During the past few days I've talked to a number of people about the recent rumblings in the gay community about President Obama and the appearance of the administration backing away from such campaign promises as repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Obviously, I'm among those early Obama supporters who've neared the point of abject frustration -- having lived through the early elation and later deflation of the Clinton years, I'm inclined to see warning signs where others may choose to give the benefit of the doubt.
During a chat with a political pragmatist who works on the Hill, I mentioned some version of Jonathan Capeheart's call for Obama to make a speech on GLBT issues in order reassure the community that we're not about to be abandoned on some altar of political expediency. The pragmatist asked me what, really, that would accomplish, given that little will change the order of GLBT-related legislation that will be moving through congress, namely: Hate Crimes, followed by ENDA, followed by DADT, followed by (maybe) DOMA.
At the time, I thought it would accomplish quite a bit, both for the gay community -- being reassured in a tangible way through a speech followed by some sort of action (say, a stop-loss order, or even a challenge to Congress) -- and for Obama, who would benefit from fewer distractions if his administration would stop needlessly provoking one of his party's more entrenched constituencies. This was after we learned of the admnistration's brief to the Supreme Court urging the dismissal of a DADT lawsuit, promoting the idea that DADT is "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion," language right out of the right-wing, anti-gay playbook.
When I inquired at the White House about this appropriation of anti-gay slogans in an admninistration brief, I got the depressingly non-specific yet lengthy sentence from a spokesperson: "The President has said that he wants to see Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security. Doing so will ensure that all who are committed to serving our country are able to serve."
That's a long way from the beginning of the year when press secretary Robert Gibbs, asked whether Obama would repeal DADT, simply said, "Yes."
Then came today and the news that Obama's Department of Justice contributed an unexpectedly full-throated defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in yet another court brief in response to a suit challenging the law. If you're interested in an entire breakdown of the brief -- and an evisceration of the idea that the DOJ is somehow obligated to defend the indefensible -- check out the full post at AmericaBlog. The long and the short of it is that, once more, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to use language that has been deployed against us for years by anti-gay forces, in support of legislation that demeans us all as second-class citizens.
Andrew Sullivan, among others, likes to talk about Obama's tendency to play "long ball" -- to be looking ahead three, four, even five steps in the political game at hand. It's certainly possible that that is what he's doing here: staying low, nurturing his role as commander-in-chief and earning the support and trust of the military leadership, one of the nation's last bastions of explicit homophobia. That, I would understand.
What I don't understand, and what undercuts the idea that some long-ball game is being played here, is the weeks long fumbling of any and all questions about DADT. It began, really, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates answering the DADT question with the excuse, they "have a lot on our plates right now," and excuse that's been repeated with disturbing regularity in the days and weeks since. Even leaving aside the ludicrous nature of such an excuse from a president that built his fortunes on the slogan "Yes We Can," the "we're too busy to think about people like you right now" is no less than salt in a festering wound. It might be an easier excuse to believe if I didn't keep seeing things like Obama taping a comedy bit for Stephen Colbert's show.
This snowball of ridiculousness keeps rolling down the hill, and the only person now who can put a stop to it is Obama himself, whether through a speech, an appearance or a specific and targeted action that would demostrably make a difference in moving toward equality for all GLBT Americans. If not, then at some point we're not going to have much choice other than to believe the worst, no matter how much we've been hoping for the best.
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