Dogged Blog

Friendly fire, redux: Obama's DOJ defends DOMA

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know I'm angry, pissed off, furious, and in a state of rage over the fucked up and disgusting arguments the Department of Justice used to defend the Orwellianly-named "Defense of Marriage Act" -- a defense released in all its hateful glory on the very anniversary of the day that the ruling in Loving vs. the State of Virginia was handed down in 1967, overturning laws banning inter-racial marriage.

I'm not alone. From the highest heights of A-list, connected, inside-the-beltway DC powerhouse LGBT orgs to the most infuriated queer commenter (or ally) on the political blogs, we're all angry. Disappointed. Shocked. And did I mention "angry"?

From the frequently hot-headed John Aravosis at AMERICAblog:

We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It's pretty despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn't just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn't motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn't be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn't discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can't).

He actually argued that the courts shouldn't consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.

From Pam Spaulding:

While this may not be the perfect test case for DOMA, the Obama administration, in its defense of the Act, has filed a brief that is a roadmap for every fundnut anti-gay argument against the right of same-sex couples to marry.... Friends, is this is the watershed mark, the line in the sand, the utter moral betrayal of this administration in black and white? Does this mean that we are not only expendable to this Administration, but that it has decided we can also be vilified as a constituency at will and not receive any blowback? That's balls. A brief with language like this could have been written by Liberty Counsel it's so homophobic; that it's written in legalese doesn't blunt the arguments being made here. It will be used to cause lasting damage to future civil rights gains.

From the normally beyond-temperate Human Rights Campaign:

The most alarming argument [in the brief], grounded neither in fact nor in law, reads as follows:

[DOMA amounts to] a cautious policy of federal neutrality towards a new form of marriage. DOMA maintains federal policies that have long sought to promote the traditional and uniformly-recognized form of marriage, recognizes the right of each State to expand the traditional definition if it so chooses, but declines to obligate federal taxpayers in other States to subsidize a form of marriage that their own states do not recognize.

“Same-sex couples and their families are not seeking subsidies,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese.  “We pay taxes equally, contribute to our communities equally, support each other equally, pay equally into Social Security, and participate equally in our democracy.  Equal protection is not a handout.  It is our right as citizens,” he said.

HRC also joined with the American Civil Liberties Union, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce in another statement:

We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be "neutral" with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states.

There is nothing "neutral" about the federal government's discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of "neutrality" ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.

When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

I'm not stupid. I get that the Department of Justice normally has to defend acts of Congress. But they don't always. Bill Clinton's DOJ didn't defend the provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that would have restricted speech about abortion.

Even if they felt they had to defend it, they didn't have to do it this way. I'm not an attorney, but many who are say this case could have been best defended by focusing narrowly on standing. It instead made a number of other kinds of arguments, based on things not even brought up in the original pleading, and that were, incidentally, inflammatory, homophobic, offensive, insulting and deeply, deeply painful to gay and lesbian Americans and our families.

And even if -- which I do not concede -- they somehow "had to" do that, there was not one mitigating statement from the White House, not one sign they'd given this a moment's thought, ever, of how this would feel to us, what it would be like to hear or read those words coming from someone we thought of as a friend, if not the "fierce advocate" he claims to be.

That failure is made a thousand times worse because not only did Obama campaign on an explicit promise that he would fight to repeal DOMA, but he has been utterly silent on it since then -- until this statement.

I'm not one who jumps all over Obama for not getting things done fast enough or not focusing enough on my issues. His stance on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is unfathomable to me, but until yesterday I was willing to concede at least the chance that he had a plan, and that if he did, it was a plan based on more information than I could possibly have.

But today, all I feel is betrayed. See, I didn't expect Obama to work miracles. I wasn't looking for him to fix the world or walk on water. But he promised he was going to repeal DOMA, not defend it in gratuitously offensive and degrading terms.

And see, I believed that promise. I didn't have a timeline I was holding him to, like some LGBT activists. I wasn't sitting here going, me. First. Now. But as Nietzsche said,"What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you."

I'm 50 years old. I've seen a lot of things. But I believed him when he said DOMA had to fall, and now I don't believe anymore. And few things hurt like that.

The Stonewall Rebellion, 40 years later

Sometimes I fall in love with one of my own articles. Like this one, which I wrote for 365Gay.com on the 40th anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York, which marked the birth of the modern GLBT rights movement:

It was 1969, on a hot New York City summer night – the hottest June night in history. The police had just raided one of the only places in New York City where same-sex couples could dance together, a crappy Mafia club with watered-down booze and a sideline in blackmail.

The cops didn’t expect any resistance at all. It’s not like this was the first time they’d raided a gay club or even this particular club; this was their second raid on the Stonewall Inn that week. Their normal procedure was to check IDs, make a few token arrests, and send people whose gender they weren’t certain of into the restroom for examination by a policewoman.

No one ever objected or resisted, and the lucky ones who were allowed to leave got out of the area as quickly as they could, grateful not to have been arrested.

But not that night.

Activist Cleve Jones and transgender activist and actress Calpernia Addams spoke with me for the article, and you can read it here.

Actually, yes, it is hate... what Prop 8 supporters don't want to understand

Nothing makes Prop 8 supporters itch and wriggle and object like this does:

It's the "H8." Whenever we use it, you see, they say they don't hate us. In fact, they almost beg us to believe that they don't hate us, they support traditional marriage, or it's just their religion or their belief system or how they were raised, blah blah blah.

They say they don't hate us, but they seem to be confusing "hate" and "anger," or possibly "hate" and "violence." I'm not saying everyone who supports Prop 8 and laws like it burns with anger at us (although some of them do), nor that they feel like bashing in our brains (although some do).

No, what I mean is that a feeling that someone is less than you, that he or she is abnormal or not fully human, that their love is not the same as your love, that their desire to bond with another person is a perversion -- and that you, as the holder of rights, should be allowed to deprive them of theirs due to your disapproval of their existence is, in fact, hate.

Yes, you do hate us. And if that makes you feel uncomfortable, good. It should.

How's this for an equality soundbite?

"We seek nothing more and nothing less than equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states."  -Cleve Jones

Hey, Equality California: Voting on rights is wrong

A sincere and very patient young woman named Erica just called from the office of Equality California. She wanted to know if I would volunteer to go door to door in a nearby town, talking to voters about marriage equality.

"It's the only way we'll win our rights," she read earnestly from her script, "by changing hearts and minds. Will you join us?"

"I don't think you want me," I told her. "I'm not thinking it's a good idea to go around begging people to give me what should be mine by right. And I'm really, really angry now, and I don't think you want me talking to people about this."

She understood, she said. They were all upset, too. Maybe I'd consider driving other volunteers down there, instead?

I told her I didn't think so, that I wasn't sure I thought we should go back to the ballot on this at all. I said I thought voting on people's rights was wrong, even if we won. Even though I think we probably would win.

"Thanks for your time," she said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," I told her. "And good luck."

The dogs of equality

Yesterday at the "Day of Decision" rally for marriage equality in San Francisco, I noticed what an extraordinary number of dogs were there standing in solidarity with the lesbian and gay community on this important civil rights issue.

I've long been grateful to our straight allies, but this support, cutting as it does across the species line, means the world to me. I particularly welcome the support of the pit bulls, who, one must acknowledge, know a thing or two about second class citizenship.

Thank you, dogs of equality! Believe me, I'll be there to stand for your rights, too!

Note from a second class citizen

"I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they'll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward.. come out.. say 'enough'.. and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help." ~Harvey Milk

Tomorrow is the Day of Decision; does that make today the day of apprehension?

If you'd asked me 15 minutes ago what the California State Supreme Court's decision on Prop 8 tomorrow is going to be, I'd have given you a very balanced answer to the effect that the Court could go either way for a variety of reasons which I'm sure I'd have then proceeded to outline in great detail, all in tones of the most profound detachment.

In the last quarter-hour, however, I discovered that would have been utter bullshit. I was reading a LGBT political blog in which a casual comment was made that the "conventional wisdom" among activists right now is that the Court will leave Prop 8 standing but allow the 18,000 people who married before it passed to remain married.

And despite the fact that this opinion has no more basis than my earlier one, or a thousand other opinions from anyone else, despite the fact that no one actually knows what will be announced tomorrow, it slammed into my gut like a kick from someone wearing steel-toed boots. I literally couldn't breathe for a second.

And that's when I realized I've been thinking they'd overturn it.

This is exactly what happened with Prop 8 last November. If you'd asked me what was going to happen, I'd have told you that it was impossible to know, it could go either way, blah blah blah, but when it passed, my shock told me loud and clear I'd never really believed it.

And I guess right now I don't really believe, down so deep even I can hardly access it, that the California State Supreme Court may decide that it's legal, acceptable, and constitutional for my rights as a citizen to be stripped away by a popular vote.

I wrote a while ago that my anger at the passing of Prop 8 frightened me. I wish you could see my hands right now while I'm typing; they're shaking.

Friday: Netroots Nation New Media Summit, and Day of Silence

On Friday, I'll be at the Netroots Nation New Media Summit here in San Francisco, but I won't be liveblogging it or updating about it on Facebook or tweeting about it, because tomorrow is the Day of Silence in support of LGBT youth and their safety in school.

The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Each year the event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.

See you Saturday!

Get to know us first: What I missed during the inauguration yesterday

All over California, in every county that voted to pass Prop 8, one or more of these genuinely astonishing public service announcements from GetToKnowUsFirst.org aired during yesterday's televised inauguration coverage. (That's why I, who live in San Francisco, didn't see them.) They introduced viewers to several same-sex couples and their families.

The first one features an African-American couple with four kids. One of them is in Spanish and profiles a Latino couple with two adopted daughters and a big, supportive extended family.

Tag line? "Marriage promotes families. Support marriage equality. GetToKnowUsFirst.org."

The PSAs were shown in 42 of California's 58 counties, on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Despierta America (Univision), Levantate (Telemundo), CNN, FoxNews and many local stations. Only one television station declined to air them -- in, of all places, Los Angeles, where KABC decided the first ad, featuring two African-American dads and their four children, was too controversial to air, get this, when families are watching.

Maybe the people at whom they're aimed will hate them. Maybe they'll make things worse. Maybe they're exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know. What I do know is that they're entirely different than anything we've tried before, and at this point, that has to be good.

I think my favorite one is the first one, with the Latino couple a close second. It's in Spanish, but I followed it easily with nothing more than high school Spanish and living in California my whole life.

The one with two lesbians, no kids, and their dogs didn't work for me, even though really, it should have, because, well... dogs.

So tell me, hetero readers. I know you're all beautifully liberal and support my equality under the law, but you probably still have a bit more objectivity on this than I: do you think these are effective messages? Clearly they won't reach true haters; will they reach anyone?