Is Obama Punishing Us for Going Off His Time Line?

I think this whole mess with the DOJ filing is a warning from President Obama.   Why?  Because (like I said before) Obama wants LGBT people have equality, but only when we’ve been good little children who make sure we keep giving him money and electing his ineffective Democratic partners in the House and Senate.

That to me is essentially what John Berry, the highest LGBT person in the Obama administration, is saying in this Advocate interview:

We have four broad legislative goals that we want to accomplish and legislation is one of these things where you’ve got to move when the opportunity strikes, so I’m going to list them in an order but it’s not necessarily going to go one, two, three, four. Obviously, I think the first opportunity is hate crimes and we’re hopeful that we can get that passed this week. We’re going to try, but if not, we’re going to keep at it until we get it passed. The second one ENDA, we want to secure that passage of ENDA, and third is we want to repeal legislatively “don’t ask don’t tell,” and fourth, we want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Now, I’m not going to pledge — and nor is the president — that this is going to be done by some certain date. The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration – our goal is to have this entire agenda accomplished and enacted into law so that it is secure.

The Advocate: Does that include a second term? A lot of people have talked about DOMA being pushed back until a second term.

Berry: I say this in a broad sense — our goal is to get this done on this administration’s watch.

Finally, I want to talk to you about the DOMA brief. Our strongest argument against “don’t ask, don’t tell” is that we stand with the truth. And that we, more than anyone, know the cost of lying and the terrible pain it invokes.

This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces. He has to enforce the laws that have been enacted appropriately and that he has inherited. It would be wrong for me or any of our community to advise him to lie or to shirk his responsibility. He’s doing his job. He has made clear that he stands for the repeal of DOMA. It will be part of this administration’s agenda to accomplish that act. We ought not waste energy and angst attacking him when we should be focusing the energy and effort on getting 218 votes in the house and 60 votes in the Senate, and that’s where we ought to target the energy and the strength of this community and this president is with us, this is our agenda and it’s his agenda.

Obama and his administration are lying when they say they had to defend DOMA.  There is flexibility.  But what’s worse is the extent and vociferousness of their defense of DOMA.  They could have made a nuanced filing that articulated their concerns with the law but instead they pulled out every anti-gay argument imaginable.  Check out this post Richard Socarides, former aide to Bill Clinton:

Thus, the general rule that the DOJ must defend laws against attack is relative – like everything in Washington. And even when the DOJ does defend a law against constitutional attack, it does not have to advance every conceivable argument in doing so (such as the brief’s invocation, in a footnote, of incest and the marriage of children). In fact, many legal experts believe that in this particular case none of the issues going to the merits of whether or not DOMA is constitutional needed to be addressed to get the case thrown out. The administration’s lawyers could have simply argued, for example, that the plaintiff’s had no standing. There was no need to invoke legal theories that were not only offensive on their face, but which could put at risk future legal efforts on behalf of our civil rights.

A friend of mine said that you have to be a pretty fucked up individual to want to be the leader of something as fucked up as our government.   I never assumed Obama was infallible or perfect.  But my mistake was assuming Obama was a man of integrity and courage.  I get that LGBT equality is not massively popular politically or statistically.  But it is pretty obvious that it is morally wrong to deny LGBT people equal rights and protections.  Obama talks about making these tough decisions, that America had to stand up for what is morally right (i.e. torture).   It seems now, though, the only tough decisions he’s making is how long he can keep LGBT people disenfranchised and quiet.  I was going to say that Obama wants us to just be thankful that we have a president who doesn’t attack us.  But this DOJ filing is an attack on my community, my family, my friends and my life.  It’s one thing to ask for patience and it’s another thing to use the same bigoted language as our most devout enemies.

Obama wants to set the time line for gay rights.  Maybe we get one or two legislative victories this term (the Hate Crimes law and ENDA), but the heavy lifting comes after his re-election.  Obama knows best, right?  This DOJ filing strikes me as an admonishment to the LGBT community who want to speed things along.  It’s a like a little warning shot across our bow saying, “Don’t come any closer.”

It’s unbelievably sad this is what Obama has decided to do.  I don’t know why I keep falling back on this, but you’d assume someone who is black would get why discrimination is wrong. It reminds me of a MLK Jr. quote:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”