LGBT Activists Criticize Obama's Speech for What Wasn't There, But Miss a Very Big Thing That Was

If you needed evidence that the community of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is not monolithic in its politics, reaction to President Obama's speech to the annual Human Rights Campaign dinner offered plenty.

Expectations were high.  When word came that the president would address the dinner, many assumed that the was coming to make news: to announce a new move that would advance the cause of equality -- maybe even use his executive powers to suspend Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the law that prevents LGBT people from serving openly in the military.

In his speech, the president mentioned all of the major legislative issues that motivate LGBT activists: He said that he had called upon Congress "to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act," which forbids the allocation of federal marriage benefits (like collecting a spouse's Social Security) to LGBT folks legally married in a state, and protects any state from having to recognize LGBT marriages performed by another. Obama rattled off other LGBT priorities, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for which he said his administration is "pushing hard," and a domestic partnership bill.  And he promised to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

But he offered no timetable, no specifics. He failed to mention the anti-same-sex marriage  ballot measures percolating in several states, most notably, Maine, where the religious right is organized to overturn marriage equality in that state.

A foreshadowing of the president's addressed was offered in an e-mail blast from Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, in which he urged readers not to judge the president too hastily, and seemed to suggest that the time to judge the president's record on LGBT rights would come at the conclusion of his second term.

But what has he [Obama] done?

I've written that we have actually covered a good deal of ground so far. But I'm not going to trot out those advances right now because I have something more relevant to say: It's not January 19, 2017.

That matters for two reasons: first, the accomplishments that we've seen thus far are not the Obama Administration's record. They are the Administration's record so far....

An avalanche of criticism ensued in the gay blogosphere and other opinion fora. Solmonese felt compelled to clarify his statement. After Obama spoke, activists focused on what they did not hear. It sounded old to them. To me, it sounded remarkably new.

It was new for a sitting president to address a major gay-rights gathering. I felt my eyes well up when he mentioned the words "bisexual" and "transgender"; I don't know that I've ever before heard those words spring from the mouth of POTUS.

But even more importantly, completely overlooked by activists as they battle for marriage rights was a critical turning point: In anticipation of the criticism he clearly expected to receive, Obama compared the movement for LGBT rights to the civil rights movement of the 1960s:

Now, I've said this before, I'll repeat it again -- it's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans petitioning for equal rights half a century ago. (Applause.) But I will say this: We have made progress and we will make more.

This is not a statement without some risk for Obama. It's a comparison often met with resentment in the African-American community -- a comparison few have the moral authority to make. The nation's first African-American president is one of them.

Right now a battle over marriage equality rages in Washington, D.C., where the city council has introduced a marriage equality measure. The right wing has come to town to introduce an anti-marriage equality ballot measure, and they've done so by having Rev. Harry Jackson, an African-American pastor who works with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, move to the District of Columbia.  Jackson's mission? To organize African-American pastors against same-sex marriage.

Last November, California voters approved Proposition 8, a ballot measure that overturned the legalization of same-sex marriage by that state's Supreme Court. The measure passed with the support of a majority of African-American voters -- most of whom, in the same voting booth, pulled the lever for Barack Obama.

In a speech meant to a nearly all-white conference of religious-right activists, Jackson, as AlterNet reported, called on the faithful to tone down their criticism of Obama, the better to rally black pastors in D.C.

Jackson went on to tell how, in a meeting with the "spiritual fathers" of the city, he stood accused of trying to discredit the president. Imitating the voice of an old Southern black man, he told of how one pastor said, " 'Ah know what he agonna try to do -- the right-wingers gonna get up in here and because we make a stand before marriage, they're gonna use it against Mr. Obama.'

"You know, I almost got my black card revoked."

"We're going to have to decide that we're going to have stay with issues," he continued, "and we're going to have to not attack Mr. Obama … now, hear me out, that may rub you the wrong way, but God bless you, I'm used to a little hostility. … We cannot afford to be undisciplined and to engage in a way that will cause people to think that we're something that we're not."

In his speech to HRC, Obama gave activists a potent quote with which to neutralize those who are uncomfortable with same-sex marriage but rightfully skeptical of right-wing agitators like Jackson. Obama's remarks should also prove helpful in California, where LGBT-rights activists are now hard at work putting together a ballot measure to overturn Proposition 8.

Echoing the president's right-wing opponents, who often say that hope is not a strategy, Dan Choi, who was dismissed from the National Guard under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, addressed the the tens of thousands who marched on Washington yesterday in the National March for Equality. "Patience is not a strategy, " he said.

Perhaps not. But in the march to freedom, it is often necessary -- as is keeping the heat turned up. But when a U.S. president -- one faced with the unimaginable burden of trying to keep the country from falling into a very serious depression -- offers the movement the kind of rhetorical support that could take it to a tipping point, well, that should not be ignored.

<i>AN INTERVIEW WITH LT. DAN CHOI BY BIL BROWING OF BILERICO PROJECT</i>

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