue, that the situation could have changed again by that evening, but it’s been over 24 hours now so we have to entertain that this could stand for a while. (@maars)

Obama has stuck to his guns about pushing a repeal through Congress and getting things done right – or as he says it, “in an orderly fashion.” The Pentagon is expected to have completed its “review” by December 1st, so while it’s not really clear what the next step of this theoretical repeal process will be, it could hypothetically progress after that point. Really, no one is feeling all that optimistic, because as you may have noticed, the Senate and House are both about to get a lot more Republican, and pushing anything gay through Congress is going to be a lot harder – maybe impossible. (@sify)

There are still a few Republicans who don’t see social issues or “culture wars” as the priority for their party – like Rudy Giuliani, who says he supports gay rights and that he “didn’t see [DADT] as a big issue in this. The social issues were not in this. So maybe that’s an area where Republicans can ease up a little bit . . .” Our best bet at this point might be crossing our fingers and hoping that more people like him come out of the woodwork somewhere. Until then, we’ll await the Pentagon’s pronouncement of its dubious research and hope really hard. (@pamshouseblend)

So, How F*cked Are We, Exactly? Let’s Talk About the Midterm Elections.

We can’t pretend we didn’t know it was coming. Statistics whiz Nate Silver has been warning a bloodbath in the House for at least a month. Though he has repeatedly acknowledged the limitations he’s facing and the things his models might miss, his near-perfect track record in 2008 warrants deference.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t make the outcome any easier to take. While last night was in some ways a victory for LGBT candidates, we lost more than 50 seats in the House of Representatives, and just barely maintained a simple majority in the Senate (which is hardly encouraging given the struggles we’ve faced with almost a filibuster-proof majority). Unless suddenly our politicians decide to compromise and learn to work together again, Washington is going to have a hard time getting anything accomplished in the next two years.

Which may be absolutely devastating for the country.

We have so much we need our congressional representatives to accomplish. Officially the recession ended in June 2009, but everyone knows we’re not safe yet. The economy has consistently been one of the most important issues among likely voters. Conventional wisdom suggests that this is the reason voters ran away from the Democrats in droves; the economic recovery simply hasn’t happened quickly enough.

The problem is, though, that we need to do more, not less. Our economy is in dire straits, and we need Congress to act decisively “to get us out of our economic trap” (to quote Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Krugman). Much of the backlash against current politicians stems from the stimulus package and abstract rage over government spending. However, economists generally agree that that the stimulus was absolutely necessary, and that the real problem is that it didn’t go far enough — we needed more government spending. Our economy isn’t going to improve by shutting down the government.

By ushering in a wave of conservative politicians, we’re also facing incredible battles on social issues – “social issues” being political code for most of the issues that matter to our community, like being able to marry or adopt. It’s unclear now where we’ll find the votes to repeal DADT or reform immigration laws or fix the prison system or protect the environment. It seems like all of the social issues may simply get pushed off the agenda.

So, from a governing standpoint, this election is anxiety-inducing.

What about from a political standpoint? We’ll leave the punditry to the pundits. Some want to claim that this indicates a loss of faith in Obama and we’re in for big changes in 2012. Others point out that the majority party almost always loses seats in the next election, and that swings of this magnitude are not entirely unprecedented. On the other hand, while it wasn’t necessarily a surprise that we lost the House majority and the number of Republican seats has increased, many are disturbed by the political extremism of those inhabiting those seats. It’s one thing to lose a majority; it’s another to lose what was a Democratic seat to Rand Paul, who opposes parts of the Civil Rights Act and whose supporters have been known to physically attack counterprotesters. Although Obama’s stated mission has been to bridge the political divide and work towards ending the polarization of American politics, it seems like that hasn’t been accomplished as well as we might like. With the advent of the Tea Party, the candidates who were elected last night are the most extreme and least willing to work together with Democrats on important issues in a long time; they’re also the least ashamed of their homophobia and racism. Maybe it means a lot and maybe it means a little and two years (or twenty years) from now, we can all sit around discussing the ultimate political implications of the 2010 midterm elections.

Did the Democratic administration have this slap in the face coming? Were people right to vote against Dems who have shown themselves to be less than committed to the change they promised? Maybe. It’s a pretty personal question. As a kind of heartrending hindsight, however, statistics have suddenly popped up all over the internet reminding us of what the Dems have accomplished, even if it wasn’t with fireworks or fanfare. How much has job growth changed in Obama’s first two years from Bush’s last year? “In 2008, we lost an average of 317,250 private sector jobs per month. In 2010, we have gained an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month. (Source) That’s a difference of nearly five million jobs between Bush’s last year in office and President Obama’s second year.” What else have they accomplished? We’ll let Rachel tell you. [Skip to 1:40 if you’re impatient.]

At the very least, those of us who support progressive policies should take this election as an indication that our messaging needs some work. The key to winning any election is convincing the populace that your party is the best able to accomplish what they want, fix their problems and give them what they need. Somehow the Democrats, while trying their hardest to push through bills that would change lives, failed to convince voters that those changes were real – that they would be able to end a war by pulling out troops, or that they would be able to provide accessible healthcare by allowing everyone to access the healthcare system. People are voting against their self-interests because we are not communicating effectively. If we hope to advance any of our causes, we need to fix this.

On the day after, the question is always “What do we do now?” and we always feel at a loss for an answer. We already voted, which is supposed to be the ultimate exercise of power in a democracy, and that didn’t work. But it doesn’t help anyone to give up, either. In the months to come, we need to look for political capital everywhere we can find it. We need to communicate effectively with our politicians and demand the things we need; when those needs are met, we reward our candidates with our support, and when they’re not, we let everyone know. Knowledge is power, and we have to believe that people like Rand Paul were voted into office because people didn’t know how much damage they could do, didn’t know that there were other options to work towards jobs and peace and education. So we need to educate both ourselves and the people around us, our friends and families, about the way things should work, so that they can join us in making it happen. Ready? Go.

Am I In a Dysfunctional Relationship With Barack Obama? We Talked Last Night and it Was Weird

When we first met Barack Obama in 1996, he seemed like the perfect boyfriend: smart, loved freedom, played basketball, had a good sense of humor and lots of interesting stories and, most of all, he loved us for who we were. He wanted the world for us. Things kept on going good for a while there.

“I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that not being discriminated against is a civil right.” (Obama 2004)

He saw in us what others had failed to see. We agreed on so many aspects of relationships that we’d never really seen eye-to-eye on with anyone else before.

For many practicing Christians, the inability to compromise may apply to gay marriage. I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christian men and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faith without civil penalty. I believe that American society can choose to carve out a special place for the union of a man and a woman as the unit of child rearing most common to every culture. I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights no such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simlpy because the people they love are of the same sex–nor am I willing to accept a readingof the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.

The heightened focus on marriage is a distraction from other, attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians.

(Obama, 2006)

Then maybe we got too comfortable? Look, to be honest, I’m not sure what happened. I want to believe in this, and I want to believe in our future together.

I feel like now’s the time. Back in the beginning, our parents didn’t really approve. Our exes DEFINITELY didn’t approve. And now, over a decade later, our parents approve. Our exes approve. Those kids who called us ‘disco dykes’ in middle school approve, albeit judgmentally.

So yesterday, because I’m BRILLIANT, I had this great idea to tell him I wanted to talk and he got that look on his face like “Really, Veronica? Right now?” and here’s the full transcript of how that went down. And look — I know. He said he didn’t really want to talk, or that he wasn’t ready to talk, and sometimes when you make someone talk about the relationship before he’s ready, it ends up being a really unpleasant conversation regardless of how anyone REALLY feels.

Anyhow sorry, tangent!

Okay so first I asked him about that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Thing, and I felt like that went really well and I feel a lot better about it now, though I really QUESTION THE WAY HE’S GOING ABOUT IT. Whatever. I guess everyone has their process, I just wish it didn’t give me so much anxiety. I wish I had a button I could press somewhere to just stop my brain from CARING SO MUCH. But then I wouldn’t be me omg TANGENT. Here, this is what he said:

It’s not a simple yes or no question, because I’m not sitting on the Supreme Court. And I’ve got to be careful, as President of the United States, to make sure that when I’m making pronouncements about laws that Congress passed I don’t do so just off the top of my head.

I think “don’t ask, don’t tell” is wrong. I think it doesn’t serve our national security, which is why I want it overturned. I think that the best way to overturn it is for Congress to act. In theory, we should be able to get 60 votes out of the Senate. The House has already passed it. And I’ve gotten the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to say that they think this policy needs to be overturned — something that’s unprecedented.

And so my hope and expectation is, is that we get this law passed. It is not just harmful to the brave men and women who are serving, and in some cases have been discharged unjustly, but it doesn’t serve our interests — and I speak as Commander-in-Chief on that issue.

Okay, right?

So I had to ask about gay marriage because I seemingly have no self control:

I am a strong supporter of civil unions. As you say, I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage.

But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents.

And I care about them deeply. And so while I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon, I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about. That’s probably the best you’ll do out of me today. (Laughter.)

The one thing I will say today is I think it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.

And then he says shit like what I’m about to show you — and like, is this manipulative? Or is he just trying to dazzle me with poetry like always? Obviously he’d bring up Birmingham JUST LIKE WE DID.

I guess my attitude is that we have been as vocal, as supportive of the LGBT community as any President in history. I’ve appointed more openly gay people to more positions in this government than any President in history. We have moved forward on a whole range of issues that were directly under my control, including, for example, hospital visitation.

On “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I have been as systematic and methodical in trying to move that agenda forward as I could be given my legal constraints, given that Congress had explicitly passed a law designed to tie my hands on the issue.

And so, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think that the disillusionment is justified.

Now, I say that as somebody who appreciates that the LGBT community very legitimately feels these issues in very personal terms. So it’s not my place to counsel patience. One of my favorite pieces of literature is “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Dr. King had to battle people counseling patience and time. And he rightly said that time is neutral. And things don’t automatically get better unless people push to try to get things better.

So I don’t begrudge the LGBT community pushing, but the flip side of it is that this notion somehow that this administration has been a source of disappointment to the LGBT community, as opposed to a stalwart ally of the LGBT community, I think is wrong.

Because, as Milan Kundera so helpfully points out in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we have no rehearsal for this life; my only option is projecting my experiences from past relationships onto this one in order to predict what might happen next.

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” (Milan Kundera)

I have some potential theories for why Obama is being weird, all of which suit my ultimate purpose which is to prove that we should still be together and that he really loves me. Granted, they’re theories that give him a lot of credit, but I remember what it was like when we first fell in love, and I want to get back to that place. We were so hopeful then. We shouted it in the streets.

1) Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Have you ever dated a straight girl without knowing it? I have. She said from the get-go that she was straight. She had not one but two boyfriends. We spent all our time together, fucked, and eventually began fighting constantly. She started the fights, calling me a slut for going on a date, reading my emails to other people about her, taking blows so low they knocked me off my feet. The whole shebang. But I kept clinging to my preconception that she was straight, and tried to understand her motivations based on that starting point. Of course several months after I’d moved out of our apartment, we had drinks and she confessed what was blatantly obvious to everyone else — that she’d treated me like a girlfriend, had expectations of me more like a girlfriend than a best friend. This happens a lot to people, I think.

I’m clinging to what he said, not what he does. Just because he won’t endorse gay marriage doesn’t mean everything else he’s doing doesn’t contradict that. Because it’s incredibly possible — according to a source that I pinky-swore I would not reveal — that what he’s done is appoint two lesbians to the Supreme Court while saying that the courts should decide about gay marriage.

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2) Surprise

This one time I was — I’ll just say ‘dating’ because it’s easier to explain — a guy on Valentine’s Day who refused to get me a carnation. I asked like every fucking day and he said carnations were cheesy and wouldn’t I rather have white roses or something fancy and I was like I WANNA CARNATION as if everything was gonna collapse between us if a carnation with his name on it was not delivered to me during Pre-Calc.

I gotta hand it to him, he put on a good front. And when I got back to my dorm to grab my books before lunch, there was a package for me. It was so large it had to be put in the hall counselor’s office instead of out at the desk. ONE HUNDRED F*CKING CARNATIONS. Seriously one hundred. It pretty much took up my entire room. One hundred!

So maybe he’s just playing it cool right now and then in the second term, Obama is going to totally surprise us with like one hundred civil rights!!!!

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3) I Like You So Much, I Talk to Everyone But You

Obama is a smart, reasonable person. Maybe he figures that it’s just so obvious that he likes us, that he talks to everyone else but us. Because who WOULDN’T like us? We’re flesh and spirit; free animals reckoning with the structure that enables and deters us.

We’re just so obviously “the one”; maybe he shows us that in the sacrifices he makes when we’re not there, rather than the actions we see when we are.

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Maybe he’s just not the man I married, like that scene in St. Elmo’s Fire when Ally Sheedy realizes that John Bender is basically a Republican now and is no longer the liberal renegade she married in college.

Leslie: Alec is becoming a Republican… and he wants to get *married!* Oh, my God!
Jules: I always *knew* he was a Republican!

Maybe all the back talk got to him. Maybe he got scared of losing some of his friends over me and started putting up walls.

But I wanted the rebel on the motorcycle. I wanted risk. I wanted him to have my back all the time no matter what the cost.

Also? He did do this really awesome thing for me just yesterday. It’s 30 minutes long but I promise, it is SO worth it! Ack he’s just so cute sometimes. Idk. He’s a lot nicer than my ex, I can tell you that right now.

Dan Choi is People

The Village Voice published a feature on Dan Choi called “Bad Lieutenant.” Have you read it. I suggest perhaps doing so.

I’ll wait.

It has things like this in it (this follows a paragraph about grindr):

Choi is unapologetic. He says he resents it when anyone, especially those in the gay-rights movement, discourages him from exploring—well, sexually—his newly revealed homosexuality.

“I think our movement hits on so many nerves,” he says, “not just for reasons of anti-discrimination and all the platitudes of the civil rights movement. I believe that it’s also because it has elements of sexual liberation. And it shows people that through what we’re trying to do, they can be fully respectful of themselves, without accepting the shame society wants to throw upon them.”

Okay. Did you read it? Did it give you feelings? Were they conflicted and confused? Here were my top three feelings immediately after finishing it.

1. Why did they call it “bad lieutenant,” what are they trying to say

2. Why are they obsessed with Grindr, they seem more into it than Dan Choi is

3. I want to hug Dan Choi and possibly give him some Xanax. I don’t know.

The point of this article was, ostensibly, to show the “real” side of Dan Choi that isn’t just about chaining himself to the White House gate and marching in parades. I am not ultimately sure whether that goal was achieved. Not because The Village Voice wrote a shoddy profile, although I stand by my earlier point w/r/t Grindr, but because I think that’s becoming an increasingly difficult thing to do – separate Dan Choi from Dan Choi’s politics, from “the movement.” In other words, this piece actually placed a strong emphasis on the link between the ‘real’ Dan Choi and the Dan Choi who chains himself to the White House gate and marches in parades. I am not sure whether Choi himself can separate the two for sure anymore.

And that says something about us, I think, about the rest of us.

Like it or not, Choi has always been something of a canary in a coal mine for the gay community; when he was first out, optimistic and full of ideas, so were we. Having just launched this website and still optimistic about ambiguously scheduled counter-protests, we met Choi at one of his first post-discharge appearances, only a few days after he came out on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Obama was in the White House and for the first time in a long time, things felt possible. When he started getting angry, frustrated with the slow pace of progress, so did we – we felt like we had the puzzle pieces, a Democratic House and Senate and a president who was willing to say “gay, lesbian and bisexual” on national television, but they weren’t falling into place. We were unemployed and tired of reading about hate crimes in the newspaper and starting to feel very done with waiting. Now, if this article is any indication, Dan Choi’s frustration and anger has turned into an obsession with change, an obsession with the movement – and I think this is worth our attention, because it may well be our future too.

Choi does come across as human, and flawed, in this piece. He swears a lot, doesn’t speak with his parents, potentially charges too much for speaking appearances, and Jesus God yes he does use Grindr. He also comes across as wedded to his cause in a kind of worrying way. Maybe, it is intimated, this is why he’s gone so much farther recently – why his increasingly harsh criticism of the White House and things like his hunger strike a few months ago have been driving other activists away, with people like Jake Goodman of Queer Rising and Nonnie Ouch of the Texas Tech GSA saying that they’ve “lost respect” for him.

Regardless, there is a tangible sense of the pressure rising, of something coming to a head in “the movement” which is never defined but constantly referenced. I felt, honestly, a kind of fear reading it, but also sadness – both for Choi himself. I’m not sure which was worse, the extent to which his life has been given over to this struggle or the extent to which he doesn’t even seem to be fully aware of it. For instance, the fact that he’s homeless and living off the couches of activist friends seems to barely occasion a shrug.

Choi says he lives out of a couple of bags and, being used to “falling asleep wherever you have to” in the military, he doesn’t seem to mind the nomadic life. “I’m in a relationship with the movement,” he says. “And in any relationship, sometimes you have to sleep on the couch. And sometimes, even with the movement, the couch is literally a couch.”

I lost count of the number of times “the movement” was mentioned. It’s a flawed comparison in a lot of ways, but what I thought of most was the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s – that will always be what “the movement” evokes for me, that and the civil rights movement. I thought a lot about both of those things reading this. About how much people in those movements had to give up before they saw any kind of change. How people gave their whole lives over to this, like nuns entering a convent of justice and rage. I thought of the height of both those movements, the point at which they reached a kind of fever pitch where people decided that anything was better than the way things were, and were willing to give up anything for change. And how much change we’re still waiting on, even after those sacrifices.

I don’t know anything, really. It’s hard to discern anything really about Choi, let alone the gay rights movement in America, from a six-page article.

But I am increasingly getting the sense that Choi has reached that point where he’s willing to give up a lot, maybe everything, for change.

And that the rest of us might not be far behind: Obama’s ratings in the gay community are at the lowest they’ve ever been, and many are saying they’d rather not vote than vote Democrat. I’m wondering how far we are as a group from that fever pitch of anger and refusal to wait any longer that brings things to a boil – that point that is the most painful but also the most powerful in terms of changing the world.

I’m not saying Choi’s brand of activism is “the right one,” but I will say that it doesn’t seem to be coming out of nowhere. I think there’s an increasing sense that asking nicely just isn’t working, and that no one seems to be giving us what we want so it’s time we demand what we need. There’s a reason Choi is the poster boy of “the movement,” and a reason the Village Voice wanted to talk to him – he loved America wholeheartedly enough to offer his life for her defense, and as the Voice wisely observes, “when Choi first came out, he could ‘never have imagined criticizing the commander in chief.’ Now he does it routinely.”

“Don’t do ANYTHING, Obama!” he railed. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing, which is JACK SHIT. Don’t appeal the decision. Don’t add one more thing to your plate—your heavy-ass plate.”

If you’ve been following Dan Choi’s career as an activist like we have, your takeaway from this piece is probably something like “What happened to him? How did he get so angry that he’s yelling at people in parking lots? What made him so obsessed that this is all he can think about?” At least, that would be your first takeaway. After that would come more difficult questions.

Like, “What would it take to make me that angry? What would make me yell about Jesus in a parking lot or chain myself to government property?” Because really, what would it take? Six kids killing themselves in the space of a few weeks? A dozen kids? The government fighting in court to keep DADT alive while tweeting that they oppose it? Prop 8 winning in the Supreme Court? More highly publicized bashings and murders of gay and trans people? Or worse, completely unpublicized bashings and murders of gay and trans people?

I’m just saying, it might be worth thinking about. Dan Choi certainly is.

Obama Makes Surprise Visit to DADT Meetup, Promises to Bring Repeal and Dessert Next Time

OBAMA

On Tuesday, President Obama dropped by a meeting of DADT repeal advocates who had wandered into the White House to chat about moving on the repeal by the end of the year. Seriously, he did this.

“The President stopped by to directly convey to the participants his personal commitment on this issue,” said one anonymous aide.

According to a leaked email sent to attendees, the conversation was expected to focus on moving forward with the lame duck session, off the record. Attendees were told that if there was any discussion of current court cases or legal strategy by anyone present involved in active litigation against the government regarding DADT, then the session would end immediately.

At a Tuesday briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the White House was still focused on the DADT repeal, but that executive action was not out of the question. He also noted that the study of the potential impacts of a repeal will be complete by the beginning of December, which is only a month away, and that “the President believes, continues to believe, that […] time for the ending of this law has come.”

In the interests of point/counterpoint, here is GETEqual’s new video “telegram” addressed to Obama and the current Democratic administration. It expresses a certain level of dissatisfaction despite Obama’s demonstration of “personal commitment,” and it features a few new faces that we haven’t yet seen openly criticizing the President — namely, Constance McMillen, Ceara Sturgis, and Will Phillips. The idea is that in the trickle-down model of “change” the White House is marketing, these kids are the real test of whether it’s working — and they’re saying it’s not.

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RACHEL MADDOW/JOE MILLER

Rachel Maddow hunted down Joe Miller in Alaska and was finally able to ask him a few questions about gay rights and abortion while chasing him, West Wing-style, down a series of hallways. She also sneaks in a Bridge to Nowhere joke.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

DEPORTATION

Despite having married his partner last August in Connecticut, where gay marriage is legal, Henry Valendia could face deportation to his native Venezuela later this year. Valendia is due before an immigration judge on November 17th; under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which federally defines marriage as between one woman and one man, Valendia’s husband John Vandiver is unable to sponsor him. The couple is hoping the case will be delayed until the Supreme Court makes a decision on DOMA, which was ruled unconstitutional in July. They also have a Facebook page.

RIGHTS

Yesterday, the Omaha City Council voted down a proposed measure that would have given gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people protections that Nebraska doesn’t otherwise provide. Also, someone called Pastor Cedric Perkins would like you to know the following:

“I find it offensive that we would equate this with civil rights,” Pastor Cedric Perkins, pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church said. “Those rights were based upon a person’s color of their skin, which they could not change.”

I have no words. An abstaining councilman, Franklin Thompson, would like the issue put to a public vote, and whether or not that happens will be decided next week. In the meantime, the Council is completely on board with workplace discrimination and refusing to serve gay people in restaurants, hotels, or other public places. Direct your angry letters here.

PRESIDENT PALIN

Want to watch a cute girl from the future in a tank top tell you to vote? Watch this video:

President Obama Says It Gets Better

President Obama has made an It Gets Better video. You’re going to watch this and then you’re probably going to have +/-30 conflicting feelings, because the man in this video represents a series of unmet promises and yet also real, true hope and results (w/r/t getting people excited and moved enough to vote and convince other people to vote, if nothing else).

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Obama says really perfect things like:

“I don’t know what it’s like to be picked on for being gay, but I do know what it’s like to grow up feeling that sometimes you don’t belong.”

as well as:

“You are not alone. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything to deserve being bullied.”

And then he says this, about how enduring discrimination will ultimately make you more capable of empathy and therefore also empower you with a greater understanding of how to combat the discrimination you once faced, along with other forms of discrimination:

“It means you’ll be more likely to understand personally and deeply why it’s so important that, as adults, we set an example in our own lives, and that we treat everybody with respect.”

This statement is obviously one that we agree with like whoa. Unfortunately it’s also one that seems to be in contrast to um, his whole deal when it comes to ‘setting an example’ by way of ‘changing laws so that everyone is actually equal without a loophole.’

I’ve added my thoughts to this last quote in bolded brackets and basically I’m just going to leave it at that. I’m glad he made this video, I really am. I think it sends a message to adults more so than to teens, and I think that’s exactly where the message needs to be sent. I just wonder how he can say it with such a straight face, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t want to be cynical about this but really I’m just exhausted with the world at large.

“As a nation, we’re founded on the belief that all of us are equal and that each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness [MARRIAGE?]; to make the most of our talents [ENDA?]; to speak our minds; to not fit in; but most of all, to be true to ourselves [DADT?]. That’s the freedom that enriches all of us. That’s what America is all about [JUST AS SOON AS CONGRESS VOTES ON IT].”

DADT Injunction Still Stands, Gays Can Enlist – But Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Today we woke up to find that the fragile non-enforcement of DADT ferociously defended by judge Virginia Phillips is still in place. For now. Mostly. I don’t understand why this is even still an issue, I want to scream from my eyeballs. From The New York Times:

A federal district judge in California said Monday that she is inclined to deny the government’s request to allow the Pentagon to enforce its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay and bisexual members of the military while her injunction against it is being appealed. “My tentative ruling is to deny the application for a stay,” Judge Virginia A. Phillips said at a hearing on the government’s request, according to Reuters. She is expected to issue a ruling to that effect on Tuesday. The Obama administration has defended the law, arguing that change should come from Congress, not the courts; last week the Department of Justice gave notice that if the request for a stay was denied or not resolved by Monday at noon, it intended to appeal to the Ninth Circuit “to allow the orderly litigation of the stay request before that court.”

(@nytimes)

Even more tellingly/importantly, the Associated Press is reporting that the order has come down from high-level military officials that recruiting stations can no longer turn away applicants who are gay, which we theorize means that they foresee this injunction standing for at least the foreseeable future and thus are grudgingly abiding by it. They don’t necessarily see it standing forever, though.

…Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith has announced that “top-level” guidance has been issued to recruiting commands telling them that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the military has been suspended, at least for now.

But recruiters have also been told to tell possible LGBT recruits that the moratorium could be re-instated at any time.

(@dallasvoice)

Pretty much every reputable source is advising soldiers to stay in the closet for the time being, as this is unlikely to be the final solution to the clusterfuck that is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and out soldiers will probably still face consequences in the future. Dan Choi, however, is holding them to their word.

If he is indeed allowed to re-enlist (and I’m not sure he will be, it’s possible that his insubordination/civil disobedience will still be enough to bar him besides his homosexuality) it will at least provide a very public way to track the reality vs. the theoretical status of DADT – that is, when Choi is eventually re-discharged, we’ll all have a barometer for the abject failure of the government to handle this situation. Because lest you forget, the government IS trying to make sure this fails. Today a lawyer with the Clinton administration (which was responsible for DADT in the first place) stated that he thinks Obama should argue against Phillips’ injunction BUT simultaneously argue to federal courts that the original DADT law in 1993 was unconstitutional.

“I would like, at the right time with the right military process being worked, to see the government actually switch its position,” said Walter Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general under President Bill Clinton. “The president, in his capacity as commander in chief, can make his own judgment that [don’t ask] is not necessary. … He doesn’t have to give judicial deference to the political branches.”

Will the President take that advice? Only time will tell, but right now the betting money says that time will tell us “no.” There’s no way to foresee how this fight will develop, but if past performance is any indication, the people who will eventually be responsible for ending DADT will be individuals working their power to the best of their ability in defiance of the administration, and this presidency will have passed on one more opportunity to effect radical change.

Oh My F*cking God, Another DADT Roadblock, What Is Wrong With You People

If the DADT filibuster earlier this week was really upsetting for you, you might want to go make a drink/sandwich/alcoholic sandwich before reading this one. Maybe work on some art therapy. The bad news is that the Department of Justice has filed a fourteen-page brief trying to block Judge Phillips’ injunction of DADT, meaning that they don’t want to have to stop discharging soldiers until the policy gets sorted out. The other bad news is that there is no good news. The brief can be read here in its entirety, but the gist of it is that since the case against DADT was originally filed by the Log Cabin Republicans, the ruling applies only to members of the Log Cabin Republicans and not any soldiers whose discharge is actually at stake; also, that Phillips doesn’t have the authority to overrule the military, that somehow an injunction now will block other, later, very important judicial angles that the DOJ was going to take on DADT. And lastly, of course – OF COURSE – they still need time to study and strategize and consider, and that suddenly up and stopping DADT discharges would throw the whole military and therefore the entire world out of whack. (@advocate)

There are a few obvious responses to this information. For instance, that it’s patently ridiculous. Also, that Phillips has already addressed pretty much all of these arguments in her original decision. And maybe most significantly, that it’s a deeply disappointing position for an administration who has promised approximately eight thousand times that it wants nothing more than to repeal DADT as soon as possible. The DOJ is sticking to its guns on this one, and insisting that in some roundabout way that we’re probably just too young and naive to understand, this brief is actually working TOWARDS  a repeal.

But as Alex Nicholson of Servicemembers United said, Obama and his administration “had a choice to take several different routes [with the injunction], from the moderate and reasonable to the extremely ridiculous. It appears that they decided to go with the latter end of the spectrum.” The realists among us knew that we shouldn’t get our hopes up for the DOJ to completely let this one go, even though just letting Phillips’ ruling stand probably would have been the simplest way of handling the repeal. That said, though, is it too much to call this brief straight-up insulting? By resorting to every possible last-ditch legal effort to remove any obstacles to the enforcing of DADT, they seem to be sending a strong message that they are willing to resort to every possible last-ditch legal effort to remove any obstacles to the enforcing of DADT, which is actually the exact opposite of repealing it.

I know. I know. I’ve got nothing. It’s ceased to be about how many chances we can give this administration to do nothing when they said they would do something; it’s about how many chances we’re willing to give them to do exactly what they said they would not do and still hope that maybe they’ll change their minds somehow. We like to think of ourselves as fairly patient and forgiving, but let this be the official notice that we are Reaching Our Limits.

The DOJ has yet to file an actual appeal of Phillips’ ruling, and there’s no guarantee that the federal court will entertain the arguments contained in the DOJ’s brief. If you’re playing along from home and trying to add up all the points in your head, the answer is yes, we are in fact hoping for one judicial department of our government to deny the request made by another judicial department of our government, and therefore move one step closer to upholding the promises of the executive branch that have been stalled indefinitely within the legislative branch.

If you are wondering where the people you actually elected are in all of this, and if you feel like you remember several of them promising that this problem would be solved by now, YOU ARE CORRECT. Would you like an audiovisual aid to help process this feeling? YES. ME TOO. Thanks, GetEqual! If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go kill off the brain cells that deal with “the military,” “the government,” “politics,” “homophobia,” and “this fucking country oh my god.”

Obama and Clinton Say They’ll Fight For Gays’ Right to Party, Not Get Beaten Up

GOV’T:

Yesterday was a big day, kids! Barack Obama said a lot of things, Hillary Clinton said a lot of things, there were a bunch of gay icons at the White House, and it looks like the gays came out the winners! In a statement last night, Obama vowed to keep pushing ahead on gay rights.

President Obama vowed Tuesday night to push ahead with his gay rights agenda, assuring an audience of gay men and lesbians at the White House that he remains committed to repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same same-sex marriages performed in other states.

“Committed gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country,’’ Mr. Obama declared, during a White House reception to celebrate June as gay and lesbian pride month.

Also, the Labor Department is going to “issue regulations this week ordering businesses to give gay employees equal treatment under a law permitting workers unpaid time off to care for newborns or loved ones.” Hey it’s like paternity leave but for gay people! This is simply an executive action, not an act of Congress, so it’s got less staying power than a law. But this, combined with Obama’s protection of partner rights in hospitals earlier this year, shows that he’s committed to advancing gay rights through several government avenues — at least, that’s our take on it.

Also also, Hillary Clinton spoke at a gay event hosted by the State Department and reiterated the administration’s commitment to gay rights and the reduction of discrimination based on sexuality or gender. “These dangers are not gay issues. This is a human rights issue. Just as I was very proud to say the obvious 15 years ago in Beijing — that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights — well let me say today that human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights once and for all.”

Her remarks are a bit long, I know, but it’s worth watching:

Basically, Obama and Clinton were covering two sides of the same coin. Obama is working for us on the homefront, and Clinton is working for us abroad. “It’s not right, it’s not who we are as Americans, and we’re going to put a stop to it,” Obama told a raucous White House reception honoring Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. HOLLER.

NO BULLYING:

The New York Senate just passed an anti-bullying bill that’s inclusive of gay and trans students, and Gov. Patterson is expected to sign it into law soon.

The bill calls on school officials to address bullying and bias-related behavior of all kinds that interfere with student safety and learning. The law requires reporting of bias-related incidents to the State Education Department and creates rules that help prevent hate violence. (@ontop)

CONSTANCE:

Constance McMillen was in Washington yesterday for Obama’s little shindig, and she made the rounds on Capitol Hill to try and convinve lawmakers to pass an anti-discrimination bill similar to the one in New York. “On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, McMillen huddled in a conference room with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to talk about a bill he introduced to ban public schools from excluding gay and lesbian students from activities.” (@clarion-ledger)

PROP 8:

This article sums up pretty much all of our feelings about the forthcoming decision in the Prop 8 trial — extremely cautious optimism. Apparently the rest of the LGBT community agrees. We all know the facts are on our side, logic is on our side, but there’s still that nagging pit of fear in the bottom of our stomachs because, you know, things like Maine still happen! (@atlantic)

CUSTODY BATTLE:

Lisa Miller and Janice Jenkins are back in court. Well, their lawyers are anyway.

Miller, of Forest, and daughter Isabella Miller-Jenkins failed to appear for a court-ordered Jan. 1 custody swap in which Jenkins was to get the girl. The girl is now listed as missing, and Jenkins’ attorney has said the two are believed to have moved to El Salvador.

On Wednesday, the Vermont Supreme Court will hear arguments from Miller’s attorneys who say Judge William Cohen erred last November in awarding custody to Jenkins, who is not the biological mother.

Obama Orders More Same-Sex Partner Benefits. When Can We Like Him Again?

Today, President Changey McChangerson Barack Obama ordered executive-branch agencies to extend the benefits offered to opposite-sex partners of federal workers to same-sex partners as well.

“That process has now concluded, and I am proud to announce that earlier today, I signed a memorandum that requires executive agencies to take immediate action to extend to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees a number of meaningful benefits, from family assistance services to hardship transfers to relocation expenses.”

Firstly, totally jealous of all those people with jobs. Secondly, I feel like he’s been paying us a lot of attention this week, and I haven’t necessarily disagreed with his response to hecklers regarding DADT either. What I’m saying is: I’m really starting to dig this guy again. Like, FULL ON.

Am I being too polite? Should I be angrier like Queerty and Dan Choi? Even Pam Spaulding, who I like so much I often just copy her point of view, says of today’s order, “it’s a small step, not a lasting accomplishment. This memorandum as it stands is only good for the duration of his presidency.”

So, maybe I’m settling for less than I should. But maybe I just think there are other bigger problems getting in the way of my life goals besides my relationship with Barack Obama. For example —

Massive Mormon Sidenote

I just saw 8: The Mormon Proposition, which you MUST SEE when it comes out June 18 in theaters or pre-order for its July retail release, and I have a lot of feelings after seeing it which I will withhold until you’ve had a chance to also see it.

In the meantime I feel there are only two possible things to do:

1. Create a new Bible for Autostraddle (“The Book of Autostraddle”) and brainwash all of you into giving us all your money, because apparently that’s all it takes to RADICALLY CHANGE THE LIVES OF TONS OF PEOPLE ON A MASSIVE SCALE. Then we could make OUR agenda King! This really strategic brainwashing will prey on your fears of an unpleasant afterlife, death, etc.

2. Oh wait JK, even though it would be for a good cause, we realized that we have souls, and also no time to write a Book of Autostraddle, so therefore, we cannot pursue “1.” Instead we must put our energy into exposing and destroying the Mormon Church’s frightening ability to influence state and federal law with seemingly endless financial resources. Perhaps a Gaga/Adam Lambert concert on the lawn of the Latter-Day-Saints Headquarters, with lots of gay dancing? (Also, this one time this Mormon company f*cked with our website.)

Here’s the trailer for the documentary:

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Anyhow Back to Obama And Whether We’re Still Supposed to Hate.Him.

Do I sound like I’m in one of those terrible relationships where I confuse temporary adjustments/selective caring with long-term growth & evolution? When you tell your friends that she’s changed, and they sort of give you a “Really Papi?” look? You know, and then you’re rambling: “I know that she’s always been really disrespectful of my feelings and was at Choice C*nts making out with that bitchy girl butttttt she sent me chocolate-covered flower-shaped melons in a swan-shaped bowl at work today, which is actually a private joke between us, long story lol, and also last week she was totally on time, so I think she’s changing right? Oh also she didn’t mean it when she said our relationship was like incest.” Are we acting like that?

I feel like he’s doing stuff, right? I mean he’s complemented us like every week. Look at this note he left in my locker (!!!!!):

I know… he hasn’t moved quickly enough in several areas and could be doing more than he has been for DADT.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good line or a well-crafted sentence followed by a deliciously pregnant pause — or maybe I just realize how busy he’s been with stuff like the economy crashing and health care and feel grateful he’s carving out any time for me at all. (I know, I know, that might be a personal issue.)

I always liked Obama, you know. I liked him from the get-go. Also, on Election Day 2008, my body torpedoed through an IKEA cabinet I was standing on and my leg got snagged on a series of nails, and now every time I look at the giant scar that canvasses the entire length of my shin, I think of Obama’s victory and our party in Harlem that night. I think of how much hope we had! I had so much hope, in fact, that I ran around with a bloody leg all night, refusing medical care. That’s how much I fucking loved this man.

I want to like him. He’s literally a part of my skin now after all.

Also, I think he’s funny! I like that he has a sense of humor. I mean really, when he makes a joke, I really feel like he gets me. You know? It’s this thing we have.

I really, really, want to like him.

Our Courtship with Obama: A Retrospective

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Before I go back to the beginning, let me briefly mention last week, because it was such a big step for us: Last week the progress on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a big step. And then the Senate Committee and House Approved the DADT Compromise. But it was a compromise, and Dan Choi still says it ain’t good enouge. The Courage Campaign, however, called DADT “a done deal.”

I know Dan’s right in many areas. And I really have always liked him too. But also, isn’t Obama soooooo much better than our last president?

Relationship Recap:

[Sidenote: A full rundown of Obama’s statements & actions on LGBT issues can be found at ontheissues.com.]

When we first got together, Obama said he’d repeal DOMA. In 2008, he wouldn’t outright support same-sex marriage but he called the measure to repeal Prop 8 “divisive and discriminatory” and congratulated “all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks,” which sounded pretty #yaygay to me.

Obama opposed DOMA when he ran for Senate.

However, in June 2009, the Department of Justice issued a brief defending the constitutionality of DOMA, which made us all feel really rotten.  It seemed like a reversal by his administration.

However HOWEVER in April 2009 The Guardian UK had already informed us that Obama is ushering in a “quiet gay revolution“. A-ha! Of course it’s been happening all this time, it’s just been really quiet! Like amber waves of grain, sleeping bunnies, etc. Hard to get etc.

In August 2009, Obama Finally Came Out Against DOMA, filing court papers claiming a federal marriage law discriminates against gays, even as government lawyers continued to defend it.

In September 2009, we totally freaked out after reading a really scary story in New York Magazine about the Tea Party movement and other anti-Obama people and, in our post titled “Look These Anti-Obama Loonies in the Eye and Tell Me How Obama Could Possibly Find Gay Marriage Attractive,” we suggested:

“Obama’s already received 400 times more death threats than George W. Bush (that’s an actual number). A frightening fringe still truly believes, erroneously, that this country’s root is The Bible. And by “The Bible” they mean “our screwed-up interpretation of the bible.” And here we are, being impatient with him for not acting on same-sex marriage yet. Now is not the time.”

On October 11th 2009, President Obama was the keynote speaker at the annual HRC dinner on the night before the National Equality March on Washington, during which he made these two very important points:

+ “I have called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefit and Obligations Act.”
+ “I will end ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ That is my commitment to you.”

(He also made a joke about opening for Lady Gaga which was amazing and so cute!)

At the time, we had this to say about his HRC speech:

Over at Queerty and the New York Times, it’s very noticed that he gave no timetable for [repealing DOMA or DADT]. Here at Autostraddle, we are just gonna feel happy & warm right now that he stood up there and said he was gonna do this stuff. Obvs this means we get to sleep in tomorrow and don’t have to march right? ‘Cause Intern Katrina just took off her pants.

Ultimately, we found that the LGBTQ community was divided, not united, by Obama’s Speech to the HRC:

Let me confess; I’m a believer. I’m a dreamer. I imagine all the people living life in peace, and for about five minutes following Obama’s speech to the HRC last week, I believed that we would. But in the days following, compelling arguments have been made on both sides. But that’s just it — people are taking sides now. Are you an Obama believer or a critic? Do you think he’s pandering to the fancy HRC so he can take our money and run, or do you think it’s meaningful that he even offered WORDS, considering the political climate of the health care debate?

Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m critical for the same reasons the critics are… we can’t say “now is not the time” forever… we need radical voices to enable moderate voices.

But on the other hand, observing straight America’s reaction to last weekend’s events has hammered home an inconvenient truth: for as long as gay rights have no direct impact on the lives of heterosexuals, we must pay attention to how often The Majority hears our demands as impatient whining. To many who don’t feel personally affected by the content of Obama’s speech, the speech sounded good enough. He did, after all, acknowledge that things are not moving as quickly as we’d like. We do know this, though: we need straight votes to win our rights and I believe we can best impact change at the ground level with other voters.

On October 22, 2009, we noted that “If you ever doubted the public perception of Obama’s opinions about us, a large majority (72%) of a US News & World Report Survey group says they beleive Obama secretly supports gay marriage” and went on to ask, in light of two “small victories” that week, are Obama’s ‘small victories’ for LGBTs this week “change we can believe in?”

Those “victories” were:

1. Health and Human Services will establish the nation’s first national resource center for the support of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender senior citizens.

2. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will ensure that its programs are available to all, including LGBT people. Today’s announcement is historic, since HUD is the first federal agency so far to officially propose guidelines that would explicitly address discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

[Furthermore, The Senate is ready to approve The Matthew Shepard Act, a gay-inclusive hate crimes bill.]

And then on October 28th 2009, Obama signed the new Hate Crimes bill, which extended Hate Crimes protections to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

But then November 2009 came. Oh, cruel November with your November Rain, and your gay marriage vote in Maine that totally failed. And then people wondered why Obama hadn’t stepped in for Maine, and we all slit our wrists and died while the assholes relished. Then Obama pretty much moved on to health care and Christmas, as did our families.

In January 2010, an earthquake struck Haiti. We had the Olympics and then in February 2010, an earthquake struck Chile. Also; the economy, etc.

In April 2010, Obama ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would prevent hospitals from denying visitation privileges to gay & lesbian partners. We worried a little bit that this might be a way of doing away with the ugliest part of the same-sex partners situation so that denying us full rights would seem more humane, but regardless, thank the dear lord.

Not bad, right? Then the DADT stuff we already talked about?

Our Prior Relationships Include:

George W. Bush (January 20, 2001 –> January 20,2009)

In 1999 Bush opposed extending hate crime laws to protect gay people and opposed letting gays into the boy scouts. In 2000, he said he was against gay marriage but would leave it to the states. Though he hears a gay GOP group out, he sticks to “no gay adoptions.”

In the October 2000 debates, Bush says “I will be a tolerant person. I’ve been a tolerant person all my life. I just happen to believe strongly that marriage is between a man and a woman. I don’t really think it’s any of my concern how you conduct your sex life. That’s a private matter. I support equal rights but not special rights for people.”

In February of 2004, Bush calls for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He asserts his need to protect marriage against activist judges in September 2004, and in October assures Americans not to change our views on the sanctity of marriage.

In February 2005, George W. Bush introduced a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.

+

Bill Clinton (January 20, 1993–> January 20, 2001):

In 1991, Bill was asked if he would stand by his pledge to let gays serve openly in the military. Not really thinking it was a big deal, he said yeah and then got in trouble for that one later. In 1993, he created the order that would become DADT, changing existing policy to allow homosexuals into the military. (His gay supporters had raised $3.5 million for him soooo he owed ’em).

Clinton supported the Supreme Court’s decision to reinforce the protections offered by the Americans With Disabilities Act for Americans living with HIV and AIDS. He was also the first President to appoint openly homogays and lesbianisms all up in the government, including positions requiring Senate confirmation.

In September of 1996, when everyone thought same-sex marriage was about to pass in Hawaii, Bill Clinton totally dicked us over and signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law. Clinton told The Advocate, “I remain opposed to same-sex marriage. I believe marriage is an institution for the union of a man and a woman. This has been my long-standing position, and it is not being reviewed or reconsidered.”

In a State of the Union Address on January 19, 1999, President Clinton said, “discrimination or violence because of race or religion, ancestry or gender, disability or sexual orientation, is wrong, and it ought to be illegal. Therefore, I ask Congress to make the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act the law of the land.”

Last year (2009), Clinton redacted his previous statements about same-sex marriage, and said gay people should be allowed to get married. THANKS BUDDY MAYBE YOU COULDA DONE THAT WHILE WE WERE STILL TOGETHER.

++

One shouldn’t judge a relationship just on how much better it was than the last one, but it’s always important to give a little credit where credit is due.

What do you think? Can we wear our moveon.org Obama shirts again? I mean, I worked for moveon in ’08 dealing with their retail orders and some of y’all waited like eight weeks for your t-shirts, so I bet you wanna wear that shit.

I just want to like something. Because there’s all this oil all over all of these birds, and they’re gonna die, and I don’t like it.

Obama to DADT Activists: I’m On Task, Don’t Yell!

DADT:

After the White House backed a compromise on DADT this week, Obama was once again interrupted during a speech by a member of the crowd.

“Maybe he didn’t read the newspapers, because we’re working with Congress as we speak to roll back ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Obama said at the event for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California.

“C’mon, man, I’m dealing with Congress here,” Obama said to laughter. “It takes a little bit of time.”

The crowd member was Kip Williams of GetEqual, who sent out a statement about the event last night in which he said:

Today I heard President Obama speak at an event in San Francisco. When he praised Congress for “acting quickly to save jobs” last year, I thought about my lesbian and gay friends who have been kicked out of the military simply for having the integrity to be open and honest about who they are. So I interrupted our President, and I asked him to stop all discharges of lesbian and gay servicemembers until the policy is fully repealed.

President Obama’s response was disheartening. As the police detained and escorted me out of the room, he told the crowd that I don’t read the newspapers. Otherwise, he said, I would know that he’s been working with Congress to move on the issue very soon. But I do read the newspapers, and while it is imperative to pass this bill, it just doesn’t go far enough. As long as lesbian and gay servicemembers are being discharged, we still have a problem — and this bill doesn’t tell us if or when those discharges are going to stop.

Rachel has already summed up our thoughts about stuff like civil disobedience and “heckling” as an activism method. Most of that still stands, but I think the situation is a bit different now. With the compromise, Obama has even further proven his commitment to repealing DADT — we have a lot more evidence of his intent to actually follow through on his promises.

From what I can tell GetEqual is pushing for an immediate executive order from the president to overturn the policy instead of waiting and going through Congress. At this point, such a stance is unrealistic — in my opinion, anyway. Obama is not going to go around Congress, no matter how many times he is interrupted during a speech. He has picked a strategy that may take a year longer, but it will eventually, hopefully, get the job done. And it will also hopefully leave him with some extra goodwill and political capital that he can use on other important issues.

In an ideal world, DADT would already be dead and gone, a relic of how backwards the military once was. But politics is not an ideal world — far from it, in fact. By design, the system requires compromise and slow action. That’s actually a good thing, I think, because it means everyone has plenty of time to think about the ramifications of legislation. Maybe the system seems unnecessary for issues like DADT, but when Congress rushes legislation, things like the Patriot Act happen. This is a matter of opinion, but I would rather suffer a few delays on DADT than upend the system or cost Obama some leverage on other important topics.

PROP 8:

After months of waiting, Judge Vaughn Walker announced yesterday that he will hear closing arguments on the Prop 8 trial on June 16.

Once again, the issue of cameras in the courtroom has come up. In January, the Supreme Court ruled that the trial could not be broadcast. But news organizations have asked for cameras to cover the closing arguments. Walker is mulling the decision now.

Queerty has offered up some great reasons why Walker should say no to cameras:

+ Ted Olson won’t have to worry about hair and make-up.
+ Protect Marriage attorney Charles Cooper won’t have to worry about any embarrassing gaffes.
+ Judge Walker can go naked under his robe. Or at least pantsless.

TRANS RIGHTS:

The LA Times has written a really fascinating behind-the-scenes look at trans rights advocacy in Washington, through the eyes of Mara Kiesling of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Transgender activists have come a long way in the last few years — take for example the passing of the Matthew Shephard Act — though victories are still hard won. The Employee Non-Discrimination Act is now the biggest fight on the horizon.

GALLUP:

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans are finally at the halfway point on gay acceptance: Americans’ support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations “morally wrong” dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup’s decade-long trend.

That survey has a columnist from the Dallas Morning News wondering when we can stop talking about all this gay stuff, for chrissake. ‘Cause you know, 50% is good enough right? Right. (@gallup @dallasmorningnews)

COLLEGE CLASSES:

College courses about gay marriage are popping up these days, to varying degrees of success or failure, especially at Catholic universities. One professor of such a class argues that gay marriage isn’t the black and white issue it sometimes seems: It’s the richness of this debate that renders it such a likely and important subject of academic study, not the fact that the professors teaching the course have a particular political agenda they want to advance with their students. Marriage has a rich and complex history in the United States, one that is tied up in evolving notions of equality, liberty, dignity and citizenship, as well as family, respectability, love and what it means to be an adult. What’s more, almost all recent welfare reform initiatives have included funding for programs that would encourage poor people to marry and teach them how to stay married. Underlying these initiatives isn’t romance and warm and fuzzy feelings about the family, but the state’s interest in privatizing the costs of paying for poor children. (@salon)