Obama's big gay speech: Heard it all before.

(John's take on the speech is here.) Just watched the Obama speech at a party for the Maine campaign. He was quite proud of his Lady Gaga joke.

Obama told us, "I'm here with you in that fight." He told us that during the campaign, too. That's why we supported him.

The president acknowledged that many of us think progress hasn't come fast enough. But, he said we've made progress and will make more. He also wanted us to know that we're impacted by everything he does...health care, schools, etc....because we don't want to be identified by just one thing. But, "my commitment to you is unwavering."

When we look back we'll see a time when discrimination ended in the workplace and the battlefield. We'll also see a time when same-sex couples are recognized as equal. I guess we can look back on January 19, 2017.

Obama delivered a beautiful tribute to Judy and Dennis Shepard -- Judy and Dennis Shepard deserved the tribute. He let us know he's going to sign the Hate Crimes bill. Duh. We know that. In 2007, the Hate Crimes bill passed in the House and Senate (even breaking a filibuster in the Senate.) Bush threatened to veto it. Obama said he'd sign it.

Obama said we're pushing hard to pass an inclusive ENDA. And, he will support his nominees who are attacked because of their sexual orientation.

According to Obama, "we are moving ahead on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" Obama said, "I will end Don't Ask, Don't Tell." But, there was no timeline. Nothing even approaching a timeline. No idea of how it will be done.

Obama talked a lot about same-sex couples, but never mentioned marriage or even civil unions. Although, he did tell us he wants Congress to repeal DOMA.

He mentioned AIDS in DC, but didn't mention marriage in the District. No mention of the battles in Maine or Washington State.

This speech offered less than the cocktail party speech for the A-listers back in June.

The expectations were very high. The president spoke for approximately 25 minutes. And, tonight, he did not deliver anything new or exciting. He did not assuage our concerns.

I'm sure HRC is happy. This was a big night for the institution. But, I'm not sure what it did for the movement -- or HRC's actual mission of full equality. Read More...

I'm not sure it's wise for HRC to take full responsibility for what Obama has, or in this case hasn't, done

If HRC is talking to the White House on a daily basis, and the White House is regularly blowing us off, or affirmatively kicking us in the face (e.g., the incest DOMA brief), then HRC is either giving the White House the nod to do these things to us, or their influence is terribly ineffective. Just seems a very dangerous message for HRC to be telegraphing, that they're somehow at the center of the mess the Obama administration has made of gay rights.

From AP:

The Human Rights Campaign, which invited Obama to speak at its dinner Saturday night, said it remains hopeful of seeing more action. "He's obviously the most supportive president and has done more than any president" on behalf of the gay community, said Joe Solmonese, the group's president. He said the Obama administration has been working with the group on a range of issues "on an almost weekly and sometimes daily basis."

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Dem close to Obama: Gays are "naive"

Politico:

“It certainly can’t hurt if people on our side realize the vehemence of the opposition the president faces,” a top gay Democrat close to Obama told POLITICO. “The stuff the right wing is cranking out is horrible, terrible. There are a lot of understandably impatient LGBT Americans…but while all their criticism is well-intended, some of it is politically naïve.”

I've been working in politics for 20 years, and quite successfully at that. I know how the system works. And it doesn't work well when you telegraph cowardice and fear. The Obama administration would like you all to believe that your expectation that he simply keep his promises is somehow "unrealistic" and "politically naive." And yes, it may be naive that we actually expect Barack Obama to be true to his word. But please spare us the lectures about how politics is just too confusing for we simple gay folk. We're not new to this dance. And we're not going to sit back when people make us concrete promises, over and over again in exchange for our vote, and then have the nerve to criticize, and condescend to, us for simply expecting them to keep their promise.

We handed the Democrats both houses of Congress and the White House. They are in no position to whine about how hard it is to legislate. It's never been easier in a generation. Democrats need to stop whining and finding excuses, and start showing real leadership before the opportunity is lost. Read More...

Send us your photos of the National Equality March, if you're in DC this weekend

Joe, Chris and I were talking, and we wanted to start taking more advantage of you guys, so to speak :-) We want you to send us your photos (not photos you found online, but photos that YOU took) of particular things, from time to time, that I can then post in the photo album feature on the top right corner of the site. For any particular day, we can swap out my photos for your photos of, say, Halloween, or your pets on Friday, things like that.

This weekend, I'd like any of you who are in DC for the National Equality March to send me your photos of anything related to the political weekend in DC. It could be you and friends at a party related to this weekend, it could be a photo from the HRC dinner tonight, from the protest outside, from the march tomorrow, etc. If I get enough, and enough good ones, I'll post them.

Send your best photo (or two, if they're really good) to me at:
ablogphotos@gmail.com
And put "march" in the subject line so I know. And actually, if you want to send your favorite pet photo too, go for it, I can post those next Friday - put "pets" in the subject line. And if you know how to change the size of your photo, we don't need anything huge - 500 x 500, max, at 72 dpi is fine (if you don't know how to edit photos, we can do that for you).

And by sending me your photo, you are attesting to the fact that you have the rights to the photo, and that I have permission to publish it on the blog for free via my Flickr account (or whatever other means works best). Thanks, I think this will be fun. Read More...

HRC backtracks on support of Obama

After HRC president Joe Solmonese was roundly criticized for writing yesterday that the gay community should wait until 2017 before criticizing President Obama's inaction on his campaign promises to our community, Solmonese issued a new statement today, seemingly backing off a bit on his unequivocal support for Obama's inaction on gay rights:

The following is from HRC President Joe Solmonese in response to reaction to his weekly message published yesterday:

I’ve seen some reactions to my weekly message, that I gave the President a free pass not to fulfill his campaign promises until 2017.

Here’s something from what I wrote that the authors didn’t include in their pieces: “I predict great things coming out of our work with this President, but that does not mean that I am satisfied today. Our community cannot be satisfied so long as DOMA is on the books and an inclusive ENDA is not.“

I am not satisfied.

HRC is not satisfied.

Our community is not satisfied and that’s why thousands of LGBT people and our allies are in Washington this weekend to demand more.

That’s our position. Stopping here would mean losing. But stopping here is not what we intend to do.

We are pushing for much more. It is our job to dog them, but it is also our job to make sure that success is possible. As I wrote, “To do the work, we have to work with our supporters in Congress and with the Administration. Whatever you think of the Administration’s first nine months, you don’t pass laws by sitting out. You pass laws by sitting at the table.”

Do I believe we’ll have a good track record by 2017? Yes. But the President can’t deliver on his promises alone. It will take all of us working together.

When your primary goal is getting a seat at the table, and you're not willing to walk away from the table, you're going to have a very hard time winning. AIPAC, the NRA, and the religious right didn't earn a place at the table in Washington by being nice guys. They're respected by the Obama administration, and by politicians at large, because they're willing to beat the crap out of anyone, Democrat or Republican, who crosses their members.

You don't win in Washington by being perceived as a happy pushover whose primary concern is whether he's got a place at the table. Especially when you've been given a seat at the kiddy table and you don't even realize it. Read More...

"Giant red flag": Anti-gay side creates new PAC to rake in "a large sum of money" in Washington to reject R-71

Troubling, but not completely unexpected development in Washington State in the battle of Referendum 71, the battle to accept or reject the state's new "everything, but marriage" law. The anti-gay side is starting a new PAC that can accept large donations over the next couple days, before the October 12th deadline for large contributions (over $5,000). Of course, we wonder if this means Mormon money. Via The SLOG:

Dave Mortenson, a conservative campaign consultant who filed the PAC, says, "A bunch of individuals contacted me to see if we could raise some money really quick." He says, "I am not going to share who I’ve been talking to, but if we do get the money, we will report it." Are these religious groups, corporations, wealthy donors? "We are working them all," says Mortenson.

October 12 is the deadline for donations over $5000, according to state campaign rules.

Can the group raise a large sum of money before Tuesday? "I’m pretty optimistic, let me put it that way," says Mortensen, who has worked on Republican legislative campaigns since the 1980s.

The group running the primary campaign to reject R-71, Protect Marriage Washington, has raised $60,114. The campaign working to approve R-71, Washington Families Standing Together (WAFST), has raised $779,104. And another group in favor of approving the measure, Human Rights Campaign Approve Referendum 71, has raised $72,805.

Filing a new PAC is a "giant red flag" that anti-gay forces are about to dump loads of cash into the anti-gay Reject R-71 campaign, says WAFST campaign manager Josh Friedes. Much of the money for California's anti-gay Prop 8 came in the final weeks before the election.

The anti-gay forces really want to quash our rights. And, they do have lots of money at their disposal. When the alarm bell sounds, the homophobes step up. They sure did in California. And, a lot of the large donors were Mormons.

Our side wants to Approve R-71, to keep the new law on the books. The campaign's ActBlue page is here. Read More...

Obama not to touch DOMA in first term, lingering fear of 1993

Wash Post:

Obama's aides have signaled that efforts to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act will take a back seat to other domestic priorities during the president's first term, an indication that Obama wants to avoid the mistakes that Bill Clinton made when he attempted to allow gays to serve in the military during the first months of his presidency.

That's interesting. It's also historically inaccurate. I was in DC at the time, working on the issue. Bill Clinton didn't do anything to attempt to lift the ban. It was the Republicans, and Sam Nunn, who made it in an issue during the first weeks - not months - of Clinton's administration. But putting that aside, if it was "wrong" to address controversial gay issues so early on, then why is Obama addressing controversial health care issues so early on? Wasn't that also a lesson from the Clinton years?

Not to mention, seriously, these guys are taking lessons from 1993? Why don't they take their African-American civil rights lessons from 1953 why they're at it? Leadership is not about searching for the best excuse to avoid following through on your promises. The way this administration willingly telegraphs fear is simply astonishing. And then there's the assumption that they're going to win again in four years, and we'll still have a Democratic congress, so we can just wait for his major promises.

Finally, the lesson of Clinton's experience with DADT is not to pursue repealing DOMA? Huh? And we're to believe that they're still going to pursue lifting the ban this term, even though the ban is the very issue freaking them out enough to punt on DOMA? I call BS. If DADT has made them terrified of DOMA, then it's really made them doubly terrified of DADT itself.

PS And a quick note to the Washington Post. Obama didn't extend any benefits to the gay partners of federal employees, though that's certainly what his people keep claiming. As I uncovered at the time, the benefits were already available for over a decade, and even DOD employees under George Bush were receiving them. This is part of the larger problem with this administration - there's a lot of civil rights smoke and mirrors going on. Read More...

Bill Maher on Obama attending HRC's dinner

Bill Maher writing at Huff Post:

Everyone deserves equal rights. That's why they're called "equal" and "rights." Tomorrow night President Obama will speak before a gay rights group, and on Sunday there will be a massive gay rally in Washington, or as I call it, the Million Mo March. Which makes this weekend the perfect time for Obama to announce he's repealing "don't ask, don't tell" and committing to a full-throated endorsement of gay marriage. One, because it's the right thing to do and two, because it will throw the conservative base into such a frenzied, pants-shitting panic that they'll drop all that BS about death panels and socialism and let us all get some actual work done.

But of course that's not going to happen. I can tell you what the president is going to tell his audience tomorrow: How much he supports them. How much he agrees with them. And how he wishes he was President so he could help them out. But here's the thing about being president. There isn't a lot you can do without either Congress, Oprah or Goldman Sachs behind you. But there is one thing the president can do with the stroke of a pen: He can let gays serve openly in the military. It's called an executive order. Harry Truman wrote one in 1948 for blacks in the military, and that was that.

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Cleve Jones vs Joe Solmonese on DADT and President Obama

Read More...