LGBT POV

As I watched President Obama’s Saturday night speech to the Human Rights Campaign on video yesterday morning, it dawned on me just how much our chief executive sometimes resembles one of those weird sub-atomic particles quantum physicists are always talking about.

The “Obamatron” perhaps.

In case you didn’t know, certain sub-atomic particles routinely behave as if they exist at more than one place at the same time. I know, but this has been proven both mathematically and experimentally. These particles only lock into a single position when some measurement is taken, or, as the physicists say, when they are “observed.” What position will they take in five minutes? Tomorrow? Who the hell knows? Depends on the observation.

Or, in the case of the Obamatron, on the identity of the “observer.” The phenomenon goes right back to the beginning. Remember how jazzed all us LGBT “observers” were because of all the promises candidate Obama made to us during the campaign? All those enlightened positions based on simple justice and morality! Then remember whom he chose to be his spiritual and moral voice at the inauguration, before a more heterogeneous, heterosexual group of “observers?” Rick “Hate-With-A-Human-Face” Warren! It still rankles, doesn’t it?

Marriage equality is another example. Candidate Obama told us gay “observers” that he opposed Prop 8, in other words, that he didn’t want to see our right to marry taken away. At the same time, he was telling the general public that he opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds. (Can’t you just hear Freddie Mercury singing, “Now I’m here! Now I’m there!”) The result? Pro-Prop 8 robocalls using Obama’s own voice.

Staying on marriage, Saturday night, before a roomful of LGBT “observers,” the president expressed his longing for “a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.” He stressed the “importance of equality for LGBT families” and called for the repeal of the “so-called Defense of Marriage Act.” Brava, Mr. President! Brava!

Brava, that is, until we flash back to June. The “observers”—a federal court hearing a challenge to DOMA and, by extension, the mainstream media and the public. Obama’s Justice Department defended the “so-called Defense of Marriage Act” in a legal brief by comparing same-sex marriage to the “marriage of uncle to niece,” or the “marriage of 16-year olds.” The government needed to preserve the “traditional form of marriage,” an “age-old societal institution,” Obama’s brief said. John Aravosis over at Americablog raised holy hell.

I’m a lawyer, so I know the president is charged with defending the laws, no matter how onerous the laws might be. But that doesn’t mean he has to compare gay marriage to incest when there isn’t any resemblance at all, or spout legally irrelevant fundamentalist claptrap about “tradition.”

And then, of course, there’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country,” Obama said to the HRC “observers.” He referred to the “urgency of this struggle,” presumably that for LGBT rights, presumably including the right to serve openly in the armed forces.

But again, when the “observer” is the general, generally straight public, it’s a different position. Then, we have Obama National Security Advisor James Jones lamenting on CNN’s “State of the Union” Oct. 4 that the president has “an awful lot” on his plate right now, and that he’ll get around to “tak[ing] on” the issue of DADT “at the appropriate time.”

But wait a minute! What about that “urgency?” What about those patriotic Americans we “should not be punishing?” Like decorated fighter pilot Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, who’s being ejected from the Air Force after 18 years (and an estimated $25 million spent to train and equip him) because he’s gay? Or West Point graduate Lt. Dan Choi of the New York Army National Guard (an Arabic language specialist, for God’s sake), who’s also being booted for being gay?

The president can’t repeal DADT all by himself—it’s a statute passed by Congress, which means only Congress can definitively end the policy. But he could put DADT discharges on hold with a stroke of his pen, according to a study released May 11 by  the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Palm Center. He refuses to do it.

Don’t get me wrong. I like and admire President Obama very much. I voted for him last year and fully intend to vote for him again. Not just because the alternative was, and is likely to be, a government straight from the pages of H.P. Lovecraft, but because he seems to be a smart, down-to-earth, genuinely decent guy whose heart and instincts are in the right place. But this “quantum politics” crap has got to stop.

Lots of ink and pixels have been spilled in speculation over why the president can’t seem to get off the dime on LGBT issues. Maybe he’s afraid to spend “political capital,” some theorize. Let him get past health care and energy before turning to “culture war” issues others say. But all of this attempted mindreading is pointless. There’s no way to figure out what’s in the president’s head, or anyone else’s for that matter. And it’s actions that count anyway, isn’t it?

Here’s what I’d say to the president if I had his ear:

Mr. President, you are a brilliant, and, I believe, compassionate man. But sometimes even the most brilliant and compassionate need to be reminded of the simplest of ideas. One of them is this:  When you try to please everyone, you generally end up pleasing no one.

That’s what’s going on here. Slowly, yes, but surely, one by one, you are losing the faith and confidence of the LGBT community. We are too accustomed to being courted by politicians and then dumped like trash the day after the election to respond any differently, especially after nearly a year of inaction and profoundly mixed signals.

On the other side of the fence, isn’t it rather unlikely that you’re making any converts by delaying action on promises to us, while nonetheless endlessly repeating those very same promises?

But the bottom line is that we elected you to lead, not to simply talk about issues ad infinitum, tailoring your words to your audiences, while putting off for as long as possible the moment when you finally have to take a firm, definite position and then actually follow through. Leaders do things, Mr. President.

You once said you were a “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans.” With all due respect, not so fast.

President Truman was a fierce advocate for African-Americans when he integrated the armed services by executive order despite hostility from both parties.

President Eisenhower was a fierce advocate when he deployed the National Guard to Little Rock in 1957 so those African-American kids could go to school.

President Johnson, a Texan, was a fierce advocate when he picked up the ball from President Kennedy and rammed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.

Robert Kennedy was a fierce advocate when he sided with Cesar Chavez and his migrant workers and supported the California grape boycott in the mid-60s.

To be a fierce advocate, Mr. President, requires you to first take a firm position. Then, you need to actually do something in support of that position. You could start by instituting a moratorium on DADT, and you could do it tomorrow.

We’re waiting.