HRC Belatedly Blasts Obama

In my view too many of the major LGBT Rights organizations approach making demands of our elected politicians like frightened children who fear reprimand and as a result beg for crumbs rather than upset those that WE helped elect. The sad reality is that if LGBT Americans patiently wait for elected officials to dole out equality, we will never secure full equality under the civil laws. And why should politicians do anything for us if we continue to give our money and talents to them even as they more or less thumb their noses at us? Maybe, just maybe, the Obama DOJ brief supporting DOMA has finally been enough of a slap in the face to wake our supposed leaders up to the fact that playing nice often gets one nothing in politics. I am happy that HRC is finally stirring, but we will have to wait and see if it continues. Here are highlights from HRC's letter to Obama, the full text of which can be found here:

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Dear Mr. President: . . . Last week, when your administration filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,”[1] I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you.

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Reading the brief, one is told again and again that same-sex couples are so unlike different-sex couples that unequal treatment makes sense. But the government doesn’t say what makes us different, or unequal, only that our marriages are “new.” The fact that same-sex couples were denied equal rights until recently does not justify denying them now.

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The government does not state why denying us basic protections promotes anyone else’s marriage, nor why, while our heterosexual neighbors’ marriages should be promoted, our own must be discouraged. In other words, the brief does not even attempt to explain how DOMA is related to any interest, but rather accepts that it is constitutional to attempt to legislate our families out of existence.

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DOMA is not “neutral” . . . It is not a “neutral” policy toward the minor child of a same-sex couple, who is denied thousands of dollars of surviving mother’s or father’s benefits because his parents are not “spouses” under Social Security law. Exclusion is not neutrality.

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I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings and as families when we read an argument, presented in federal court, implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones. . . . If we are your equals, if you recognize that our families live the same, love the same, and contribute as much as yours, then the answer must be no. We call on you to put your principles into action and send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress.

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The time for playing nice is long past. We need to make it very clear to Obama and Congressional Democrats that we will no longer quietly remain second class citizens in our own country as a result of what is in reality religious based discrimination which is after all illegal under the U.S. Constitution.