Earlier today, a diary made the Rec List for a while touting a resolution put forth at the United Nations calling on the national of the worth to fight and end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is a great gesture by the United States in the world community and stands in stark contrast to the U.S. government's position on similar resolutions proposed by other nations during the George W. Bush administration.
Where I take issue with the diary is its employment of a list that has taken on the qualities of propaganda designed to make us all feel warm and fuzzy about President Obama on LGBT issues. The same list has been posted here irregularly in the past and despite the encouragement by other kossacks for the author to de-propagandize it and correct a mistake in it, it is still being posted. I've addressed the list in a diary not long ago and will do so again below with some additions and further explanation, but first I want to ask some people here, and you probably know who you are, what you expect to accomplish by continuing to push this meme and drive this wedge within the community? Seriously.
While I by no means speak for the LGBT community, there are a significant number of us (LGBT and even straight) who do not share this nothing but roses view of President Obama on LGBT issues. Trying to paint him in that light is disrespectful to the legitimate criticisms that can and have been made on his handling of a variety of issues important to the LGBT community. The fact is on many issues of great import, the President has not been helpful and indeed hurtful to the cause of LGBT equality and the people who see and are upset and angry with the President over these issues are not going to be brought into the fold of the "Obama can do no wrong" crowd by being invited to an Easter Egg roll or a cocktail party. Nor are they going to be convinced by continually touting a list of thin accomplishments, embellished to the point of absurdity. While Obama has improved in the last few months on LGBT issues, he has sown a great deal of mistrust and fostered a lot of acrimony over how he's handled things up to this point. To his supporters I say, is it really in your best interest re: his re-election campaign to discount the legitimate discontent of LGBT activists who are not fully with Obama at this point because of his handling of LGBT issues?
If you don't want to alienate "the Angry Gays" further, perhaps you ought to be a bit more honest about the list of accomplishments. Cut out the propaganda and correct the record on the mistake in the list.
For your benefit, here is a point by point discussion of the list starting with the DADT issue mentioned in the diary followed by the 12 points in the numbers list.
0. The Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
DADT has not been repealed nor is it required to ever be repealed under the law passed late last year. To clarify, the law passed is an authorization by Congress granting the President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense the power to certify that a repeal of the DADT policy (10 U.S.C. §654) will not negatively affect military readiness, the result of which being that 60 days after certification, 10 U.S.C. §654 will be repealed.
This is indeed an accomplishment, but one less impressive than it could have been. When the White House delivered its DADT "take it or leave it" compromise to SLDN and the LGBT community last May, the LGBT activists were a vote away from having enough votes on the Senate Arms Services Committee to attach a full repeal of DADT complete with a non-discrimination policy with the force of law. We didn't get to that point by not pushing as activists. We already had one incident of gay activists chaining themselves to the White House fence to raise the profile of the issue. If the activists had not raised the level of exposure of the issue, it simply would have been swept under the rug (or to use Robert Gates phraseology, "push[ed] down the road a bit"). At that point, you literally had White House legislative liaisons to Congress telling members of Congress to oppose attaching the DADT repeal to the Defense Authorization bill. The White House was working against the activists on getting DADT passed. Fast forward to the lame duck, after two more fence chaining incidents, several hecklings of the President and a lot more pressure from phone calls and letters, it became apparent to Obama and Democrats in Congress they couldn't jet let it slide, because that would have meant going into the 2012 elections with only the Hate Crimes Act to show for the largest Democratic majorities in Congress in over a generation. They knew that with the level of aggravation in the LGBT community, that they would be in trouble come 2012 worse then they were in 2010.
To support his claim, the diarist quoted Rachel Maddow making a mea culpa on her show.
It, in fact, was not possible for the President to do this through Executive action. This is something that had to happen legislatively if it was really going to happen in a definitive way.
The President did not waver. He DID work on the Senate to get this to happen. He insisted that this was possible against a lot of people, including me, saying it was not possible.
This is a difficult promise kept. It's not just a promise that was kept. It was one that was hard to keep, that cost a lot of political capital and a lot of work and this is the President's victory today and his base will reward him for it.
I must part ways with Ms. Maddow's characterization. While President Obama couldn't repeal DADT himself, he could have issued a stop loss order permitting openly LGB people to serve while the conditions that make the stop loss order possible still exist (still expected to be at least several more years from now). In the intervening time, LGB service members could have come out and be open about who they are. If even a small fraction did, by the time either a new Republican President came into office or the stop loss order conditions ended, the volume of such openly LGB servicemembers would make it a political impossibility to not repeal DADT. The political backlash of discharging perhaps thousands of openly LGB's would have forced a DADT repeal.
Instead we are now in a position where when the ban is finally lifted (no earlier than May 23, 2011 at this point), without a nondiscrimination clause in law, full authority over whether LGB's can serve is with the President. It is not difficult to imagine a Republican President in 2013 seizing upon one or two small LGB-related incidents in the military, perhaps even concocted, and magnifying them as a justification to either reinstitute DADT or start kicking LGB's out all together as the pre-1993 policy did. Huckabee has already said he'd reinstitute a policy against gays in the military and he could as President. Instead of having a little less than four years of experience with open LGB's serving, at most we will have 19 months and potentially much less the longer the "training" goes on.
It was the President’s choice to continue kicking LGB's out by the hundred's. He had the power to stop that. The use of that power would ultimately lead to the result he claimed to want. Instead he chose a route that necessitated highly visible and loud activism, acts of civil disobedience and even heckling to keep the issue alive. If it weren't for that activism, there would have been no compromise deal in the bill as the Republicans filibustered and thus no room for a subsequent standalone compromise bill with the defense bill as leverage.
Also chew on the fact that, unless someone can refute this definitively, since 2009 President Obama has fired more people on account of their sexual orientation than any executive in this country. To give him so much credit for repealing DADT when it isn't repealed and will still be a huge problem for LGBT's in the military after it is repealed is an oversell of the highest order.
1. Extension of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees
If we did a Politifact analysis and rating of this, it'd rate barely true. When you start talking about extending workplace benefits to spouses or partners of employees, almost everyone's mind immediately turns to things like health (e.g. medical, dental, vision) or pension benefits, but lo and behold neither of these were covered by this extension of benefits. The "benefits" in this extension are very mundane, like moving expenses if the federal employee moves, or the ability to join the long term care plan which is a non-subsidized insurance plan whose rates will not be notably reduced by being on the government's group plan over being in any other group plan. And these were done in the middle of the controversy over the administration using bans on incestuous and ephebophilic marriage as justification for defending DOMA against a challenge in federal court. Moreover, these benefits exist only by the goodwill of the President and can be taken away just as easily as they were given. This achievement can be described in a single word: perfunctory.
If you are going to say that President Obama extended benefits to the same sex partners of federal employees, at least have the decency to say "some minor benefits" rather than the generic and highly misleading term "benefits." doing otherwise makes it a propaganda statement and way overselling the extent of what Obama did.
2. Signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act
Signing the hate crime act would have been a very big deal...if it were still 1998. The process of getting it passed in the face of overwhelming public support (consistently 60 to 75% percent of Americans depending on the poll for several years). It was even part of the Defense bill headed for George Bush's desk in the 2007, but DEMOCRATS chose to remove it over the veto threat of a President with the worst approval ratings in the history of President approval polling. It would not have been a difficult get in 2007 if Democrats had had any semblance of a backbone. Even the vote to remove it showed their cowardice, doing it by a voice vote rather than a recorded one. In the run up to the 2009 bill, Obama mentioned the bill once before the House vote...the day before after the whip count already had support well past the threshold needed to pass. His only mention of it after that was before the HRC at their annual dinner and certainly wasn't a strong push to get the Senate to act on it. President Obama's "achievement" on hate crimes is further vitiated by the fact that in the 16 months the act has been law, there has not be a single federal prosecution of a hate crime committed on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Based on the 2009 FBI's Hate Crime statistics report, extrapolating the numbers for the 16 months since the hate crimes act was signed into law, there have been 1887 anti-LGB hate crimes (no anti-T numbers because the reports prior to the 2010 repot to be released in November don't include them, though some may be reported in the other anti-LGB categories) including 6 rapes, 299 aggravated assaults, 651 simple assaults and 429 acts of intimidation. You'd think they could find maybe one or more of them worthy of federal prosecution either by the state not doing enough or the case falling exclusively under federal jurisdiction.
3. Instructed HHS to require any hospital receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds (virtually all hospitals) to allow LGBT visitation rights
We can quibble about the timing, how it took 15 months into the term for them to issue the order to start the rule-making process to put this in place. On the whole, this was very welcome, even if limited. Relatively few LGBT's by absolute numbers experience this discrimination, but it among the most painful forms of discrimination a LGBT person can experience and does go a long way towards alleviating the mental stress that a lack of production inflicts. That said, this is C.F.R., not U.S. Code and can therefore be removed by a subsequent Republican President through the same rule making process.
4. Banned job discrimination based on gender identity throughout the Federal government (the nation's largest employer)
As with #1 and #3, this in practice affects very, very few people (fewer than #1 and #3 I would suppose given the size of the transgendered community) and while it is to be applauded, it also suffers from a lack of permanence. Like #3, it falls more into the category of alleviating mental stress than actually having a lasting affect on the broader community.
5. Signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act
As FogCityJohn has pointed out several times here, it would be gasp worthy if he didn't sign it. It’s like signing an extension of a No Puppy Execution by Blender Act. No sane President wouldn't sign it. If it has been done by every President since it first came up, its not a notable achievement, unless we want to start counting the President wiping his butt as a public health accomplishment even though I'm sure pretty much every President has done the same. In other words, this is fluff...filler...not a true notable accomplishment and its inclusion in the list of accomplishments is propaganda and way overselling.
6. Extended the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover Gay employees taking unpaid leave to care for their children of same-sex partners
At first glance this looks big, until you start reading the fine print. First, it doesn't cover partners and spouses. It only applies to same sex couples that have children and only adds coverage for leave by the non-biological parent for care of the child(ren)...and even then only within companies meeting the minimum thresholds for applicability of the Act. Work for a company with fewer than 50 employees? Not covered. Worked part-time with the company less than 1250 hours in the previous year? Not covered. Work for a local government or education institution? Not covered. Moreover, many of the large companies already have such domestic partner provisions in place. This most definitely strengthens them, but for some, this was not new coverage or protection and for many more they still don't have this coverage because they work for a small business. This is no where near as big as it is being made out to be.
7. Lifted the HIV Entry Ban
This has been corrected here on DailyKos a number of times. Authorization to end the ban was signed into law by George W. Bush in July 2008, more than 6 months before Obama entered office. Bush repealed the ban, not Obama. It didn't go into effect because several administrative regulations had to be modified. Obama didn't issue the new regulations order lifting the ban for a year. This should not have taken 18 months or even 12 months.
8. Implemented HUD Policies that Would Ban Discrimination Based On Gender Identity
This is very welcome, but like #3 suffers from limited scope (i.e. those getting HUD help for their housing via mortgage or government housing) and the ability to be rescinded through subsequent rulemaking.
9. & 10. Appointed the first ever transgender DNC member & Named open transgender appointees (the first President ever to do so)
Yes he's appointed more LGBT people than any other President, but that's hardly much of an accomplishment given the only real competition was Bill Clinton who left office 8 years prior when transphobia was much more pervasive. However, he's not appointed many LGBTs to high-level positions or policy positions. The highest two appointees are the head of the OPM, who has found himself the subject of lawsuits denying recognition to married LGBT couples and has been defending DOMA in court, and the Ambassador to New Zealand, a nation with which we doesn't require a complex level of diplomacy. He didn't name a single LGB or T cabinet officer. He's appointed two gays to the Federal bench, but as of yet neither has been confirmed. He even showed weakness in one of the appointments naming one of the appointees to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, an appellate court that does not have general jurisdiction (i.e. he won't ever be ruling on a "gay" case). If both are confirmed, there will be 3 openly gay judges out of around 866 Article III federal judges. That's 0.35% of the judiciary. Given that conservative estimates put LGBT's at no less than 1% of the population, he's got a long way to go to get the numbers up to the level of being statistically significant.
For a while even, the Obama administration was putting out a list of openly LGBT people they had appointed. My reaction to this list is similar to the reaction Al Sharpton and Bill Maher had to a teabagger on the Bill Maher show when she started listing off blacks in the tea party movement: "See, you can name them all!" and "When you can list them by name, its not really that [many]".
11. Eliminated the discriminatory Census Bureau policy that kept LGBT relationships from being counted
Prior to the recent 180 on DOMA, this was probably the most important policy directive he made, reversing the Bush era interpretation of counting those couples where both persons indicate they are of the same sex, whether married in fact or not. And it was done early and quickly, certainly showing it was possible for them to move faster on LGBT issues.
12. Extended domestic violence protections to LGBT victims
See #3 and #8. And another policy change that was a simple matter of statutory interpretation but took 18 months to do.
This is not a list of bold accomplishments. This is a list of things he was willing to do that wouldn't make waves too big or to frequently that Republicans might notice, oblivious to the fact they will notice them all and will seek to undo them zealously when they get back into power. This is certainly not a list to bank support on in the face of the "miscues" with McClurkin and its subsequent "happy gays" press statement, Rick Warren, the Smelt DOMA brief, the pushback against DADT action in 2010 and the persistent defense of DOMA just to name a few.
Like many "Angry Gays" here, I've acknowledged Obama has improved so far this year, but it still has not been enough for many of us. As I said previously, the reversal of position on DOMA is easily the biggest and boldest move President Obama has made on an LGBT issue and has the potentiality of being the most important advance in the history of LGBT rights in this country's history, but it still hard to get passed all the negative things he's done dating back to the campaign for President.
You are not going to win the "Angry Gays" by telling us we are wrong when the facts bear out we've been right far too many times on Obama. Its a bad strategy that is offensive. Rather than trying to cheerlead us into believe propaganda hype, why not engage not just us, but Obama himself. Why not, as I suggested in the earlier diary, ask the Angry Gays "How can we help get Obama to the place you need for him to be?"
If we don't push, we don't get heard and we continue to be ignored. Obama used FDR's old line of "Make me do it." This is what Obama wants us to do, to make him address the issues. Its not what he promised during the campaign when he said he'd go to the bully pulpit himself, so he and his fervent supporters should not be so dismissive and upset that gay activists are force to attack Obama to the point that he responds. Part of the problem with "make me do it" is that you no longer get to direct the movement applying the pressure.