Democrats and Political Homophobia

I have no problem with a democratic politician avoiding gay issues in order to get elected or to stay in office….then voting correctly (in favor of gay rights) when issues come up. If they are too vocal about their support, they will not get elected. President Obama is the most supportive president the LGBT community has ever had. Why berate him just because he is isn’t out there marching in gay parades?

It is better to have an enemy I know, than to have a ‘friend’ who might stab me in the back or run away or I have no idea if they are a friend or not…. I won’t Republican, but I won’t vote Democratic in an election where the person hasn’t fulfilled 2006 campaign promises. Look at how much action happened AFTER the Demos lost their ’60 vote filibuster-proof majority’ they had asked for but then wasted.

Is this a serious post?!? One of the major campaign themes was that Obama can do more than one thing at a time. It doesn’t take all that much effort, maybe a couple of hours on the phone with the UK, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, and Austrialia about how to implement the change they did. There are a bunch more, but the bigger ones we are already working with side by side would probably be the best source of info.

Me too and we will get them. It has been a YEAR!!!

Sorry but you are just plain and simple WRONG.

Patience dude. Obama will fulfill his promises to the LGTB community. Patience + support= positive results. It will happen. Have a little faith. These kind of harsh comment are not helpful either. We all need to stick together, focus and keep fighting. If he loses we are definitely doomed. The guys plate is stacked.

I support don’t ask don’t give for this very reason. There’s a leadership vacuum right now. Obama’s an empty suit, even with his reelection infrastructure in place in 2012 he’s still going to lose. You can’t shit on/ignore your base as much as you have and not expect us to say “fuck you” and stay at home. Of course when the bloodbath happens this fall and republicans barely miss retaking the house and senate Rahm will read this as a signal to move further to the right. They really are idiots/morons.

Sorry if it sounds harsh, but I didn’t donate/work phone banks for this. Not for this. With Rs I expected to be shit on/kicked with a D the betrayal just hurts even more.

Stop telling me that it can’t be done/that you don’t have the votes. It never stopped Bush. IT NEVER STOPPED BUSH.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid are consciously avoiding repeal of laws like DADT and DOMA because doing so prevents them from having to take any other pro-gay actions that could be used to brand them as “liberals”. They’re working very hard trying to cultivate a Centrist image. Obama in particular has been devoting a lot of outreach to religious groups that hold anti-gay views. With laws like DADT and DOMA on the books he can tell the gay community that his hands are legally tied and he can’t help them. He can then turn to right-leaning religious groups and argue that he hasn’t done anything particularly pro-gay (or as they like to call it: “anti-family”).

thanks for pointing this out to the vast majority of non-computer programmers here.

Tough, pioneer, resolute, inflexible.

Understand, I think my ANGER overwhelms my HORMONES. LOL!

Tim, I would be very interested in how you turn off that part of your brain. I even find some Repugs hot. How they look doesn’t influence my political outlook or my desire for my civil rights, but I’m breathing, and I have eyes and hormones.

I don’t see THAT happening. Dumping Rahm would be perceived as tantamount to admitting Obama had made a mistake by appointing him, and as this presidency grows to resemble Bush II more and more each day, I can’t imagine Obama doing anything which might expose his fallibility. There is surely no one left at this blog who still thinks we’ll get an apology for the DOMA brief, is there?

That’s only true if you don’t know a pimp from a whore and judge people by what they wear and not how they act.

“Unfortunately, many people believe they are the only ones that are deprived of certain rights and can’t be bothered to help anyone else.”

I think its more insidious than that. I think many people believe their minority group is the only who has a LEGITIMATE claim on equal civil rights. Not EVERYONE in minority groups are that way, but there are quite a few in some groups who absolutely do believe others should experience discrimination and don’t deserve rights.

Good god, it’s like watching someone blame the miniskirt-clad coed for getting date raped.

right. the problem is Obama.

Do you have any evidence to support that statement?

I find him incredibly hot, but I don’t think that exempts him from being involved in the problem.

Typo correction: …306 million… (not material)

.nail meet, hammer

.analysis brilliant

I knew Barrios in college. Not shocked that he wants to hang out with the A-list crowd, and principles be damned. The only thing worse than Fraudbama are his enablers in the Gay establishment.

Politicians would pay a lot more VALID attention to LGBTQ rights if other minority groups believed in them. There are a lot of vocal members of several minority groups that fight against gay rights, while fighting for their rights at the same time. Look at the black pastors and community leaders with the DC gay marriage recognition bill. 70% of blacks that voted on Prop 8 voted YES.

If other minority groups actually bothered to not be hypocrites and believe in ALL minorities’ rights being protected from the majority, then everyone would be a lot better off and we would have had gay rights a long time ago.

Unfortunately, many people believe they are the only ones that are deprived of certain rights and can’t be bothered to help anyone else.

You keep using the word “homophobia” when you should be using the work “hypocrisy”. The Obama administration obviously isn’t afraid of or repulsed by the LGBT community; its just treating you as cannon fodder: listen to our empty promises, go fight the fight, donate your money, work to get us elected, then STFU like the powerless entity you are, while we work on our real agenda.

Don’t worry — they’ll be back with their promises of change for a better tomorrow just as soon as they think they need you again.

As they say in the Mafia: nothing personal, just business.

There are a lot of people in the gay community that are apathetic, but I rather suspect that all groups that have fought for civil rights have the same problem. I sometimes think that it’s the younger guys who are the most apathetic. They don’t remember how things were. I don’t really remember Stonewall, but I do remember a lot of bad things that have happened since. If they could only have witnessed the Reagan Administration’s handling of the HIV crisis, they would be a lot less apathetic.

The problem is how to motivate those that are apathetic. We really can’t depend on repealing DOMA to motivate them. A lot of the younger guys are not ready to settle down, so they’re certainly not ready for marriage. Of course, there are a lot of older guys who have been burned and are also not interested in marriage. Of course, the DOJ’s brief on DOMA probably did get more people motivated. If anything will motivate the gay community, it will probably be DADT. Everybody can see the absurdity of DADT. There are also several charismatic victims of DADT who should appeal to a lot of people.

I have a lot of hope for the guys who were vicitims of DADT. One of them may become the leader that the LGBT community needs. Both the Black community and the Feminist community had leaders, the LGBT community only has a few pathetic leaders. They are our version of a “self satisfied, latte drinking, unaware generation”.

would you like to explain how Obama ISN’T shitting on us right now to help Obama? Or, at least in a way he THINKS will help him?

you have no idea who i associate with or what i confront on a daily basis. virtually everywhere i go, i’m inside a bubble that doesn’t support glbt issues in any way, shape form or fashion (but i do read and see that MY situation is becoming obsolete for more an more GLBT people every day) so let me clue you in:

i live OUTSIDE a town of less than 200 people in a county that votes 90%+ REPUKE.

if you look at the data, a MAJORITY now supports the repeal of DADT and about 58% support marriage equality.

even in my little narrow-minded community (where i have lived for more than 10 years), i am completely OUT and have had people i don’t even know come up to me in the general store to say, “i know who you are and even though i can’t condone your lifestyle, i respect you as a person”.

Will Obama look Ferhenbach in the eye on Monday and tell him he’s proud of his service, that he’s a hero?

My guess is he won’t even allow a brief chat, Obama’s not going to let anyone pin him down. What can he say given his current lack of moral courage other than “Sorry, bad timing?”

I said it yesterday, but: Guess what Obama and the Democrats in Congress gave us for Pride this year? TWO parties of NO.

I disagree with you nicho. If you count the states that weren’t allowed to cast their ballots…. Okay, but let’s agree to let the historian hash it out. And being a historian, I would love to be the first to publish a book about it. But I’m NOT willing to do anything that might mean that Clinton might not get a shot in 3 or 7 years down the road.

So, let’s concentrate on the agenda before you and feminists like me. And the sad truth is that Phyllis Schafley may be right. Feminism might be dead. The funny part is that in my opinion it died under the weight of the self-satisfied, latte drinking, unaware generation who grew up without remembering how women were treated by the Civil Rights Movement. I go and listen to young women complain about the glass ceiling and then when I point out that they can’t even bump their heads on the glass ceiling without doing it on the back of a whole host of women who clean their houses and watch their children, I get looks of utter blankness. Makes me want to cry.

Anyway, I wonder to a certain extent if the same thing isn’t happening in the gay movement? There is a part of your community that is so happy to no longer be pursued by cops and to have some protection against job loss, that they just seem willing to accept the present situation. How do you mobilize them?

The problem with Hillary is not your straw man, but the fact she ran a wretched primary campaign. She chose absolutely shitty advisers and stuck with them. She agreed to an outdated and incorrect strategy and, even when it didn’t work, she stuck with it. She and her advisers totally underestimated the threat from Obama and couldn’t react when they found themselves outmaneuvered.

In short, all the things you do not want in a president.

Add to that the fact that the Clintons’ primary loyalty is to the Clintons. They will shit on anyone who isn’t going to help the Clintons. Why else do you think so many supposed Clinton friends supported Obama? The Clintons had screwed them over in one way or another.

Excellent post, Joe

The only thing that I would add to is that poltical homophobia exists within some rank-and-file sectors of the Democratic coalition itself (i.e. racial and ethnic minorities, Reagan Democrats, union workers). Not only that, but the Democratic Party has simply swept the issue under the rug among those constituencies. As a result, you have a divide between the politicos who are very pro-gay rights (e.g. union leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus) and many of the voters of those constituencies who are either neutral on the issue or even anti-gay.

maybe it’s just me, but rahm sets off my gaydar. maybe he doth protest too much?

i pointed this out to my partner, who said, “no, it’s not just you…i think the same thing.”

It’s sad that you feel the need to pretend it’s just political. They do not like us. Where are Obama’s gay friends? Has he ever had any? Oh, maybe that fellow he admired because he didn’t “proselytize all the time.”

Obama never seemed comfortable with gays. Hillary did. Oh, but she’s a lying, racist bitc_, I forgot.

Absolutely. If there were more of us than there are people who dislike us, we’d be a powerful force. Instead, as George Bush showed in 2004, there’s profit in catering to (or at least not offending) the practitioners of homophobia.

This country finally got somewhere on civil rights for African Americans when the number of white people who favored equality exceeded the number of practitioners of racism. That made it safe for Lyndon Johnson to push civil rights legislation, and that made it safe for sufficient numbers of legislators to vote for rights.

The same thing will happen with equality for gay and lesbian Americans. When we have enough straight allies to convince legislators it’s safe to vote for us, legislators will vote for us. But, until then, only very brave politicians and those with very safe seats believe they can afford to be our allies.

Well- but these things have always existed, and not just with homophobia and heterosexism. When dealing with racial discrimination, one finds these same sorts of insideous more down-low forms of discrimination and mindsets that propectuates legal and de facto discrimination. The trick is to get people to realize that it is happening. That’s why I applaud this diary. When someone asked me whether I thought President Obama is a homophobe, my response was that it does not matter. It is the laws he promotes that are homophobic, and he allows them through his inaction to continue to impact our lives. Or, to put another way, it does not matter whether you cut my legs off because you really don’t like me or because you think others do not like me. It’s the same harm being done.

I just saw Jarrett Barrios from GLAAD interviewed on CNN. Absolutely pathetic. He’ll be at the White House shindig Monday. That’s one we now know for sure. If anyone hears of any other confirmed invitees, please post it here so we’re all aware.

This is a what comes first distinction though. The political homophobia exists because of homophobia-in-general borne of that adolescent male squeamishness many boys have about same-sex sexuality. Obama’s a rigid, cold, stand-offish guy who wants to be perceived as “all man.” When he gives his speeches, they’re not inspirational because they’re heartwarming or because they ask us to embrace our humanity or love one another. He’s cold, chilling; not warm. His speeches are forceful because he’s upstanding, rigorous, and commanding. His words and delivery don’t ask us to work together, like Bush, they say ‘just stay out of my way.’ It seems to be what America wanted to hear.

It’s been an assuring act so far, but it’s already come to the point where it rings not just dissonant, but hollow. These guys, this White House, like Bush, are terrified of dissent, or losing control lest they’re perceived as being weak. They’re immature, they lack vision, and every time when push comes to shove, they get beat down and lose the offensive.

It would take a president much more secure in himself to have the courage and grace necessary to use his power to put down hatred of homosexuality. Politics is the problem, surely, but lack of character is the root problem in all of Obamas failures as president so far.

Joe,

Your post has me wondering if Rahm Emmanuel is the root of the problem with the Obama administration– and not just on gay issues. There have been some outrageous moves made by our Justice Dep’t. on detainee issues which are at odds with everything that Obama claims to stand for. Maybe Rahm is the rot at the core….

I’m not sure you can classify it as homophobia. I think it’s worse. We’re not people — we’re merely numbers on a spreadsheet.

Politicians do two things well — count money and count votes. They whip out the calculators and spreadsheets and decide what they will do based on what will give them more money and/or more votes.

We can threaten to withhold our votes and we can withhold our money, but they’ve already done the math. Policy A will bring them more votes/cash overall than Policy B.

Yes, they will lose us, but they will gain more on the others side — so it’s a net benefit. If the spreadsheet showed the reverse, Obama and Rahm would be fawning over us.

But it’s not personal, as Don Corleone would say — it’s just business.

If you’re expecting anyone to act on principle, you’re in the wrong game.

you have hit the nail on the head, my friend.
maybe this will be the difference for us…precisely clarifying the specific issue/problem/reality and then forcing Obama to answer to it.

justice is on the side of equal gay rights.
we’ve just got to persuade the f-ing politicians.