Obama Is Missing in Action on Gay Rights

The other day David Mixner slammed President Obama for "not getting it" when it comes to gay rights - a view that I agree with 100%. Now in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Richard Socarides - a former Clinton administration member - piles on and further lambastes Obama for his failure to address the big issues in the gay rights struggle - i.e., the things he promised to address during his campaign. Indeed, Obama has made the term "fierce advocate" into nothing more than an insulting joke when it comes to full civil equality for LGBT Americans who in the majority of the states in the nation are second and third class citizens and open targets for religious based discrimination and mistreatment. I may be harsher than some critics, but I have come to view Obama as little more than a cynical liar when it comes to LGBT issues. Oh yes, he is willing to scatter a few crumbs here and there in order to keep "Gay,Inc." functioning as the equivalent of paid apologists, but the rest of us are left twisting on a rope. Here are a few column highlights:
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President Obama celebrated Gay Pride Month earlier this week by telling guests at a White House reception that he still favors full equality for gays and lesbians. But despite a steady trickle of small steps Mr. Obama has taken to promote gay rights, on the big issues he is a disappointment.
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First and most obviously, Mr. Obama has not made good on his campaign promise to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, allowing the military to continue stalling. Despite his earlier assertion that leadership was the only thing required to abolish this long-discredited policy, the administration's efforts have been lackluster.
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Earlier this year, the president's staff indicated privately that they would prefer to wait until after the midterm elections to move forward. Only after it became clear that Congress was going to act without him-and after he was heckled twice at fund raisers by the activist group GetEQUAL-did Mr. Obama step in, and then with a Pentagon-inspired "compromise."
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Another of Mr. Obama's core campaign promises was that he would put an end to workplace discrimination, a key issue for gay Americans. To date, White House efforts to pass federal employment nondiscrimination legislation (known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) have been virtually nonexistent. The administration sent the acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to testify in support of the bill at a House hearing and called it a major accomplishment.
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In a telling development, the most significant and aggressive legal effort to promote gay equality today is being led by a conservative, former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson. In federal court in San Francisco, together with co-counsel David Boies, he is prosecuting the most comprehensive and sophisticated legal attack on antigay marriage laws in history.
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When conservatives like Ted Olson are way out in front of the LGBT communities alleged "fierce advocate" it is painfully clear how f*cked up the scenario has become. Personally, nothing that Obama has done to date has helped me or LGBT Virginians who continue to find ourselves subject to firing at will and facing discrimination under available health insurance options. And folks wonder why some of us threaten to sit out the mid-term elections? Perhaps we are simply tired of being played for suckers.