In this must-read, Andrew Sullivan speaks for pretty much every gay person I've spoken with, excluding those in the administration. I'm going to attempt to excerpt. You really need to read the entire thing.
I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on these issues. They want them to go away. They want us to go away.So much to respond to. But I'll start with that last line. I disagree with Andrew about the value of the Hate Crimes amendment. Having said that, he's right about one thing. It's the least important of our civil rights priorities at the moment, and I fear it may be the only thing we get in the next 4, or 8, years. And rest assured, it will be lauded over our heads to show us "how much" has been done for us, when in fact, it isn't that much compared to DOMA, DADT, ENDA and marriage - all of which, I fear, will be abandoned.
Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all).
And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada. We're firing Arab linguists? So sorry. We won't recognize in any way a tiny minority of legally married couples in several states because they're, ugh, gay? We had no idea. There's a ban on HIV-positive tourists and immigrants? Really? Thanks for letting us know. Would you like to join Joe Solmonese and John Berry for cocktails? The inside of the White House is fabulous these days.
Yesterday, Robert Gibbs gave non-answer after non-answer on civil unions and Obama's clear campaign pledge to grant equal federal rights for gay couples; non-answer after non-answer on the military's remaining ban on honest servicemembers. What was once a categorical pledge is now - well let's call it the toilet paper that it is. I spent yesterday trying to get a better idea of what's intended on all fronts, and the overwhelming sense - apart from a terror of saying anything about gay people on the record - is that we are in the same spot as in every Democratic administration: the well-paid leaders of the established groups get jobs and invites, and that's about it. Worse: we will get a purely symbolic, practically useless hate crimes bill that they will then wave in our faces to prove they need do nothing more.
The bottom line: People are pissed. Increasingly so. And if the gay community has proven one thing, it's our ability to dominate a news cycle. The irony is that by abandoning their gay civil rights commitments, if in fact that's what's happening, the Obama administration may be creating the very public gay PR fiasco, a la Clinton's first term, that they're trying to avoid.
