Obama announces intent to disobey law governing State Dept meetings, while enforcing anti-gay laws


I think our community deserves an answer to a very important question.













Why is the Obama administration repeatedly refusing to obey laws on a variety of matters, but when it comes to anti-gay laws such as DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell, or the HIV travel ban, not only does the Obama administration refuse to disobey them, they actively defend DOMA and DADT in court. What's worse, the administration, with the help of Barney Frank, has argued that if they didn't defend DOMA in court, if they didn't keep kicking two US soldiers a day out of the military, then they'd be somehow undercutting the law just like the Bush administration did, and that would be wrong.



But that's exactly what the Obama administration is doing in countless non-gay cases that we've document over the past several months.



This is why Joe and I have been so critical of the administration lately. Something is going on. They're backing off of their promises to our community, and giving these phony excuses for why they're doing it, and then Barney Frank jumps in and defends them, using the same phony excuse. Then we catch them in the lie.



Perhaps it's time that our lead groups, beyond just SLDN, started holding the administration's feet to the fire on their promises to our community (I know, they would risk those White House cocktail invites). And perhaps it's time that Tammy Baldwin grew a pair, and that Barney Frank got over this post-gay phase he seems to be going through.

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On Loyalty Oaths or Ebony and Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony

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The following has been clipped from The Bilerico Project Report dated 14 September 2009.

_________________

I'm sure you've all heard by now that Rep. Jerry Nadler plans on introducing a bill to repeal DOMA in the House, and that Barney Frank isn't co-sponsoring because he's worried that the "certainty principle" will be a poison pill that will kill the bill and that it will be a distraction from other legislation like ENDA.

Personally, it seems like a rather academic debate right now considering that the bill won't be voted on until at least after the 2010 midterms and that it won't pass the Senate in Obama's first term, if it does pass within the next decade. Sorry, I just don't feel the optimism here.

But there are also plenty of reasons to think that Frank either should or should not cosponsor the bill. There is a strategic debate there, and we're having it because the person at the center of that strategic debate is Barney Frank, one of the gay movement's smartest, most powerful, and staunchest actors. If it were anyone else, he'd probably be shouted down as an "uncle Tom" or a "traitor." If anyone would have paid attention in the first place.

More extreme (in rhetoric and emotion, not politics) members of the LGBT population have already gotten fed up with Frank. Aravosis is now referring to the Congressman as "formerly gay," because apparently having a different opinion on a strategic discussion means that you're no longer allowed to suck dick. Joe Sudby, who generally shows more restraint, said:

But, sometimes, we really need our allies to be our allies, not just the smartest people around.

His comment is fairly representative of what a lot of people are actually saying when they call someone an "uncle Tom" for not agreeing with them that marriage is the most important issue ever, for example. They don't want people to think on their own or help out as they can - they want loyalty.

But loyalty isn't defined as loyalty to the community or loyalty to a certain goal. It's defined as "You're a good, loyal, real gay person if you agree with me." For some reason, it's not a definition people on the left use, but the center-left/big-city liberal section of the community that's always just assumed it had the God-given right to define the strategies, goals, and composition of the LGBT movement.

Continue reading "On loyalty oaths"...

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