Is Don'T Ask, Don't Give Working?

An opinion piece by a gay conservative on AOLNews suggests that those in the LGBT blogosphere and the "don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign endorsed by an number of big time blogs - as well as this blog - may well be doing more to get things moving on LGBT issues than all of the "make-nice: efforts of our self-anointed leaders at HRC. The sad reality is that most politicians will not do something merely because it is the right thing to do. Instead they act either to secure continued support/votes or to stop efforts that will be potentially harmful to their political careers. And since money is the mother's milk of politics, threats to stop the flow of money is often taken far more seriously than HRC statements condemning various policies. Here are some column highlights:
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While President Barack Obama's decision to move forward with the elimination of the military's much hated "don't ask, Don't tell" policy has attracted widespread coverage, the reason behind the sudden push hasn't. So, what exactly got the White House wheels in motion on DADT?
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It certainly wasn't the Human Rights Campaign, which has been playing a game of make-nice with Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration. Its leader, Joe Solmonese, ever quick to criticize Republicans when they fall short on gay issues, has been tepid in his criticism of the president when Obama failed to keep campaign promises to the gay community.
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It may instead have been an effort by a coterie of liberal bloggers and activists calling "for a temporary moratorium on DNC donations" who made the administration realize there was a price for its inaction.
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The fledgling movement, which adopted the motto "Don't Ask, Don't Give" and has attracted the likes of legendary gay rights activist David Mixner, aimed at discouraging donations to the party until the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the repeal of both "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Mostly left-of-center bloggers at such sites as Pam's House Blend, Queerty and AmericaBlogGay pressed their readers to boycott the Democratic Party.
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Their actions generated a lot of heat in the community, culminating in a cover story in the Advocate, a monthly gay newsmagazine. And threatened with this loss of revenue from some of their most reliable (and affluent) supporters, the Obama administration surely realized it needed to act quickly on one of those issues, lest it lose a significant chunk of its financial support and alienate some of the party's most enthusiastic backers.
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So, this gay conservative blogger's hat is off to his fellows on the other side of the political aisle. Unlike the heads of the establishment gay organizations, they didn't kowtow to the leaders of the political party they prefer and refused to accept their promises of action on some undefined date in the future. They told the administration there would be consequences for its failure to act. And it acted.