obama and the gay medical rights mandate

Naturally, my immediate reaction to the news was positive. And then I was annoyed that the coverage was skewed, because it was already discussing the political implications, when this is really just about basic human decency. But now that I'm reading the articles in full, like this one at NYT and this one at WaPo, I have another set of thoughts.

We know that President Obama says he does not support same-sex marriage. I believe this is his sincere sentiment. A lot of Democrats in prominent positions have claimed to be against gay marriage, but you can still hold out reasonable hope they are just politicking - real progressives all support it, right? But something about Obama suggests to me that he does believe what he says about gay marriage, and that's not such a great thing.

I'm wondering if there's a (sort of nefarious?) strategy here. Will those 1100+ benefits of marriage just be granted, piecemeal, to same-sex partners, through a series of federal mandates and executive orders? That will give us many of the rights we deserve, but also possibly undercut the marriage movement, since the concrete aspects to the movement's raison d'etre -- the legal inequalities -- will have been removed. You can see here Obama's true position, I think: he believes strongly that discrimination against LGBT people is wrong, because he broadly applies liberal, civil rights principles to us. But he does not understand what makes our struggle exceptional, and so his politics do not reflect that.

LGBT people are exceptional. We aren't just a group of people who have been arbitrarily discriminated against and undermined. We are a group of people whose very ability to live our lives like full human beings is actively challenged. We are a group of people whose right to visibility in society is cheered against. For these reasons, we are exceptional, and for us it is not and cannot just be about a list of federal benefits or medical rights or powers of attorney, or employment protections. It is about full equality under the law and maximum possible equality in the eyes of our fellow man, and our access to civil marriage represents that like nothing else we could possibly be fighting for.


UPDATE:
Andrew Sullivan says it much shorter and sweeter than I do.

gatesgate

Racial profiling is such a given that I don't see why or how the Gates debacle solidifies what everyone already knows is true.  Being black and male makes you more likely to take shit from police, no question.  But the part of this story that is not getting nearly enough attention is abuse of police power.   The fact that Gates was actually arrested is infuriating, and not [just] because of his race.   The clearest conclusion I make from this?  A cop who feels disrespected is a dangerous person.  If you don't kiss his ass, you can end up arrested on your own front porch.

Jacob Sullum has a great post about this.  Bottom line:

Instead of showing what happens to "a black man in America," the case illustrates what can happen to anyone who makes the mistake of annoying a cop.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is illuminating as well:

When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it.

a new generation of fierce advocates

Maybe there's a reason to be happy about the Obama Administration's disgusting betrayal of the LGBT community in this week's despicable DOMA brief.

(Info, analysis and reactions here, here, here, here and here.)

This is another wake up call, even bigger than November's.  When Prop 8 passed, gays, lesbians and allies took to the streets in peaceful protest - but the enemy was ignorance, the power and money of right wing and religious organizations, and our own failure to make our case to the California electorate.  It energized us, and in the months since, we have seen tremendous legislative and legal victories, and now six states guarantee our marriage rights.  

Let this be a lesson.  Obama will NOT protect us; he will not deliver on his promises to treat us with respect, and he and his administration have sent out a clear signal that they do not value our dignity as human beings and as American citizens.  

If it's fierce advocacy that we seek, we must turn to ourselves.  We must do the work.  It will never again be enough to cast a vote, to buy a button, or to write a campaign check.  We are the ones we've been waiting for.

fresh feminism

Thank you, Michelle Obama, for so clearly and powerfully articulating what feminism really means.  Too often no one takes the steps to explain why and how feminism is central to propelling a liberal democratic society forward. Here she is in London speaking at an all girls' school:

(From BBC Channel 4)

Money quote: 

"...because communities and countries, and ultimately the world, are only as strong as the health of the women. Part of that health includes an outstanding education. The difference between a struggling family and a healthy one is often the presence of an empowered woman, or women, at the center of that family...The difference between a languishing nation and one that will flourish is the recognition that we need equal access to education for both boys and girls."

everybody calm down

Time to chill out -- no serious lawmakers are pursuing a Fairness Doctrine of any kind. It's not going to happen.

Rush Limbaugh's op-ed letter to President Obama in today's Wall Street Journal is a fantasy.

The hysteria over the specter of the Fairness Doctrine can only be coming from two possible places:

1) Confusion and learned behavior: The Far Right is doubling down in anticipation of being completely ostracized and shut out of the public discourse. This is not an unreasonable assumption, considering they were successful in treating left-wing media voices this way when their party was in power, especially from late 2001 through 2003. They have been so conditioned by the political culture they have helped distort and destroy for the last decade that they can't even fathom that Obama is not Bush: Left Wing Edition.

2) Strategy and arm-flailing: As they are plunged more deeply into irrelevance, and as their populist messaging runs up against the hard realities of a severe economic downturn, right-wing demagoguery simply requires new sensational topics to keep the hordes frothing. One can only fill so much airtime professing hope that Obama fails and warning that ARRA makes us a socialist state. The rest of the 24 hours news cycle must be filled with something -- so whatever gaps are left after a few hours of gay-bashing can be filled with dire warnings about liberal conspiracies to muzzle conservative media.


As usual, reality is probably some combination of the two.

who killed that wal-mart employee?

Yesterday (Black Friday), the New York Daily News reported the tragic death of a Wal-mart employee who was trampled to death by a pre-dawn crowd of "bargain hunters" at a Valley Stream, NY store.  Today, the Gray Lady weighs in.  Some snippets:

American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.

...immense strains on the economy, which [have] made bargains more crucial than ever...

For decades, Americans have been effectively programmed to shop...Financial institutions have scattered credit card offers as if they were takeout menus and turned our houses into A.T.M.’s. 

Hollywood and Madison Avenue have excelled at persuading us that the holiday season is a time to spend lavishly or risk being found insufficiently appreciative of our loved ones.

These are excerpts, and perhaps the full article is more nuanced than these make it appear (though I don't find it so).  But is it really proper to lay the blame for that man's death at the feet of "American business," "strains on the economy," "financial institutions," or "Hollywood and Madison Avenue"?

The article draws parallels to the breadlines of the 1930s and the gas lines of the 1970s.  Are these really analogues?  At one point, reporter Peter Goodman does make a cursory reference to the fact that the bargains sought at that Long Island Wal-mart weren't exactly for essentials, but he does so by declaring that Chinese-made flat screen TVs have become our 21st century "comfort food."  

This is deeply misguided.  If Americans (uh, American consumers) are so enthralled by Madison Avenue's campaign of false scarcity, if they believe financial institutions have forced them into borrowing against their homes and catapulting their personal debt to 120% of their income, and if they best way they can think to address their economic anxiety is to buy a flat screen television at a discount then this "adjustment" is going to be far more painful than many economists imagine.

adorable!

This woman winked at us tonight. Cutesy!

Ladies, take two steps back.