Obama’s White House and Gay Rights

Barack Obama has been far from perfect on gay rights thus far.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell remains the law of the land, as does the Defense of Marriage Act.  Both laws codify overt discrimination against a discrete group of people.  That’s wrong, any way you slice it.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed now, without any further delay.  The military brass is out of step with the rest of the country.  They need to get out of the 1950s.  They need to stop discharging service members that we really need, people like Lt. Dan Choi, an Arabic linguist whose trial is today.  People like Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, who is a decorated fighter pilot.  People like Lt. Sandy Tsao.  DADT is asking them to live a lie.  We need these people.  Obama could stop their discharges by signing an executive order.  But he has not.  And we’re bleeding good service members that we urgently need. 

The Obama administration’s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act was especially offensive.  The brief went much further than it needed to.  In fact, it could have been written by someone like James Dobson.  DOMA needs to be repealed now, too.

So President Obama’s record on gay rights has been, shall we say, less than stellar.  Our first African American president has been absent on the biggest civil rights cause of our generation.  He has been talking a good game, as he did yesterday at a reception for gay leaders marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, when he said (full remarks here), “We’ve been in office six months now.  I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”

That remains to be seen.  Obama also promised to get the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill passed.  He reiterated that he had called on Congress to repeal DOMA and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act.  He said that DADT “doesn’t contribute to our national security” but didn’t call for its repeal.

Gays have made a lot of progress with this president.  Obama is the first president who has actually uttered the acronym LGBT in an official setting.  But gay people have been waiting a long time for full, equal rights under the law.    It’s been forty years since Stonewall and still gay rights lag those of other groups.  I appreciate Obama’s words.  But it’s time to follow them up with action. 

It’s time to get gay rights passed in this country.  It’s time to repeal DOMA and DADT (and to stop discharges in the meantime), get ENDA passed, and get the hate crimes bill passed.  Anything less would be a failure for Obama and would be a failure for the country.  A nation that discriminates against a particular group — whether it’s Jews or gays or on some other racial basis — can’t survive in the long term.  Passing full equal rights is the right thing to do.