Obama Then, Obama Now

From Pam's House Blend:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 17, 2009

Fact Sheet: Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination

In an Oval Office event later today, President Barack Obama will sign a Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination. The Memorandum follows a review by the Director of the Office of Personnel Management ant the Secretary of State regarding what benefits may be extended to the same-sex partners of federal employees in the civil service and the foreign service within the confines of existing federal laws and statutes.

Over the past several months, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management and the Secretary of State have conducted internal reviews to determine whether the benefits they administer may be extended to the same-sex partners of federal employees within the confines of existing laws and statutes. Both identified a number of such benefits.

For civil service employees, domestic partners of federal employees can be added to the long-term care insurance program; supervisors can also be required to allow employees to use their sick leave to take care of domestic partners and non-biological, non-adopted children. For foreign service employees, a number of benefits were identified, including the use of medical facilities at posts abroad, medical evacuation from posts abroad, and inclusion in family size for housing allocations.

The Presidential Memorandum to be signed today will request that the Director of OPM and the Secretary of State act to extend to same-sex partners of federal employees the benefits they have identified. The Memorandum will also request the heads of all other executive branch departments and agencies to conduct internal reviews to determine whether other benefits they administer might be similarly extended, and to report the results of those reviews to the Director of OPM.

The Memorandum will also direct OPM to issue guidance within 90 days to all executive departments and agencies regarding compliance with, and implementation of, the civil service laws, which make it unlawful to discriminate against federal employees or applicants for federal employment on the basis of factors not related to job performance.

Pam also posts this reminder of Obama's specific promises that he made to the gay community last year, when he wanted our votes:

I'm running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all - a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It's wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.

...As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.

...I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.

...The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense.

...We also need a president who's willing to confront the stigma - too often tied to homophobia - that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.

...I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together.

...Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

From ABC News via Americablog, reporting a press conference at the White House today with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:

TAPPER: Does the president stand by the legal brief that the Justice Department filed last week that argued in favor the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act?

GIBBS: Well, as you know, that the Justice Department is charged with upholding the law of the land, even though the president believes that that law should be repealed.

TAPPER: I understand that, but a lot of legal experts say that the brief didn't have to be as comprehensive and make all the arguments that it made, such as comparing same-sex unions to incestuous ones, in one controversial paragraph...

GIBBS: Well...

TAPPER: ...that's upset a lot of the president's supporters. Does the president stand by the content, the arguments made in that brief?

GIBBS: Well, again, it's the president's Justice Department. And, again, we have the role of upholding the law of the land while the president has stated and will work with Congress to change that law.

John Avarosis also reports, based on a phone call to John Berry and reader emails, that today's presidential memo is NOT giving federal agencies any power they didn't have already. It's a publicity trick, guys, you understand that?

NOW He Throws Us a Bone

This just in from the Washington Post:

As John Berry forecast in his Advocate interview at Gay Pride in D.C. on Sunday, Obama is going to sign an order tomorrow extending healthcare and other benefits to partners of federal employees.

That's great news for all those who are eligible, and I'm happy for them.

But that doesn't make everything all right now between Obama and the LGBT community. There's millions of us who won't be affected in any way by his signature tomorrow.

We deserve ALL the rights and benefits that anybody else does, in or out of Washington, D.C. We are Americans, we are citizens, we are human beings too.

Nothing less than the equal protection of the laws everywhere in the land will satisfy us; because that's simply our due as the equals of everybody else in this country.

Mr. Obama does not yet see it that way, folks. He is doing this for political reasons to take the heat off. Understand: He is a straight man who still does not get it.

It's high time he did, though.

Also noted: this persuasive article, "Obama needs a bit of Truman's courage," by Dick Polman in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Update: It's not even a bone he's throwing us, it's just a little piece of gristle, John Aravosis opines:

As you may have heard, President Obama tomorrow will be signing a presidential directive, not an executive order, providing "some" benefits to gay and lesbian employees. Well, the details, murky that they are, are coming. And they aren't great.

First off, Chuck Todd on MSNBC that because this is only a "memorandum," as he called it, it will expire when Obama leaves office. Lovely. Second, health benefits for federal employees won't be covered. Why? Because of DOMA, so says the Advocate.

Just which benefits will gay federal employees be getting? The White House is refusing to say. But it's unlikely it's anything involving money, like Social Security, or, as we now know, health care. Which is ironic, since health care is Obama's number one issue (but not for us). Also ironic, which I wrote about earlier, is that health care reform likely won't cover us either, since they'd have to include us as "families" and "dependents" - and let's face it, they just compared us to incest and pedophilia, does anyone think this administration or this congress is going to define us as "family" in their health care package? (It's also not clearly that DOMA would let health care reform provide us any benefits anyway.) In any case, Obama's inaction on DOMA, and outright defense of DOMA, is now undercutting his other efforts, meager that they are, to help us. It's all tied together.

Furthermore, John says about tomorrow's memo signing in the Oval Office:

It's also awfully convenient that the event is being held at 5:45pm, just a tad too late for the evening news to pick it up. Gosh, how did that happen?

Unfortunately, federal benefits for gay federal employees is not even one of the eight campaign promises Obama made to our community (there are only seven now on the White House Web site - the DOMA promise went down the memory hole about two months ago). . . .

Today, after having been compared to incest and pedophiles by our own Democratic president, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what this president needs to do to win back our trust. Not to mention, we have to beat the bejeesus out of you for five days to even get your attention, and this is all we get?

What is he going to do on DOMA, DADT and ENDA? Is the President going to apologize for comparing us to incest and pedophilia last week? Is he going to support us in the next DOMA lawsuit, whose brief is due on the 29th, or he is yet again going to support a bigoted law that he has called "abhorrent," even though he is fully in his power as president to oppose an existing law IF HE CARES ENOUGH TO DO SO.

When you figure that one out, get back to us. Until then, spare us the cute photo opps that give the president an opportunity to stand around a bunch of gay people and show how loved he is by the gays. when everyone is really pissed off at him. This isn't North Korea.

Update 2: The NYT quotes Administration sources who confirm that tomorrow's Presidential doggie treat is indeed a political ploy for damage control:

Mr. Obama will be weighing in for the first time on one of the most delicate social and political issues of the day: whether the government must provide benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. While he will announce a list of benefits, officials said, they are not expected to include broad health insurance coverage, which could require legislation to achieve. . . .

But administration officials said the timing of the announcement was intended to help contain the growing furor among gay rights groups. Several gay donors withdrew their sponsorship of a Democratic National Committee fund-raising event next week, where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to speak.

And remember I told you the other day there is no fucking plan? Pam Spaulding says:

The more I think about how this stuff seems slapped together, the more I believe that there was no "plan" for our issues and legislation. But that can't be true, can it? John mulls the same thing.

Honestly, really I don't want to believe that It was all about placating and delay and deny -- and then laying the blame the lack of votes on the Hill for inaction. Harry Reid finally caught on to this asshattery. The question, then, is how could this well-oiled political machine that we saw during the campaign, turn into a crew that is so ham-handed on our issues that they thought tossing out an inflammatory DOMA brief wasn't going to be like dropping an A-bomb on the community?

Given some unnamed source in the administration actually admitted to the NYT that this partner benefit announcement was crafted to stop the benefit from tanking, the WH is clearly off balance and off message. It's amateur hour at our expense.

#1 in Russ's Book Club

Update: The White House sent John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management and the highest-ranking gay person in Washington, to run interference by giving an interview to the Advocate today.

John Aravosis at Americablog sums up Berry's totally lame defense of the indefensible this way (emphasis mine):

The president does not have the option to oppose existing law, at all, no exceptions, zero, nothing -- Berry claims. That's a flat out lie, as we showed earlier with the essay by former Clinton White House special assistant Richard Socarides.

BERRY: This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces. He has to enforce the laws that have been enacted appropriately and that he has inherited. It would be wrong for me or any of our community to advise him to lie or to shirk his responsibility. He’s doing his job.

The president can ask DOJ to oppose laws in cases where there are important political and social issues at stake. Period. We've proven that they're lying about this, it's no longer debatable.

Oh, and where in the Constitution does it say that the president is required to compare our marriages to incest and pedophilia? We still haven't heard an explanation for that one. Nor have we heard an apology.

Did you catch how Berry said, above, that if we asked the president to file a brief opposing DOMA, we'd be asking him to "lie"? (First off, Berry admits that Obama owns the brief - so no more of this, "it was the lawyers" - it's Obama.) Anyway, so asking Obama to oppose DOMA in the brief would be asking him to "lie." What the hell is that supposed to mean? You mean the president was telling the truth when his brief claimed that gay marriage is like incest? He actually believes that? When the president claimed that Loving v. Virginia has nothing to do with our battle for marriage equality, he was saying he really believes that somehow the civil rights battle of African-Americans is different, better, than ours? Obama really believes that it's unfair to ask straight taxpayers to pay for our spousal benefits when we already pay for theirs? Obama thinks DOMA doesn't discriminate against gays? That it doesn't deny us benefits? That it's good for America in these tight budget times?

We're now to believe that Obama actually agrees with the bigoted crap that the White House let the DOJ put in that hateful brief? WTF?

Pam Spaulding says:

Who's holding this administration hostage to PTSD fears of Clinton and DADT in 1993? It's 2009, toadies. This administration, sitting atop high approval ratings with a minority party choking on its own bile and an American public that is more supportive of LGBT issues in the polls that at any time in history is crapping on the community in broad daylight and wondering what all the fuss is about. Someone in the White House needs a reality check. Fast.

Mike Signorile did an interview with Joe Solmonese of HRC last week about the Administration's alleged plan for LGBT rights. Listen carefully to why the hate crimes bill is being pushed, and read between the lines, now that you know what this Administration is really all about.

I am so fucking mad, people. Mr. Obama is about to discover there's no fury like an old queen scorned - or 15 million old queens, more like it. He lied to us. He used us. And now he's kicked us out the door like a Saturday night trick on Sunday morning. Tell him how you feel.

The mendacity of hope, indeed. Mine just went down the toilet, as far as this President is concerned.

P.S. - Note the heavy irony of the impassioned speech Berry gave just last week at the Justice Department to mark Pride month, a speech that was intended to demonstrate the Administration's deep concern for gay rights and equality.

P.P.S. - Notice, in the message Berry conveyed from the White House, there is 1) No apology, 2) No retraction, and 3) No reach-out to the community. Boiled down, the message is, Sit down and STFU about it.

But that's not what I voted for, Mr. President.