Monday, June 15, 2009

An organized response to Obama's failure on GLBT rights

An organized response to Obama's failure on GLBT rights

by: Smartypants

Mon Jun 15, 2009 at 18:24:17 PM EDT

Pam's post on HRC's letter to President Obama asks a critical question: "What happens next if the President thumbs his nose at this letter?"

The question really got me thinking. What options are left to us when our purported friends and allies ignore an appeal to common decency?

Because it's pretty obvious our elected 'friends' are screwing us. Again.

And why not? They've gotten away with it before and never paid a price. Too many of these so-called friends and allies in elected office know that if they show up at a pride rally and occasionally vote for some mildly progressive measure on our behalf, as grateful GLBT constituents we will continue to be a reliable source of money and volunteers. And we won't make a fuss because we're afraid our very real enemies will take advantage of any division.

Read the full article at PHB.

Free Hugs Campaign

Free Hugs Campaign - Official Page (music by Sick Puppies.net )


youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

Top Obama Gay John Berry: It's Going To Be A Long Time On LGBT Rights

Courtesy of JMG:

John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management and the president's highest ranking openly gay appointee spoke to the Advocate's Kerry Eleveld after his speech at DC Pride yesterday (which I heard). Berry, who said he was speaking with the authorization of the White House, outlined a four-point list of LGBT rights that the Obama administration hopes to achieve, but stressed that the general timetable for these goals is "under the administration's watch", meaning including a potential second Obama term.

We have four broad legislative goals that we want to accomplish and legislation is one of these things where you’ve got to move when the opportunity strikes, so I’m going to list them in an order but it’s not necessarily going to go one, two, three, four. Obviously, I think the first opportunity is hate crimes and we’re hopeful that we can get that passed this week. We’re going to try, but if not, we’re going to keep at it until we get it passed. The second one ENDA, we want to secure that passage of ENDA, and third is we want to repeal legislatively “don’t ask don’t tell,” and fourth, we want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Now, I’m not going to pledge -- and nor is the president -- that this is going to be done by some certain date. The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration – our goal is to have this entire agenda accomplished and enacted into law so that it is secure.

The Advocate: Does that include a second term? A lot of people have talked about DOMA being pushed back until a second term.

Berry: I say this in a broad sense -- our goal is to get this done on this administration’s watch.

Berry went on to say that the gay community should not "waste energy and angst" attacking the president over last week's DOJ-DOMA flap, and instead should be working on getting the necessary votes to overturn DOMA in the House and Senate.

Solmonese Writes To Obama

Human Rights Campaign head Joe Solmonese has written a lengthy letter to the president decrying last week's DOJ brief opposing the repeal of DOMA.



see: JMG post