The One Minute Man

President Unicorn found it in his heart and schedule to allow Judy Shepard 60 seconds of his time.

From The Advocate:

Shepard told The Advocate that she received the Obamas’ invitation on Monday, the same day White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Advocate Washington correspondent Kerry Eleveld during a press briefing that he “didn’t have the answer” to her question about repealing the antigay Defense of Marriage Act.

Upon arriving at the White House on Wednesday, Shepard first met with the president in the Oval Office. The meeting was short -- “It was supposed to be 10 minutes, but his meeting beforehand ran long and I only had a minute or so with him,” Shepard said. But it was long enough for Obama to assure Shepard that he was still a supporter of the hate-crimes bill named in honor of her son, a gay man who was murdered in Laramie, Wyo., in 1998 at age 21.

She was then ushered to a luncheon hosted by Michelle Obama. “It was me and about 80 other people,” she said, adding that she wasn't able to speak one-on-one with the first lady.

Although she understands that many activists, like Mixner, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the White House, Shepard encourages people to be patient when it comes to LGBT legislation.

“We are victims of our own hope,” she says. “These bills are going to get passed, it’s just going to take time and work.”

Here Is Your President Obama, Ctd.

Picking up from our previous post.

Here's a piece from Sully:

I lived through eight years of the Clintons and then eight years of Bush. Through it all, gay people were treated at the federal level like embarrassments or impediments. With Clinton, we were the means to raise money. With Bush, we were the means to leverage votes by exploiting bigotry. Obama seemed in the campaign to promise something else. I listened to him in the early days and found him sincere about ending discrimination by the government; and I came to respect, while vehemently disagreeing with, his position on federal civil unions. He seemed genuinely distressed that gay servicemembers should be treated with contempt and persecution by their commander-in-chief, that gay couples should have to fight for basic human treatment - like entry to hospital rooms, or being able to stay in the same apartment as their late spouse, or forced into cruel separation by immigration laws that treat gay couples as threats, rather than assets, or if you had the temerity to survive HIV, being treated at the US border the way Jesse Helms always wanted people with HIV to be treated - like perverts and pariahs and threats.

...it's tedious to whine and jump up and down and complain when a wand isn't waved and everything is made right by the first candidate who really seemed to get it, who was even able to address black church congregations about homophobia. And obviously patience is necessary; and legislative work takes time; and there are real challenges on so many fronts, especially the economy and the legacy of war crimes and the permanently restive Iraqi and Afghan regions we are constantly in the process of liberating from themselves. No one expects a president to be grappling with all this early on, or, God help us, actually leading on civil rights. That's our job, not his.

But I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on these issues. They want them to go away. They want us to go away.


Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all).

And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada. We're firing Arab linguists? So sorry. We won't recognize in any way a tiny minority of legally married couples in several states because they're, ugh, gay? We had no idea. There's a ban on HIV-positive tourists and immigrants? Really? Thanks for letting us know. Would you like to join Joe Solmonese and John Berry for cocktails? The inside of the White House is fabulous these days.


Then Dan Savage replies:

Fact is, Obama has "acknowledge [the] breakthroughs in civil rights" that we've seen in Iowa and other states. And here it is:



See? Obama has acknowledged the breakthroughs in civil rights for gay Americans! He told a joke about it at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. (You were there, Andrew, didn't you catch it?) Barack Obama condescended to use marriage equality as a punch line; he made, essentially, a Chuck & Larry joke about two straight dudes—Obama and Axelrod—running off to Iowa to "make it official" with the queers and their "partners." And that's hilarious, you see, because Obama and Axelrod aren't actually homos! So they don't need to go to Iowa to make it official! They can get married—to women—in all fifty states! HA!

The more I think about the joke Obama told at the WHCD the more ticked off I get. We're witnessing rapid and historic progress in the fight for gay equality and Barack Obama, who campaigned on our issues and described himself as a "fierce advocate" of gay and lesbian equality, hasn't acknowledged the breakthroughs in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in a setting or a with comments that are in any way equal to the significance of this historic moment. The best he can do—all he's willing to do—is toss off an Adam-Sandler-level joke.

So here's what I would've said if I'd been prepared for the question: Our lives, our families, and our rights are not a joke, Mr. President. The discrimination faced by gay people—whether coupled and single—is distressingly real and persists even for same-sex couples in Iowa and other states where gay marriage is legal. Stop fucking around and start delivering on your campaign promises to us, to our families, and to our children.

RedState Pretends To Know Gay People

This is just too rich:

President Obama is reportedly set to nominate California Representative Ellen Tauscher for the post of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

If you consult Ms. Tauscher’s biography, her work on arms control and non-proliferation makes its first appearance in the 12th paragraph (in a bio with 14 paragraphs overall). Her work in this area is apparently not as important as her work on Wall Street, her leadership on the Transportation Committee (including getting funding for a tunnel in her district), or her work on public school funding - all of which get prominent mention before non-proliferation issues.

...There’s another interesting thing about Ms. Tauscher: she is the sponsor of legislation to undo the military’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy. She reintroduced the legislation on March 3 — about two weeks before her nomination was announced. It has 134 cosponsors as of today - nearly one-third of the House, just a few weeks after introduction. When she introduced the bill, she planned to hold hearings to educate the public, and suggested that Secretary Powell could lead the effort to sell repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It seems as if Ms. Tauscher had done a good job of laying the groundwork for an effort to repeal the measure in the House.

So why did Barack Obama choose to elevate a leader for repealing the ban on gays in the military, to a position where she would lose all influence over the matter?

...If I had supported Barack Obama because he promised to allow gays to serve openly in the military, I sure would be disappointed today. It’s a shame they couldn’t pick someone other than Ms. Tauscher for such an important post.


Thanks for caring.

Gays In The Military: 1971

Over at The Daily Dish, Chris Boddener posted his father's account of serving with the gays in Vietnam:

When brought to the battalion's recon platoon, I made only one request of the battation's commander. I asked to bring my rifle platoon's "point man" (the scout, the first-to-the-front when traveling in file). He had very keen senses, was an excellent shot, and was strong as an ox and walked like a cat. His reputation among soldiers was that of a "John Wayne." I believe he had probably saved my life more than once.

However, the very intense members of the recon platoon were convinced that they already had the best point man in the battalion. To my surprise, the point man of this predominately-Southern, white group of men was a 20-year-old black Cajun soldier with a very slight build, noticeably effeminate speech, and who even wore a gold ring in his left ear. "Cajun" was quite a contrast to the other men, to say the least, particularly compared to my new platoon sergeant -- a self-described "redneck" from Georgia who had already served 6 tours in Vietnam and was so conservative that he voted for the segregationist George Wallace in '68.

Over the course of my time as recon leader, "John Wayne" and "Cajun" served superbly as dual point men, most notably the time we had to secure the perimeter around the second-worst air disaster in Vietnam history (when a Chinook helicopter carrying 30 men lost its rear transmission and rotor upon take-off and crashed, killing everyone aboard).

What I eventually came to realize before we redeployed to the U.S. was that BOTH of my point men were gay. The main point of anything that can be or has been said of these fine soldiers is ... so what?! To some degree, probably every one of the 700 men in the battalion owed their welfare to these two men. Their personal habits and their being "non-heterosexual" didn't concern anyone in the small group of very focused and highly intense young men who lived and slept very near both of them. It didn't bother me in 1971 and it certainly doesn't concern me one damn bit in 2008. A fine soldier is a fine soldier, period.