Too Many Democrats Still See Gays as Less Than Fully Human

The betrayal of bi-national sames sex couples by Democrats in the U. S. Senate ought to have sent a strong and troubling message to LGBT voters:  Democrats like our money and our votes, but when push comes to shove, we are viewed as different and deserving of being thrown under the bus.  I for one am tired of it and have been unsubscribing to many Congressional Democrat e-mail lists and when they call asking for money, they are getting a piece of my mind - and not a red cent.  I'm sick of fair weather friend Democrats who speak out of both sides of their mouths on LGBT issues.  While they may despise us less than those in the GOP, it is best to remember that our friends in the Democrat side of the aisle are most members of "the party of what's in it for me" when it comes to LGBT issues.  A column in The Advocate looks at the problem and its underlying root cause.  Here are excerpts:

In an unusually reflective moment a couple weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters  that his niece is a lesbian and that he is considering bringing the Employment Non-discrimination Act to a vote this year.

Then, noting that ENDA might not have enough support to pass, he mused: “It’s hard to comprehend that we haven’t done a better job.” Agreed. The idea of providing basic workplace protections to gay employees was first introduced in Congress in 1974 and today 90% of Americans believe those protections already exist.

But just one week later, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s deliberations over immigration reform, Reid’s colleagues – led by Sens. Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein — demonstrated why the Senate hasn’t done a better job. All three implored the committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, not to offer a provision that would have helped equalize immigration law for LGBT Americans by allowing them to sponsor their partner for residency. It would doom the bill, they said, too many people were against it.

Here’s the subtext of what they were saying: Not only do these senators seem to believe gay Americans are a separate class of citizens, they believe gays are a separate class of humans. We may be immigrants, but our gayness is entirely incidental to that identity. We may love, but that love isn’t worthy of recognition. Indeed, LGBT families – which include children, by the way – are not families at all. They are some aberration in the eyes of these senators. If that were not true, they would have insisted that immigration reform address these binational families – because being separated from the one you love based on the fact that they are a foreign national is an immigration issue, not a gay issue.

Republicans said they would abandon the bill because Democrats never challenged them not to say it. It’s that simple. And the more Republicans said it and the more strident they got, the more true it became. Why would including families kill the bill? Because they said it would — i.e. self-fulfilling. 

If Democratic senators had stood up for families at the very beginning of the negotiations – if they had said to Sen. Lindsey Graham, “Don’t make an issue of it because this bill must address all families or we can stop talking right now” ­– Graham might have chosen not to draw that line in the sand.

Democrats bargained away our humanity at the outset. They capitulated on including families in their immigration principles; then they capitulated on including families in the base bill; then they capitulated on taking a committee vote. Every step of the way, they emboldened Graham .  .  .  .

Sens. Schumer, Durbin and Menendez – the Democrats who crafted the bill with Republicans – helped create the self-fulfilling prophecy. They chose to negotiate with Graham, they chose to signal weakness on this issue, they chose to let Graham grandstand on it – first in their private talks and then in public.

So just as quickly as the Dems had stampeded toward equality while the issue was in the courts, they ditched it when it came time to legislate.

I'm not saying to sit out elections or never support Democrats.  But I am saying to let these folks know that their every move is being watched and that they are fools if they think they can take our money and votes for granted.   They are for the most part shameless opportunists.  They are not our friends.