Pres. Obama has Not Betrayed LGBT, But Congress Has

This is another take on the story from a gay attorney on the issue of Pres. Obama and how he has "sold out" the LGBT on the issues. I have maintained and posted and argued that just isn't true. But, here is someone with maybe a little more authority than me.

Obama hasn't left us

Then, this past Friday, I awoke to word at AmericaBlog, the Web site of gay activist blogger John Aravosis, that "Obama defends DOMA in federal court" and "invokes incest and marrying children." I was appalled. Aravosis also wrote in another post that the DOJ was "lying" when it said that Justice "generally ... defend[s] the law on the books in court." Then I looked at the brief. I agreed with Aravosis that the brief went too far in some of the language it used in its defense of the statute. But, looking at the law and past cases, I disagreed that the Obama administration had a real choice about whether it would defend DOMA in court and that DOJ's brief "compared us" to incest and pedophilia. And, because some in the community have kept pushing those stories -- despite contrary opinions from Laurence Tribe, Nan Hunter, Robert Raben and others -- I've spent the past week attempting to dispute those claims..

It is clear that the brief defending DOMA, despite whatever legal and political realities might underlie its filing, struck a nerve with the LGBT community. It was an old nerve -- Clinton's DOMA signing -- scraped raw once again. People have felt genuinely, personally injured by the very fact that the brief was filed, and their defenses have led them to fight. But the brief is not reason enough for a rupture between President Obama and the gay community. For those who believe in full equality for LGBT people in our country, it's time to move the discussion beyond the fight over that DOMA brief.

Wednesday night, President Obama -- sitting in the Oval Office with Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solomonese and out gay Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank, among others, behind him -- took the first step toward moving the discussion forward. He signed a memorandum ordering agency and department heads to, among other steps, "extend the benefits they have respectively identified to qualified same-sex domestic partners of Federal employees" where possible under current law. Even Michelangelo Signorile, the longtime LGBT activist who once outed then-closeted Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams to point out the first Bush administration's hypocrisy, agreed that these actions have shown that "we have made our point."

I think we have made our point. Fair, consistent, vocal criticism leveled against those who do not help advance LGBT equality works. Whether spread on the Internet or across statehouses or at a march, we have shown -- and they have shown -- that our voices send a strong message to this White House. Rep. John McHugh, the Army secretary nominee, himself has issued a statement affirming his desire to change the law that doesn't allow gay people to serve openly in the military.

Wednesday's events made it clear once again that the Obama administration has heard us. The administration has taken a step forward, and so should we. Demonizing Obama or openly gay leaders like Frank, Baldwin or Solomonese (which is not the same as fairly criticizing them when we disagree with their actions) is not the way to move the ball forward.

Despite criticisms of Obama's memorandum issued Wednesday, it was a solid, if small, step forward in which he shared with the nation his desire to see DOMA repealed and, before that even, the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act passed in Congress. As Rep. Baldwin explained Wednesday evening on "The Rachel Maddow Show," Obama's voiced support for the bill sends a strong signal to Congress -- one that she believes will help propel the bill forward.

I am not saying we don't have to hold his feet to the fire, but as I have pointed out before, Pres. Obama is just ONE part of this chain. He can't do this alone. It is very easy for people to say, "oh, he can just sign an executive order and fix it", well, no he can't. DADT and DOMA are LAWS, and they have to be overturned by LAWS, and that takes action by Congress, so as I have pointed out before, call your congress person.

We have 2 openly gay people in Congress, Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank, and yet neither of them are pushing any kind of legislation through for either of these laws to get them overturned.

If you are gay, and you feel betrayed, why don't you contact them? They are betraying you much more than Pres. Obama is. How long are you going to wait for them to act in your behalf? Pres. Obama, once again, stated he would sign the legislation when it got to him, that's what he is supposed to do. Now, the ball is back in Congresses lap. Get him a bill.

Barney Frank at Crooks & Liars.. Taking questions Giving answers

Rep. Barney Frank did a live chat with everyone at Crooks & Liars this afternoon and answered questions from everyone.

No, he didn't get all the questions answered because they came at him pretty fast.. but he did manage to answer most of them. Here is one of the answers I thought was pretty noteworthy to a question about the Republicans and how to make them realize they lost:

They lost in part because George Bush went too far
Wed, 04/08/2009 - 13:05 — BarneyFrank
I am a strong supporter of the rights of Unions, so I am a little hesitant about answering this because it means I would be working out of classification – this is more about therapy than about politics. But there is one political response: the dominant faction in the Congress today among Republicans, especially in the House, incredibly believes that they lost in part because George Bush went too far to the left. The one thing that will give the reasonable forces within the Republican Party the leverage they need to change things is a Republican defeat in the 2010 Congressional elections. That is, only when they are confronted with the need to survive is reality likely to win out

Yeah, that's right.. they think they lost because Bush when too far left.. that's why they are pulling so far to the right now. They have no clue what we rejected from them. That's why they are going further with the tax cuts and more of Bush's failed policies.

Another one, answering to the right wing nuts of Bachmann and McHenry craziness.

Responding to Attacks
Wed, 04/08/2009 - 12:47 — BarneyFrank
First, let’s not make a bad situation worse than it is – Patrick McHenry and Michele Bachman do sit on the Financial Services Committee, but Virginia Foxx is not one of those guarding this particular chicken coop. As to the very conservative Members who do serve on the Committee, excessive partisanship is part of the motivation, but even more prominent is their passionate commitment to a very extreme form of conservatism. This hard lined ideological rigidity according to which the market is never in need of intervention and regulation is in all cases to be opposed is what keeps them from participating in a constructive way in our work. When you hear Members of the Committee condemn the socialist tendencies of the President and the failure of the President and his appointees to show any understanding of the capitalist system, and you realize that they are talking about George Bush, you get sense of how removed they are from reality.

It is very interesting and he has some great things to say. Barney Frank is very intelligent and knows of what he speaks when it comes to banking. He is very supportive of the President and of his policies and he doesn't do it blindly. Well worth a few minutes to read the questions and the responses.

My Visit to the Dark Side...UPDATED

UPDATED

"Rick the owner of the dark side blog I visited called me a coward in the comment section here. So I went to his blog to see what he had said that he thought I was so afraid of. Here is his answer to me in his comments:

Rick said...
Annette, yest I will gladly publish your comment so other readers can see how uninformed you are.
To begin with, the official Democratic party has dropped the lie that Bush stole the election. Two news consortiums and independent organizations have concluded bush won according to law. Gore tried to steal the election and failed to do so.
You also need to review who was the governor and mayor of New Orleans and how they dropped the ball and failed to correct problems that were presented to them.
You also need to know that the Two Democrats in charge of oversight of the financial affairs, Democrats Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, when told to investigate Freddy and Fanny, refused to do so and said they were in good shape. That is where the financial meltdown began.
Here are the Democrats in charge of all Senate and House Finances for the past two years:
1.The United States Senate Banking Committee : Committee Chairman,
Christopher Dodd, (D), Subcommittees of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Subcommittee Chair;
2.Securities, Insurance, and Investment - Jack Reed (D-RI);
3.Financial Institutions - Tim Johnson (D-SD);
4.Housing, Transportation, and Community Development - Chuck Schumer (D-NY);
5.Economic Policy - Tom Carper (D-DE);
6.Security and International Trade and Finance - Evan Bayh (D-IN)
7.The House Financial Services Committee: Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA);
8.The United States House Committee on Financial Services (or House Banking Committee) oversees the entire financial services industry, including the
securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. The Committee also oversees the work of the Federal Reserve, the United States Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and other financial services regulators. Subcommittees and Subcommittee Chair: Capital Markets, Insurance - Paul Kanjorski (D-PA).
You need to get your head out of the sand and quit reading the "Hate Bush Derangement Syndrome" sources and tyical Democrat lies.
And I hope you have a nice evening.

My answer to him is in the comment section here... so far as of 6:53 CST 2/3/2009 he hasn't answered me. But there is still time....lol


I was just out looking at the competition.. yeah...I know.. No I wasn't cheating on anyone so don't think I was.. Just looking around. Sometimes you just have to see what's out there and make sure what you are up against.

Anyway, it was an anti-choice blog. VERY. From Kansas...now that won't mean a lot to many people, but to me it said a lot because it was talking about Phil Kline. He WAS a District Attorney who got himself into some hot water for taking on Planned Parenthood and for trying to get into the private files of doctors and patients. Kinda sleazy I think.

Needless to say he lost his bid for re-election, thank goodness. Resoundingly I might add.

Anyway, this blog had a short video up about How Liberty Dies.


After watching this, I couldn't help but make a comment on his blog. Now he has his comments moderated, so I really figure it will never show up...but he might fool me. The name of the blog is Rick's Pro-Life & Constitutional Issues Blog Here is the comment I made:

Yep, we have an idiot who steals an election, gets into the White House, ignores intelligence briefings, lets the worst terrorist attack ever happen on his watch. Then after going after the guys who attack us cuts taxes on the richest people, which is unheard of in a time of war, then lies his way into another war, and cuts taxes on the richest people again. Then watches while a city drowns and celebrates a birthday with a man he slandered to get to the White House 5 years before. Then after all that, losing most of the wealth of the nation as the economy tanks and Wall Street suffers it's greatest losses in years and employment suffers the greatest losses in 26 years and the country goes into the largest and longest recession it has seen in 60 years... that's how liberty dies... and I am sure I have missed some things.

I think that was a pretty good summation of the last 8 years...lol Then of course we have Blue Gal, who noticed the same thing I did this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.. He wanted to SHHHHHHH Barney Frank when he brought up the spending that has gone on the last 8 years.

Crooks & Liars has the transcript but and I will put it here too.

FRANK: Well, let me tell you what I think is the largest...

DEMINT: ... you wanted to do anyway.

FRANK: The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq. And one of the things, if we're going to talk about spending, I don't -- I have a problem when we leave out that extraordinarily expensive, damaging war in Iraq, which has caused much more harm than good, in my judgment.
And I don't understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that's -- that's wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we're through -- yes, I wish we hadn't have done that. We'd have been in a lot better shape fiscally.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is a whole another show, so I'm going to...
(CROSSTALK)
FRANK: That's the problem. The problem is that we look at spending and say, "Oh, don't spend on highways. Don't spend on health care. But let's build Cold War weapons to defeat the Soviet Union when we don't need them. Let's have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars going to the military without a check." Unless everything's on the table, then you're going to have a disproportionate hit in some places.

Barney Frank is right, the media never wants to talk about this. They always cut off the conversation and tend to forget about the fact that one of the reasons we are in this mess is due to the fact the spending has been out of control the last 8 years. We have been in a needless war, that Bush lied us into and that caused our spending to be out of control.

We are in a hole, yes, some of the spending can be blamed on the Dems just as much as the Repubs, but for the first 6 years it was the Repubs who dug the deepest, and dug the most. The Dems just carried the water for them to drink when they got thirsty.

Well, now it is time it was reversed. The Dems are trying to fill that hole back in and they need the Repubs to carry that water... but the Repubs don't want to do it. Instead they are trying to break the handles on the shovels. Well it won't work that way. You have to have shovels to dig, and you have to have shovels to fill the holes once they are dug. Someone has to carry the water..no matter who is doing the digging. I think it is the Repubs turn to carry.