1115.org

2008 SF Pride Parade – © Matt Cohen

I go to the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade ever year. I used to go with some of my gay friends, and these days I get assigned to photograph it. I go because it’s important. I go to support my gay friends. I go because I lost one of the best people I’ll ever know to AIDS. The parade is usually a good indicator of the state of the gay rights battle. In the wake of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow gay marriages in 2004, the parade took on a giddy quality, as if the possibilities were endless. As I made my way through the pre-parade activities last year to pick up my media credentials, I saw this:

2008 SF Pride Parade – © Matt Cohen

As I wrote that day:

Here’s Barack Obama on gay marriage:

“I’m a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

When I pointed this out to a few people manning the Obama booth, no one had much of an answer. Surprise, surprise.

That turned out to be more of a problem than it seemed at the time. Proposition 8 was on the ballot and, if approved, would end what Newsom started four years earlier. The leadership of the No on 8 campaign was so bad that they didn’t even have an answer to Obama’s position, a fact capitalized on by the Yes on 8 campaign which used Obama’s own words in mailers, robocalls, and broadcast ads. His own words, and Obama never once tried to get them to stop. Prop 8 passed by the way, and by 4 points. Think there was nothing Obama could have done to change that?

In the interim, Obama has promised to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as telling the GLBT community that he would be a “fierce advocate” for their equality. But he made the “fierce advocate” statement in defense of choosing bigot Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration, and has slow-rolled repealing DADT to the point where I’m pretty sure it’s dead. And now, comes his full-throated, Bush-beating defense of DOMA. I wonder what the mood will be in a couple of weeks at this year’s parade…

A word about Barack Obama and the lawyers in our midst – AmericaBlog (6/13/09):

For some, the decision whether to defend or oppose DOMA is purely a legal exercise. For many of us, it’s our lives. I’m sure, along the way, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP were told to back off on their challenge to Topeka’s segregation law. After all, that law had been unsuccessfully challenged already, and there was that very clear Supreme Court precedent on “separate, but equal.” The law is the law. Who was this political activist Thurgood Marshall to suggest it should be overturned?

It’s shocking how many people viewed yesterday’s DOMA discussion through their own purely intellectual, legal lens. The condescending tone from some of the legal types, both straight and gay – all Democrat – was insulting, demeaning, and horribly out of touch with their own humanity. Gay Americans lost rights last November in California. We had fundamental rights taken away by an election. Think about that. When was the last time that happened in this country?

Yesterday, a Democratic President of the United States of America, in the year 2009, and an African-American child of inter-racial parents no less, gave his lawyers the go ahead to compare our marriages to incest on the same day that 42 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in his parents’ favor in Loving v. Virginia. And these people, along with our President, are suggesting that the appropriate response is to shrug our shoulders and go home, since, after all, the law is the law?

So, yes, I am advocating that we push the envelope and demand new and creative thinking on legal issues, on our civil and human rights. That’s how change happens (there’s that pesky word again). That’s what we expect from our President who promised change, who promised to be a “fierce advocate” for our rights. Yesterday’s homophobic brief would have met the expectations we had from George Bush or Jerry Falwell. From President Barack Obama, it was an appalling betrayal of our humanity, and his own.

I’m sick of being separate, but equal. And it’s now clear that many of you agree. We demand our rights, and we expect this President, who promised them in exchange for millions of our votes and millions of our donations, to deliver. And so help me God, we will continue to hold this President accountable for his broken promises and his betrayals, to hell with the lawyers.

Between Joe’s post and the accompanying comments, it’s clear that at least some people are waking up, and it’s about time. Obama didn’t have to do this. He certainly didn’t have to approve an argument that used incest and pederasty to justify continuing the ban on gay marriage. I’d really like to know how Obama justifies being to the right of Dick Cheney on gay marriage. I have a little test: anyone who finds themselves to the right of Cheney on anything either needs to make a lot of changes very quickly, or just give up. And by all means, you can’t be a “fierce advocate” for shit if Cheney has you all the way covered on the issue. So now we are coming to an answer for a question I have been asking literally since Obama gave his “can’t we all just get along” keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

I still haven’t been enlightened as to whether this is supposed to mean “micro-compromise” where we go issue-by-issue and mathematically average Republican and Democratic positions, or “macro-compromise” where Democrats surrender on abortion and gay rights and get their way on alternative energy and troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Given all of Obama’s actions – not words – since he’s been in office, I think it’s safe to answer the question now. Obama has long acted as if he just wants gays (and all the other traditionally Democratic interest groups) to go away so he can do the real work of being a politician/Senator/President. By betraying them so completely, Obama is making the political calculation that they’ll still support him in 2012, (because what choice will they have?) and he’ll earn some room to operate with the Republicans. But there are two major problems with this thinking:

1) There’s no cooperation on anything from Republicans, they are simply opposing everything because they see it as their job.

2) Obama isn’t acting in a progressive manner on anything. It doesn’t take a whole lot of political capital to give Republicans what they want on Iraq (pushing back timelines), Wall Street (no real regulation), health care (no real public option, certainly no single-payer), and on and on. If there are no real progressive policies in the offing, then what does betraying the gay community get Obama? Or, on the merits, does he just think they don’t deserve the same rights as the rest of us?

If you take a good hard look at the direction Obama has taken on gay rights, I’m not sure how you can come to any conclusion other than he thinks they aren’t equal. Maybe that’s OK with you, in which case, fuck you and fuck him. Or maybe you think because one time he claimed to be a “fierce advocate” that he’s deep into a three dimensional chess game that will end with the White House repainted in rainbow colors, in which case you’re no better than the 25%’ers who stuck by Bush to (and beyond) the bitter end.