I don’t think it’s a criticism of prior presidents to point out that Barack Obama can now confidently claim to have done more than any of them to advance freedom and equality for the LGBT community. President Clinton appointed the first openly-lesbian judge back in 1994, and now Obama has seen-through the confirmation of the first openly-gay judge. He’s repealed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that Clinton negotiated (at the time, it was progress) and given gays and lesbians the right to serve openly in our military. He’s decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has stopped defending it in court. He’s expressed his support for the Respect for Marriage Act which would repeal DOMA entirely. He signed the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Bill. He lifted the ban on immigration and travel for people with HIV/AIDS. In addition, he’s vastly improved both how the federal government treats LGBT employees, and how it treats gays in general. The census now counts same-sex couples. The government no longer considers sexual orientation when doling out housing assistance. Hospitals now have to grant visitation rights to same-sex spouses.
His record is one that has to be respected. I know that the job of a good organizer is to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, but there are a lot of people who, perhaps frustrated by the slow pace of progress, made a lot of very unfair personal attacks on the president. They ought to apologize. Obama’s record on gay rights is excellent. It’s better, for example, than JFK’s record on civil rights.
I don’t disagree with you on Obama’s record, but your comparison to past presidents is a bit of a strawman. The only other one who could even be in the conversation is Clinton, and times have changed a lot in the 16 years between Clinton’s election and Obama’s. Those have been the only two Democrats in the White House since before AIDS, essentially prehistory in the LGBTQ movement. Or are you going to include the records of the leaders of the party whose leading 2012 candidate has a spouse that makes his living “curing” gays?
The contrast critics drew was almost always between the rhetoric of candidate Obama and the actions (or inactions) of President Obama. Agree or disagree with that criticism, but don’t mischaracterize it.
And since JFK’s record on civil rights wasn’t particularly good – read Taylor Branch on the subject – that’s not high praise, either.
That’s why I said it’s not an insult to prior presidents. That’s why I led with that.
As to JFK’s record, that’s also my point. It seems we’re in agreement on the facts, just not the way of expressing them.
Not quite. We agree on the facts, but the claim you’re making based on the facts is near-meaningless. Saying Obama is the best president on gay rights is like saying he’s mastered texting better than all his predecessors. There’s no past to legitimately compare it to.
No other presidents did anything relevant to gay rights?
That’s odd; I seem to remember the gay rights movement having opinions about their performance.
For example, Reagan’s inability to utter the word AIDS. I think ppl in the gay community had something to say about that (via ACT-UP)
The Obama Administration’s record on LGBT rights has indeed been one its brighter spots so far. If I were you, though, I wouldn’t lead off its list of accomplishments with the repeal of DADT, as that is once again military policy, thanks to the Obama Administration. A week ago the Ninth Circuit Court overturned DADT, but the DOJ, as requested by the White House, appealed the decision and won, reinstating the policy.
And there you have it, once again, from the “It’s never good enough” folks: Yabbut yabbut yabbut.
Those people who pressured Obama to do these things should definitely apologize.
Too bad Martin Luther King died before he could apologize for pressuring his betters into passing the Civil Rights Act. Just look at the damage he caused to the Democratic Party because of his lack of patience and perspective!
are you being deliberately obtuse?
I see no evidence it’s deliberate.
Wow – someone comparing John Aravosis to Martin Luther King.
I know we live in ridiculous times but wow – that’s pretty ridiculous.
Those people who pressured Obama to do these things should definitely apologize.
Correction: those people who mistakenly thought they were pressuring Obama to do what he was in the process of doing all along really should apologize.
Not for their misapprehension of the man, or even of the political climate, but the wholly-unnecessary, wholly inappropriate personal slander, such as “Homophobe in Chief” and “obviously not comfortable around gay people.”
I obviously agree with this. Obama is the most socially liberal president ever, and his record on advancing gay equality measures has been consistent and righteous.
But this doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy. Unless being gay is somehow a different animal than being a lesbian. Plus, isn’t the CA judge who overruled Prop 8 openly gay? Though not at his confirmation, obviously. I think the best commentary on the openly gay judge was how little controversy there was to his appointment. It’s amazing how fast things moved on the subject in as little as five years time.
That judge in CA is a State judge.
Do you think the America Blog will ever admit fault or give the President credit? It just is not in their DNA. They are still bitching about DADT. I have lost all respect for Dan Choi too. His twitter feed might as well be written by a PUMA.
DADT was progress was in the same way Plessy vs. Ferguson was progress to bring about racial equality. It wasn’t! It was absurd! And you conveniently left out that Clinton signed DOMA into law. President Obama is being judged WRONGLY by the speed at which he is cleaning up Clinton’s shit. And all he gets from this real progress is whining ass white liberals saying it’s not good enough, particularly the LGBT community saying he’s just ‘ok’. Ok compared to what? Harvey Milk? Damn sure not compared to Bill Clinton. By that measure he’s the bi-racial child of Harvey Firestein and RuPaul.
While I’m sure it was only a momentary flash of honesty that will never be allowed at MSNBC again, it was nonetheless heartening to know that there is at least one white liberal willing to call out white liberal than thou bill shit when Lawrence O’Donnel rightly noted that Bill Clinton achieved far less and compromised far more and NEVER got this treatment from the left.
Originally, DADT was progress: it changed the policy from a ban on gay people to a ban on people who admitted being gay (or who were caught engaging in gay sex), with an agreement from the military that they would stop “asking.”
Had it actually worked out that way, it would have been progress. Instead, Powell and the rest of the military brass promptly broke their side of the deal, as soon as they had a GOP Congress that had their back.
You (and Lawrence) are flat out wrong.
The leftist opposition to Clinton/Gore was so strong that Ralph Nader received 3% of the nationwide vote in 2000. 3%.
Clinton was never respected for his often illiberal accomplishments in office. His popularity was entirely driven in reaction to the Republican witch hunt that consumed his second term. And because the economy was booming and the cold war was over with minimal incident. And then his stature grew in reaction to the Bush presidency. As most presidents become more beloved upon leaving office. Wait until you see what happens to Obama in 2017 and beyond.
You’ve immersed yourself in the internet world without realizing that history fucking extends beyond the inception of the blogosphere. You find me a Ralph Nader drawing 3% of a nationwide vote in 2012 or 2016 and then you can tell me that Clinton had an easier relationship with the left. Where do you think the phrase “both sides are all the same” even came from?
Racial conspiracists who can’t remember the 90s have no idea how much discredit they do themselves. All this sobbing every day for a president who has 75/90% approval among self-described Democrats and liberals. Pull your head out of your ass and step away from the computer. Seventeen lost cause dieharders on a blog comment section do not reflect reality.
It’s apples and oranges anyway. Liberals who opposed Clinton’s policies had little voice because they didn’t have free blogging sites like blogger.com available to them. There were chat rooms, but nothing very conducive for collective action or actually getting heard. And, you’re right, once the Lewinsky scandal exploded, liberals rallied to defend the president and had to sit quietly while he rammed home a series of horrible legislation:
October 31, 1998: Iraq Liberation Act
November 3, 1998: Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act
November 12, 1999: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
December 21, 2000: Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
Thank you for pointing out the bills Clinton signed. Also Welfare Reform which is harming a lot of people now and the offset on Social Security.
And the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and NAFTA, to point to two first term “accomplishments” that pissed off a lot on the left and have led to enormous long-term damage. People also forget that giving China Most Favored Nation trading status (and subsequently pushing for its entry to the WTO), at the behest of Boeing and against the strong opposition of human rights advocates, paved the way for the outsourcing of literally millions of American jobs. Clinton’s record on a lot of issues was terrible, and a lot of people said so at the time; O’Donnell is simply wrong.
As frustrating as Obama’s failures have been, among things he can control only his various wars rise to the level of half a dozen Clinton atrocities.
And don’t forget their contempt for campaign finance law.
I volunteered for Bill Bradley and was so disgusted by the selection of Lieberman (novelty aside) that I didn’t make up my mind to vote for Al ‘No Controlling Legal Authority’ Gore until the Sunday before election day. He convinced me with the Rolling Stone interview released the weekend,
To me this is really breathtaking.
It’s been manifestly clear that it’s only because people were pushing and screaming and acting on their own that this happened. Who pushed gay marriage? Not the Democrats! (And initially not me either, in 2004). Did they rush ahead with DADT? No. It was demanding these rights, constantly making the argument, and refusing to take “wait” for an answer that this issue was placed in front of the public and the public, confronted with having to make a choice and the evidence of that choice accumulating before its eyes, began to move in the direction of liberty and quality.
Obama has led from behind on homosexual issues. That’s fine, it’s in his character to do so. This is what he means by make him do it. Why should I lionize him for switching horses when political calculation indicates it’s better to do so?
It is manifestly clear to a rooster that he made the sun rise.
BTW, “switching horses?” Obama first called for the repeal of DOMA in a letter to a Chicago newspaper in 2004. His campaign platform in 2008 called for its repeal. He’s repeated this position throughout his presidency.
The only change that this announcement represents is that a bill doing what he has been calling on Congress to do has actually been introduced in Congress.
Although I think that the truth of what you write in your column – about the role gay rights activists played in raising their issues and demanding change and pushing both the broader society and political elites towards supporting them – explains why they so misapprehend the current situation, and the current president.
For decades, progress on this issue actually did work the way you’re describing.
You don’t need to lionize him. Just give him credit when it’s due. For that matter, much as I despise Joe Lieberman, he has a fairly decent record on LGBT rights, and was point man on DADT repeal in the Senate. I was surprised, but I had to give even him kudos for that.
This is bullshit.
The president is delivering on his promises in the face of the most intransigent opposition since the Civil War. He hasn’t flip-flopped on anything. When he does flip-flop it will be by coming out as personally in favor gay weddings. In other words, he’ll flop for the better.
He’s led from behind?
I don’t know what that means. Does it mean that he’s managed to improve the situation for gays in more than a dozen specific ways without arousing any kind of meaningful backlash?
Going back to the 70s, the gay rights movement served dual purposes substantive progress, and mutual affirmation for individuals who were demonized everywhere else they turned. Often, this solidarity was expressed in terms of ferocious denunciations of anti-gay elements. Think about ACT-UP. Think about Silence = Death. Think about We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It.
People who operate and think in the mold of the traditional gay rights movement want a “fierce advocate” to be someone who gets all up in the grills of homophobic people and engages in large amounts of symbolism expressing solidarity with gay people. What we have instead is “No Drama Obama,” who’s like the guy wears loafers instead of wingtips with his suit when he’s really cutting loose.
I didn’t say flip flopped. Maybe “kicked his horse forward” would have been a better change of phrase?
Leading from behind means you know when the mood of the country is turning in your favor and go along with it without necessarily be the one to shift that mood. Others did the work, and now he is going to join them, that’s all. It’s far better than opposition and better than nothing, but had it not been for actual people out there fighting the good fight, we would not be at this point. So I see this as an excellent example of “making Obama do it” as he said. Let me be clear to the extent that specific things were done, that’s positive.
But I think it’s more likely that meaningful backlash hasn’t arisen because 1) the oxygen in the room was being taken up by other fights and 2) because actual people out there did the work of making it politically risky to generate backlash?
Even so a number of the GOP candidates are digging in on anti-gay rights so I think the jury is still out on meaningful backlash.