Part 1| Gay Activists Heated Debate about Obama’s Gay Rights Speech (video: News1News at YouTube)
CNN anchor Don Lemon hosted an après-speech debate with guests Dan Choi, Hillary Rosen, Mike Signorile and Dan Savage that at times got a little testy. In case you missed the speech, which was broadcast live on C-SPAN and CNN yesterday, Steve Clemons has the full text.
For whatever it’s worth, I was unimpressed by President Obama’s speech at the HRC banquet. Despite those fine and too familiar words, when the feel-good fades, lesbian couples will still be denied hospital visitation rights when their partners are sick or dying, and gay soldiers will still be denied the honor of proudly and openly serving their country, and we’ll still be talking about the possibility of some day coming up with a national AIDS strategy. I’m 58 years old. I’ve been marching for peace, GLBT rights and progressive causes since I was 17. I’ve lived with AIDS for 23 years now. Hearing another chorus of A Change is Gonna Come just doesn’t cut it anymore.
“The time for talking is over. This President promised to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), he promised to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, he promised to pass the pro-LGBT Employment
Non-Discrimination Act and a whole host of other things. Instead, he’s delivered on nothing while embracing anti-gay bigots Rick Warren and Donnie McClurkin. The last thing we need is more flowery rhetoric in front of rich, self-effacing gays and lesbians dressed up like penguins.”
— Andy Thayer, veteran activist with the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network, from a press release announcing plans to move a demonstration from the White House to the Human Rights Campaign’s banquet where the President will be speaking the weekend of the National Equality March in Washington DC
It appears President Obama has decided to forego a weekend of golf in San Francisco and hang out in DC over the weekend of the grassroots-netroots-spawned National Equality March. Instead, he’ll clink cubes with the A-gays at a Human Rights Campaign banquet scheduled to take place during the Equality to End AIDS Rally and Vigil, which will be happening smack dab in front of the White House.
One assumes our fierce advocate for gay and lesbian rights and our, likewise, fierce advocates for the A-gays will raise a glass and toast all that’s been accomplished since the last time these same fierce ones got together chez Obama and clinked cubes for Gay Pride back in June.
That should take no time at all.
Writes Jeremy W Peters, at The New York Times blog The Caucus:
Mr. Obama’s appearance on Saturday at the annual dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights advocacy group, represents a significant show of support for gay rights at a time when many prominent gay and lesbian activists have been questioning the president’s commitment to their issues.
Many gay rights activists have become increasingly vocal about their frustration over what they see as tepid support from Mr. Obama. While the president has professed support for overturning the ban on gays in the military and called the law that precludes federal recognition of same-sex marriages discriminatory, he has not engaged on gay rights issues as actively as some had hoped.
The way some of us see it, Mr Obama has not, in fact, engaged on gay and lesbian issues … period. More than a few of us are hoping that the HRC banquet is salted with dozens of unapologetic Lane Hudsons bellowing at the top of their progressive lungs: What about AIDS, Mr President? … What about Lt. Dan Choi’s discharge, Mr President? … Do you intend to deliver, at any time before – shall we say – 2016, on the campaign promises you made to gay and lesbian Americans in 2007, Mr President?
Andrew Sullivan, I think, said it best: “So spare us the schmoozing and the sweet-talking and do it. Until then, Mr president, why don’t you have a nice steaming cup of shut-the-fuck-up?”
Hear, hear. And a round for the A-gays, s’il vous plait. I’m buying.
Bill Clinton Explains Why He Now Supports Same-Sex Marriage (video: CNN/Anderson Cooper 360, via News1News at YouTube)
Former US President Bill Clinton recently indicated, albeit tepidly, that he supports marriage equality. Michael Tracy, writing at The Nation, revealed:
Former President Bill Clinton has come out in support of same-sex marriage.
After speaking at the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, DC, on July 8, the former president was asked if he supported same-sex marriage. Clinton, in a departure from past statements, replied in the affirmative.
Clinton opposed same-sex marriage during his presidency, and in 1996, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which limited federal recognition of marriage to one man and one woman. In May of this year, Clinton told a crowd at Toronto’s Convention Centre that his position on same-sex marriage was “evolving.”
Apparently, Clinton’s thinking has now further evolved. Asked if he would commit his support for same-sex marriage, Clinton responded, “I’m basically in support.”
[ ... ]
Clinton’s reversal is the highest-profile one to date. It may also have political implications for the future of the Defense of Marriage Act. President Obama has pledged to repeal the law, but in June, the Justice Department filed a brief in federal court defending the law’s constitutionality.
Now, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the former POTUS has indicated that, while he believes it should be left up to the states, he has reversed his position on same-sex marriage. Anderson Cooper asked: “You said you recently changed your mind on same-sex marriage. I’m wondering what you mean by that. Do you now believe that gay people should have full rights to civil marriage nationwide?”
Here’s a section of the transcript that’s up at Towleroad:
Bill Clinton: But me, Bill Clinton personally, I changed my position. I am no longer opposed to that. I think if people want to make commitments that last a lifetime, they ought to be able to do it. I have long favored the right of gay couples to adopt children.
[ ... ]
That our society has an interest in coherence and strength and commitment and mutually reinforcing loyalties, then if gay couples want to call their union marriage and a state agrees, and several have now, or a religious body will sanction it, and I don’t think a state should be able to stop a religious body from saying it, I don’t think the rest of us should get in the way of it.
[ ... ]
I think it’s a good thing not a bad thing. And I just realized that, I was, probably for, maybe just because of my age and the way I’ve grown up, I was wrong about that. I just had too many gay friends. I saw their relationships. I just decided I couldn’t, I had an untenable position.
“Basically in support” to “I’ve changed my position” is a positive step, and one the current President of the United States and self-described “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian rights” — who previously indicated, according to the New York Times last October, that “he is “open to the possibility” that his views may be “misguided” — should take. At the very least, President Obama should make it categorically clear that he does not share the same bigoted and incontrovertible position as, say, former-beauty-queen-turned-radical-religious-right-spokesmodel Carrie Prejean or the National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher.
The Divine Ms M debunks the incessantly-repeated and entirely baseless argument made by right wingers and homophobes that marriage equality will bring about the destruction of marriage. Nope. Didn’t happen. Not in Massachusetts anyway.
Finally, five years ago, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. And despite all the dire warnings, the sky did not fall down on the day a man was allowed to marry a man and woman was allowed to marry a woman in the Bay State.
In fact, the institution of marriage is alive and well and thriving in Massachusetts. New provisional government statistics show that in 2008, Massachusetts had the lowest divorce rate in the country. Tada! The rate of divorces in Massachusetts was 2.2 per 1,000 when gay people started getting married in Massachusetts.
The rate of divorces per thousand is now down furtherer to 2.0 per thousand. That‘s the lowest divorce rate in the country. In fact, Massachusetts divorce rates are now down to pre-World War II levels – 1940. So awkwardly, it turns out gay marriage is a defense of marriage act.
Let’s hope the voters in Maine, Iowa and Washington are paying close attention. NOM, suck it up.
