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I am not exactly sure what America’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community expected to get out of this past year.
But whatever it was, they didn’t get it.
I know this because a great number of my peers in this community are being terrifically loud about how upset, disrespected and betrayed they feel by the man who actively courted us from the beginning of his campaign nearly three years ago, President Barack Obama.
It’s important to note Obama didn’t conduct an especially effective courtship for most of that time.
To the extent that anyone can infer from evidence that is mostly anecdotal, the LGBT community supported his rival would-be nominee, Hillary Clinton, in numbers that were probably overwhelming, right up until the moment Clinton conceded at the Denver convention.
Once the nomination was official, though, our demographic dutifully moved its support, more or less monolithically, behind the man who promised to end "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," but held on to public opposition to gay marriage (and, for what little it is worth now, Clinton maintained the same position).
There were good signs early on. Obama spoke to us; he acknowledged us; he recognized our existence and our general right to exist.
(Of course, he also recognized our increasing skill for organization and growing economic power. He would have been foolish not to.)
He did better than threaten to merely "tolerate" us, as Sarah Palin did in her debate with Joe Biden; he promised that our fight would be his fight.
We believed him. We had to – what alternative did the opposition represent?
So we were as elated as anyone on Inauguration Day last year. I traveled to Washington, D.C. for the event and wrote about it in this space.
But I am a lifelong student of politics, and thus I am a realist, and I am skilled at the tempering of expectations.
I said the following, not in reference to prospects for LGBT citizens under Obama, but merely in reference to his coming presidency in general:
"Everyone accepts that over the course of the new administration, no one is going to get precisely his or her way. The nature of all things in government is compromise.
I am fine with that ... I just want competence. Though we may each find ourselves disappointed in the direction of this policy or that, I believe we will at least find competence rather than indolence."
That’s not asking much.
But the expectations of my LGBT peers were apparently much more demanding.
A year later, they haven’t gotten precisely their way, and many of them are furious.
To this, I have two responses.
First, consider the alternative (I suppose I’ve already said there wasn’t one, but let’s have a thought experiment anyway).
We had a binary choice, and this may not be ideal, but it’s the system that we’ve long since bought and paid for and so we must participate accordingly.
In this case, we could have chosen Obama, who at the very least spoke to us and made us a part of his platform, and who had the support of (and a quiet, though not especially well-kept secret, cabinet post offer for) our original favorite candidate, Clinton.
Or we could have chosen John McCain, who kept a 20,000-league distance from our community at all times during the campaign, and who selected Palin – openly hostile to any manner of civil rights action for us – as his running mate.
You’re disappointed with where we are now? Where on Earth do you think we would be if we’d made the other choice?
Second, let’s consider what has actually been done.
Obama started with appointing the openly gay John Berry as director of the Office of Personnel Management.
It sounds like a small victory, but OPM is a massive enterprise.
Berry is responsible for almost as many government employees as the Secretary of Defense (and in the coming years this role will only expand).
Speaking of the Secretary of Defense, "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" remains on the books, but the Pentagon under Obama has quietly and gradually sought new ways to circumvent its legally required enforcement.
Most importantly, however, the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act added sexual orientation to the list of classes federally protected against hate crimes.
It is the first time in history we have been acknowledged in federal legislation that wasn’t denying us marriage.
There’s one more thing, and it’s probably the most important.
As LGBT Americans, I fear we too often allow the wrong identity to take precedent.
We have a duty to remember that we too are Americans.
We had to make the choice that was right not only for ourselves but for our country.
The incoming president had to take on a mess that defies any analogy I’ve been able to come up with.
Don’t dare tell me you think, between the choices that we had, that we made the wrong one in that respect.
22 comments
Anyone who dates a woman while still married, and then divorces her to marry the woman he dated while cheating on his wife is a hypocrite when he/she speaks of sanctity of marriage.
Not saying he's not human since we all make mistakes. But he is a hypocrite for hiding behind " sanctity" of marriage. All he needs to say is he believes marriage is between one man and one woman and leave it at that.
#2- even if you did not make it up, does that make it right? Hypocrisy abounds. And you are immature.
And to the gentleman that has gay Republican friends... so do I. I always tell them being a gay Republican is like being a Jewish Nazi. the team you want to belong to hates you.