A disgrace?When someone promises “fierce advocacy”, makes beautiful speeches in front of the A-Gay, high-dollar pom-pom crowd then turns around and allows DOMA to be defended in the most insulting of terms within mere hours; when someone not once but twice (after promising to treat us with dignity and respect) hires two of the most anti-gay wackogelicals to front for him in a highly-visible manner; when someone promises repeatedly to get DADT repealed, says there’s a committee pressing to get that done (and we find out that was a lie, there was no such committee) and THEN we find out behind that there were WH staffers on the Hill pressing Congress to “go slow” or even stop DADT repeal legislation – - -
That is not “disgraceful”.  That is evil.
Once, we can accept as a political reality.  Twice, we can be disappointed.  Three times, we can be irritated.  What we have here is a long litany, a repetitive pattern of saying one thing and doing something completely the opposite, often within hours.
I am having no more of it.
Don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s raining.  The gAyTM is closed until further notice.  

What is most irritating……is that Obama can get rid of all this hateful legislation with the stroke of a pen. The fact that he hasn’t done it is all the proof I need that he has no desire whatsoever to follow through on any of his campaign promises.
If there is a Democratic challenger to Obama (hey, a girl can dream) in 2012 for the presidency, I will unhesitatingly give him or her my vote.

But he can’t… this is a fatherless man who wants the repsectof his bigoted surrogate father. He is probably incapable of even comprehending his error.

In addition, he has already had to denounce him and turn his back on him once.Surely he won't do it again.

Standard Democratic Party positionWhile I may find the RNC position on marriage equality deplorable, at least they have one and have stuck to it. You know where they stand.
Democrats?  Playing the whimp card as usual.  ”We kind of support it, but we don’t really, unless of course we can find some other route to equality that doesn’t offend anyone.”
With each passing day, Obama gets closer and closer to having to answer the question about marriage equality with a definitive answer.  He can no longer equivocate.
Melissa Etheridge asked Hillary Clinton why we should elect her as president when her husband through us under the bus.  The same kind of questions need to be asked of Obama:  
Why should we support your re-election when you have done nothing legislatively for us?
How, as the product of an inter-racial marriage, can you support separate but equal?
Why are you so willing to take a stand and defend the rights of non-citizens while letting the rights of actual American citizens be put up for vote by the general public?
You promised when you got into office that the first thing you would do would be to overturn DADT and yet here we are almost four years later and all we have is a study.  You either misjudged how easily something like this could be done or you blatantly lied to us.  Which one is it and why haven’t you issued a stop-order on discharges?
Why should LGBT Americans trust anything you say?

Hold it!Obama can’t get rid of jack shit with one stroke of the pen.
Legislation is the responsibility of the Congress. And I’m not saying that Obama does not play a significant role in that nor am I saying that he’e fulfilled that role (quite the contrary) but that man doesn’t have enough constitutionally vested power to get rid of all that “hateful legislation” with a stroke of a pen.
If he did, then he really would be a magic negro.

Huh?Other than (possibly, there is informed debate on the matter) issuing a sweeping stop-loss to halt but not “get rid of” DADT, what exactly does he stroke with his pen to change everything else?
How can he wipe out DOMA or pass ENDA just by presidential fiat?
I’m not even sure I’d want that to be possible, because we’ll have another Bush or Nixon (or, God help us Palin) in office eventually.

the issue that is discussed in the piece, howeverIsn’t about Congress, it’s about leadership, and Wilson didn’t show it either.

In the fall of 1912, as his campaign for president entered its final stage, Woodrow Wilson was speaking in Brooklyn when he was asked for his opinion on women’s suffrage. The issue was very much in the political ether, but Wilson had declined to take a stand on it. According to John Milton Cooper’s excellent biography of the twenty-eighth president, he responded by insisting that it was “not a question that is dealt with by the national government at all.” The woman who had asked the question was apparently displeased by this blatant dodge. “I am speaking to you as an American, Mr. Wilson,” she retorted.

I am speaking to you as an American: It was a wonderful rebuke, one that anticipated the rhetoric of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who would not rail against America but instead demand to be fully part of it. Wilson, however, was unmoved. And his slippery treatment of women’s suffrage-like his slippery approach on matters of race-did not end once he was in the White House.
Running for reelection four years later, he was still playing the same exasperating game. That year, the Democrats did not endorse a constitutional amendment providing for women’s suffrage but, instead, called on the states to extend voting rights to women. Such a half-measure looks cowardly in retrospect, of course; but it also looked cowardly at the time.

He’s a bigot.No two ways about it.
Sometime after 1996 he decided that God was in the mix. And, apparently, with him, God’s position is the same one expressed by Fred Phelps.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-EM, Miss PamMuch of this was thougrghly discussed at this very blog.
I’m replying to that specific comment, nothing else, I’m well aware of Woodrow Wilson’s shady record on civil rights.

You know, some educated black peoplewill be very squeamish about comparing the first black American POTUS to the most racist POTUS of the 20th century (and that’s not even up for debate).
In fact, Obama has been regressive on the issue of marriage equality as he’s run for higher office and noone does that.
In his regressive approach to the issue of marriage equality (as well as his general lip service), yeah, you kinda do have to compare him to Woodrow Wilson, though.

dont think soNo Obama cant just get rid of legislation with the stroke of a pen and while I think he should (with the stroke of his pen) stop allowing great,patriotic gays and lesbians to be kicked out of the  military because its the right thing to do,the rest of it needs to be dealt with through legislation because,as pointed out, we will have another hateful Pres eventually.  I part ways with Obama because of the nancy way he advocates for us, when he needed our vote and money he didnt mind voiceing his opinion. I have been married to my husband for two yrs and until he pulls his head out of his a$$ and stands up for my marriage there will be no money and no vote

But he CANas has been mentioned, issue a blanket “stop-loss” which would put DADT “on hold” & save the careers of potentially hundreds of soldiers.  He can instruct the DOJ to stop defending discriminatory laws.  (Yes, presidents have leeway on this.  Many, including GW, did it.)
He could start acting like the “fierce advocate” he claimed he was instead of the “farce advocate” he’s been.

Oh, I agree with you on the stop-loss(again that’s my “precision gene” acting up).
With DOJ…the question simply is does President Obama believe that DOMA is constitutional. Which has nothing to do with god being in the mix.

@ Lymis.
With respect, you are totally wrong regarding Obama’s legal power to issue a stop-loss order. Those who say he can’t are NOT “informed,” they are transparently motivated to simply defend HIM. The law, 10 United States Code § 12305 – “Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Laws Relating to Promotion, Retirement, and Separation,”  passed by Congress in 1983, is unequivocal in every respect, and has been ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court.
It reads, emphasis mine:

“Notwithstanding ANY other provision of law, during any period members of a reserve component are serving on active duty pursuant to an order to active duty under authority of section 12301, 12302, or 12304 of this title, THE PRESIDENT MAY SUSPEND ANY PROVISION OF LAW relating to promotion, retirement, OR SEPARATION applicable to ANY member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States.”

The President himself said in June of 2009 that such discharges “weaken national security.”
No less than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have urged the President to freeze discharges.
Yes, antigay bigots in Congress like McShame and Skeletor would freak out if he did, but It requires a supermajority for Congress to overturn any Executive Order.
The “cost in political capital” referenced even by some of those who want him to do it is based on theory not fact. Except for a few months between 1992 & 93, the majority of the public has supported ending the ban for decades. The percentage has grown overall, and even 59% of conservative voters support it. Further, polling has shown that the voters most likely to be anti gay rights are also anti Obama and would NEVER vote for him regardless of what he does or does not do.
Finally, it’s vitally important to understand that stop-loss of gays by the Pentagon itself is not remotely a new idea, and has been implemented at various times by the Pentagon in every war we’ve been from WWII through today. During WWII, the adjutant general ordered the commanding general of the West Coast Air Corps Training Center in California to review the cases of some men ALREADY CONVICTED OF SODOMY “to determine their respective availability for military service” with “the view of conserving all available manpower for service in the Army.” He canceled the men’s dishonorable discharges and made them eligible for reassignment AFTER COMPLETING THEIR PRISON SENTENCES! In 1945, facing manpower shortages during the final European offensive in Europe, Secty of War, Harry Stimson, ordered a review of all gay discharges and ordered commanders to “salvage” homosexual soldiers for service whenever necessary.
Discharges of gays were also reduced at the discretion of the Pentagon during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Gulf I, and since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, even under homophobic, DADT-supporting Bush. By his last year in office discharges were HALF what they were his first year in office. Are we to believe that the population of gay servicemembers was 50% less than it was seven years before?
Thank you.

Black activists courted Woodrow Wilsonand Wilson made no specific promises or guarantees as it concerns racial segregation and anti-lynching laws, to be completely fair to Wilson.
OTOH, the Obama campaign courted gay activists and the gay community and many gay activists (curiously enough, many gay white men, I believe, including John Aravosis, Dan Savage, Andy Towle, and Andrew Sullivan) endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
I’ve never blamed John Aravosis, for example, for being angry at Obama; he endorsed the man and raised funds for Obama. I don’t like the way Aravosis has expressed that anger at times, though.

Ah, but, larry, there’s the rub….
When you write,

it needs to be dealt with through legislation because,as pointed out, we will have another hateful Pres eventually.

ultimately that is ideal [tho a Supreme Court ruling would be better], although the use of one, a stop-loss order, would not preclude the other, a legislative end to the ban [even tho stopping every discharge we can by whatever means is a good thing]. Reprehensibly, while there are still Obambots, including gay ones betraying their own people, and even the random transgender, claiming that stop-loss would not just be impermanent but also doom a Congressional end to the ban, it is Obama himself who has turned the situation into the legislative equivalent of the BP oil spill in the Gulf…a mess that no [still foreseeable] single act will clean up.
In short, until the end of May, our allies in Congress had been trying for five years to pass the Military Readiness Enhancement Act [MREA] that did not just repeal DADT but explicitly banned not just discharges but any kind of discrimination against gays in the military, from assignments to performance evaluations.
Candidate Obama and President repeatedly promised to personally fight for the MREA’s passage. But, according to Pelosi, in the White House meetings between some of our allies and Obama reps, they were forced to “weaken” the idea, and the Pentagon INSISTED that the nondiscrimination clause be removed, and the WH backed them. Thus, the MREA went in the trash.
So, AT BEST, if the new “compromise amendment” is passed as a part of SECDEF, AND then “certified” as not hurting “military readiness” and four other critieria some UNSPECIFIED time after Gates’ “study” is done, 60 days after that DADT will be gone leaving NOTHING preventing present or future military leaders from going back to their own internal ban which existed for fifty years, discharging well over 100,000.
Thus, thanks to his betrayal, a stop-loss order is not just imperative to prevent one more person being discharged, but the sooner it’s demonstrated that open service does NOTHING to hurt the military, the sooner the bigots in the Pentagon will realize, as the Palm Center has said, that they can never put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube.

Marriage equality to one side for a moment, Obama is ALREADY another Wilson.Wilson ran for reelection in 1916 on a peace platform.  His campaign slogan was, quite pointedly, “He kept us out of war.”  Then, once a second tern as clinched thanks to his promise of peace, he immediately began planning to take us into World War I.
Obama didn’t run strictly as a peace candidate, of course.  But the promise was clearly there in his rhetoric, and a huge number of people interpreted it as such.  And of course his blithe acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize seemed to signal his intentions.  He was as hypocritical in accepting it as he was in his promises during the campaign, but the prize gave him the PR cover he needed to make his war plans under the public radar..
Every president we’ve had in the last 150 years has been a villain in one way or another (and usually in a good many at once).  Obama is no exception.

For a site that calles it self a “reality-based community”There sure is a lot of delusial people here that have completely divorced their opinions from political reality.
Pam would have you believe that somehow, Obama pushing LGBT issues is cost free. Its not. Nor is it suddently some great emergency that must be dealt with right now.
Yet there are quite a few spoiled individuals here who think that Obama should run his presidency head long into the gay marriage iceburg. No gay marriage still will not be legal, but atleast the activists will feel good that Obama will have ruined his presidency for them…to hell with the rest of the agenda.
I for one am glad that the Obama administration is pragmatic enough to ignore you.
Indeed, PLEASE keep your vaunted gaytm closed. That way when he wins without you, he can continue to ignore you guilt free. You want to bash this White House, by all means do so, but have the consistency to stop complaining that they don’t listen to you.

Please tell us how making himselfunelectable to the American people is helpful Pam?
If you think that publically supporting gay marriage is a winning strategy, then I encourage you to only support Presidential candidates that publically support that position.
However, don’t complain when they lose the election.

There are partial answers to some of Pam’s questions:

PAM: Does Barack Obama, as president, have an opinion on the constitutionality of those amendments than bar gays and lesbians from marrying?

Though he wasn’t yet President, US Senate Candidate Obama said this, a key opinion TNR missed [and another classic example from the Obama English Dictionary, see below]:

“I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that not being discriminated against is a civil right.” – Barack Obama, IL US Senate Debate, October 26, 2004.

PAM: Does Barack Obama believe that the Full Faith and Credit Clause (in Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution) does not apply to same-sex marriages?

“[Harvard law professor Laurence] Tribe, who taught Obama constitutional law at Harvard and appears in one of his presidential campaign ads, called ABC News at the request of the Obama campaign [after] the forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. Obama believes states should be under no obligation to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.
He wants to fully repeal DOMA, however, because he views the statute as ‘ineffectual and redundant’, in the words of Tribe. Obama believes a long-recognized public policy exception to the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause exempts a state from having to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state which runs counter to its own public policies.
‘Marriage is not something that states have ever been obliged to recognize if it’s been against their own public policy’, said Tribe, who has testified on the subject before Congress. ‘Same-sex couples in Massachusetts are neither better nor worse off with DOMA repealed except that the repeal of DOMA is a way of telling that couple that their marriage in Massachusetts is not going to be made the subject of a symbolic and ineffectual slam by the federal government’.” – ABC News Online, August 11, 2007.

Pam, I, and many others, agree, “this President is tangled up in a giant web of FAIL.” HE uses the same base verb to blame US.

“My view is that we should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word ‘marriage’, which has religious connotations to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples, in terms of hospital visitation, in terms of whether or not they can transfer property or Social Security benefits and so forth.” – Obama, LOGO/HRC Forum, 2007.

When I was in college, I marveled at the reverence in my professors’ voices anytime they mentioned The OED. No clergyman ever spoke of “God” or “Yahweh” with more respect. I soon learned it stood for the Oxford English Dictionary, which its publishers describe as, “the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.” The most recent 20-volume edition costs $1200; the single-volume edition [requiring a magnifying glass], over $400, and the CD-ROM version over $250. I treasure my own earlier 2-volume edition that I amazingly secured free years ago with a book club membership.
Over the last three years, it seems a new OED has appeared: the Obama English Dictionary [BOED]. This discussion illustrates it again, as did White House Gay for Pay Brian Bond recent declaration that Obama is “99% supportive of your issues.”
In the BOED “separate” IS “equal”! And somehow not being discriminated against is a “civil right” at the same time marriage is not.
In the BOED, “supportive” no longer means “to promote the interests or cause of, to uphold or defend as valid or right, to argue or vote for.” In the BOED it means “SAY you’re supportive then DO nothing, or worse.” E.g., SAY you “support” ending discharges then invest time and energy and money in repeatedly DEFENDING the ban on gays in the military in court when, legally, you don’t have to; in continuing discharges day after day after day while REFUSING to use your Congressionally mandated authority to unilaterally stop them in the name of national security even after you’ve SAID yourself they “WEAKEN national security,” and worst of all: instead of “supporting” our allies in Congress when they were at the doorstep of passing a GUARANTEED end to the ban, turning on them and us, and forcing them to tear it up, and replace it with a “maybe repeal” bill that could pass and still not end discharges.
Let’s review other unique BOED definitions of words that apparently mean something entirely different to Obama than they do others such as of “fierce,” “advocate,” and “consistent” as in, “I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on, and I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.” Don’t forget “compromise” as in “I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans;” and “bully pulpit” as in “I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality;” or “weight” as in “I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of a fully inclusive Employment Non Discrimination Act.”
Overriding all of them – for it’s true that even when actually advocated some things take more time than others -is the BOED definition of “leadership” as in

“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.” – Candidate Barack Obama, February 28, 2008.

Of course, IF there was ANY measurable attempt to ACTUALLY provide leadership on our issues, some of its failures could be forgiven. But it is leadership itself that he has failed in [when he's not actively working AGAINST us as in the aforementioned multiple ways re DADT, and needlessly defending DOMA in court].
Until the BOED no longer defines “marriage” as “not a civil right” and “supportive” as “piss on their legs then tell them it’s raining,” we must continue to hold his, and the DNC’s, feet to the fire of their words’ AUTHENTIC definitions.

Let’s start with the delusion that Obama is actually working on his promises to the LGBT community, shall we?I am quite surprised that you would pay so much attention to a reality-based community.

tsk.tsk, I don’t know how ya’ll have the patience to read this scifi fool’s scolding.

He isn’t going to win again……your position is delusional.

“should run his presidency head long into the gay marriage iceburg”His presidency is running aground on so many issues it’s hard to keep an accurate count.  Would it really be so awful if, in the process of going down history’s chute, he were to do the right thing for once?
Question for you, Geek:  How are you paid?  Does the White House pay you a fee for each posting, or are you paid by the word, or what?  Or are you actually on salary?  Do you have to submit a separate invoice every time you post one of their talking points here?  Do they pay by check, or do you use PayPal?  

SighWaahwaah we’ll make him lose the election…
Such power we have.

Weeeeee!Let’s enjoy this thread flight of fancy derail…by the Blend’s resident apologist who thinks the Blend will singlehandedly hand over the Congress and WH to the GOP!

It’s so cute when the straight boy comes to lecture us“I for one am glad that the Obama administration is pragmatic enough to ignore you.”
I know I feel comforted.  We’re neither required nor desired.  So how about if the Democrats SHUT UP AND STOP ASKING US FOR MONEY AND VOTES?

Well, the list of menyou mention were misogynists, so it’s easy to see why they endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in the primaries.  
Sullivan and Aravosis are the worst of course.  Not really sure how anyone concerned about equality for all Americans can take those guys too seriously.

LOL, well…that misogyny thing works in some funny ways.
Remember that white men were more willing to grant black men the right to vote than they were willing to grant any woman the right to vote.

Pam, doesn’t that make you a kingmaker?Talk about power! If the Blend can singlehandedly give Congress and the WH to whomever it wants, maybe we should start planning for the 2012 election. With a little effort, we could probably get ACTUAL progressives elected to office.

Yup.