Shutting Down the DNC’s gAyTM

Closed gAyTM

The current meltdown in Iran is giving cover to the massive shutdown of the DNC’s gAyTM.

Next week’s GLBT DNC fundraiser is in shambles: Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) are the handful of openly gay Congresscritters who are obvious attendees.

The DNC itself is spinning the expected mega-disaster GLBT protests as a sort of “game” or part of the already scheduled entertainment for the evening.  Keeping in mind that the GLBT community is furious with the DNC; Andrew Tobias, the national DNC’s treasurer who is openly gay, spits out an E-mail blast that includes the expected GLBT protests as a sham by pretending to be part of the entertainment:

From: “Andrew Tobias”
To: “‘Andrew Tobias'”
Cc: “‘Tom Petrillo'”
Subject: quick one – for New Yorkers
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009

Ah, the opportunities:

TOMORROW:
Meet our great Jared Polis tomorrow from 7pm to 9pm, along with his Congressional baseball buddy from NY s 25th district, Congressman Dan Maffei. Hope to see you there (150 Central Park South #2104). Click here to contribute ($250 / $100 young professional) and RSVP to andrew@polisforcongress.com.

THURSDAY:
Whether you come with a sign . . . (STOP FIRING ARAB TRANSLATORS!) (CIVIL MARRIAGE = CIVIL RIGHT!) (EQUALITY NOW!) . . . or come to help fund the tools we need to help move the President s agenda, which includes +our+ agenda . . . board the Acela and come to dinner with the Vice President of the United States. Click here. (Or here if you can t come but want to chip in.) Or how s THIS for a strategy? Contribute — but stand outside with a sign! We ll keep a plate warm for you and buy you a drink afterward, when the cameras are gone. We are, after all, all on the same team.

NEXT SATURDAY:
A +very+ small lunch in the Pines with New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Email me.

SATURDAY, JULY 11:
WATER VOLLEYBALL WITH THE CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE, Barney Frank. Click here. (You can just watch and drink if you don t want to play.)

Enjoy the summer — and enjoy the progress. We re winning.

Andy

Thanks for the “Freeway-Finger Flip-Off”, Andy!  Back at you, Buddy!

The problem: Few people are going to be attending.  It’s an embarrassment for the Presidency who campaigned for two years of broken promises and the Vice President expected to be the keynote.

GBLT bloggers everywhere are yelling the message loud and clear: Stop the money, and stop the support for the DNC.

The Obama Administration offered breadcrumbs to the Gay Community by offering same-sex benefits for federal employees via a “presidential memorandum“.  (Really?  The gays get a freaking “memo”?  Is that all the Gay Community means to this President?    …A freaking “memo”?)

The “memo” has three problems that are patently obvious:

1. The program that offers these benefits to those GLBT federal employees expire at the end of Obama’s four year presidency. Who smells a GOP-sponsored “Puppet Presidency”?!
2. If 2% of the US population are federal employees, the program Obama has offered applies to only 3% of those employees.  Federal employees in the DOJ, US Military and the Pentagon are excluded in that same memo because it would require legislation from Congress.  Yet, there are no plans for Congress to look into the matter…nor are there any discussions that have begun.
3. There’s no definition of what those “benefits” will be. Health care? Continuing Education benefits? Shared retirement accounts? There’s nothing defined and the White House isn’t willing to discuss those details.   My personal opinon: The benefits being offered are just as pathetic and Obama’s apathy towards Daniel Choi’s train-wrecked military career.

The offer was an intelligent-distraction for the Gay Community from Obama’s blatant apathy towards the stack of promises made to us on his campaign trail.

Again; from the NY Times:

President Obama and his advisers have been reluctant to wade deeply into divisive issues like overturning a ban on openly gay military members or extending benefits to partners of government employees, fearful that such moves could overtake the administration’s broader agenda.

~~~~~~~~~~~
With the administration’s decision to stop short of extending full health insurance benefits or calling for legislation to do so, it remained an open question how significant the presidential announcement would be, Mr. [Clinton advisor on GLBT issues Richard] Socarides said.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.

Personnally; I don’t think Obama’s “Gee-Whiz Memo” helped.

A brief review on what brought up this DNC Gay boycott – now in full-swing:

• In California, two federal appeals court judges said that employees of their court were entitled to health benefits for their same-sex partners under the program that insures millions of federal workers. But the federal Office of Personnel Management has instructed insurers not to provide the benefits ordered by the judges, citing a 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act.  In other words, DOMA is being used by the Federal Courts as nothing more than a patsy.   It’s convenient for the Federal Government to discriminate against the gays for financial goals – as long as DOMA sits on the books.
• The Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, in response to those California cases that are now sitting in front of the United States Supreme Court, fired off a “memo” supporting DOMA at the expense of the Gay Community. For example:

The brief insists it is reasonable for states to favor heterosexual marriages because they are the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.” In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, the Justice Department cites —>>decades-old cases<<— ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an “uncle and a niece“.

Comparing Gay and Lesbian Relationships to marriage between cousins or an uncle and a niece pisses me off to no end. Is the President of the United States that shallow?  Did the United States of America elect a bunch of dumb-witted pedestrians that are so pathetic that they would paint the entire GLBT community as a bunch of hicks?

Does the Obama Administration expect to hear “Dueling Banjos” playing in the background when they come around our house while we’re in the backyard mowing the lawn and pruning our tomato plants and weeding our radishes?  …Expecting Bubba in the front yard playing hoola-hoop with a tractor-tire?  Does the Obama Administration think a gay and lesbian household’s outdoor activities include “toilet-seat horseshoes”?


Why is the Obama Administration allowed to stereotype our Gay and Lesbian relationships and not get called out on it.  I thought Obama had moved past the idea of stereotyping “The Fags”.  Wasn’t that the true mesage behind all of that “Change” bullshit?


Obviously, I was wrong.  If I was going to be just as pedestrian as the President on stereotypes, should I begin with regular meals at the White House served black-eyed peas and chitterlings?  What a disgusting thing to say in front of the United States Supreme Court – that my relationship with my life partner is equivalent to a uncle marrying a niece.


• Daniel Choi, 1st Lieutenant,  US Army, an Arabic-translator and West Point graduate went on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC television show and “Came Out”. Subsequently, he was dishonorably discharged for it and the Obama White House ignored the issue as badly has he ignored  Jena-Six last year.when he was on the campaign trail.

Robert Gibbs, on the subject of 1st Lt Daniel Choi on the subject of DADT:

Obama appears to have an agenda that serves him first – and everybody else second (if it’s convenient for him).

Let’s talk about the Human Rights Campaign, because they have put themselves in an integral part of this debacle.

HRC bailed on next week’s GLBT Fundraiser for the DNC.   Shortly after Obama’s “mega-memo” submitte dto the US Supreme Court, Joe Solmonese, HRC’s Chair, has scuttled Obama’s gloss over over the whole issue with a scathing letter that mainstream media decided to consider last week.  Citing Obama’s DOJ “memo”, Solmonese squares off with:

Because all 50 States recognize hetero-sexual marriage, it was reasonable and rational for Congress to maintain its longstanding policy of fostering this traditional and universally-recognized form of marriage.

Solmonese responds to the statement:

The government does not state why denying us basic protections promotes anyone else’s marriage, nor why, while our heterosexual neighbors’ marriages should be promoted, our own must be discouraged.  In other words, the brief does not even attempt to explain how DOMA is related to any interest, but rather accepts that it is constitutional to attempt to legislate our families out of existence.

Now I’m going to hold Solmonese responsible for this debacle because he was involved in the first place.  Nobody is finger-pointing at Solmonese as being part of this disaster, except for me.  Solmonese is a sell-out.  Period.

Solmonese ran for cover when it was revealed that he met with the President and decided to kick issues like DOMA and DADT down the political road sometime in mid-November.  Nothing coming out of Joe Solmonese should be taken as truthful in my view.  He got caught playing games, Obama agreed and went along with those games and Solmonese has made himself into a patsy. Barney Frank admited in April that DADT wasn’t expected to be discussed until 2010 at the end of those meetings between Solmonese and Obama.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Thursday that Democratic leaders won’t push to repeal the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing gay service in the military until 2010. “I believe we should and will do ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ next year,” said Frank, a co-chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Equality Caucus. “We haven’t done the preliminary work, the preparatory work. It would be a mistake to bring it up without a lot of lobbying and a lot of conversation.”

Tammy Baldwin (R-WI) chimed in as Congresswoman Milquetoast:

“We don’t even know the votes in committee, let alone the votes on the floor. … So I think the prediction it will not happen in calendar year 2009 is probably accurate,” said Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who is also openly gay and a co-chairwoman of the LGBT Caucus.

Solmonese ignored these statesments because he was in on the take to kick the “gay agenda” down the political calendar.  The “Lt Dan Choi” story has been going on for two months now and HRC has done little to nothing about it.  In fact, it was Senator Chuck Shumer (D-NY) who told a leaders within the GLBT community that HRC  had recommended not prioritizing DADT in exchange for other legislative issues they had looked forward to.  (Joe Solmonese denies the allegation, of course.)

If Joe Solmonese is ignoring these comments coming from the two Co-Chairs of the  House Equality Caucus, ignore 1st Lt Dan Choi who’s career is getting trainwrecked, but suddenly wakes up once Obama’s DOJ memo hits the steps of the United States Supreme Court, then Joe Solmonese needs to step down from his position for sleeping at the wheel. He can deny Senator Shumer all he wants – but actions (and inactions) speak much louder than words.

Democrats hold a majority in the United States House, a very skinny filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate, and they own the United States White House.   And here’s  our GLBT Congresscritters chewin’ their fingernails over whether or not they can get a vote out of committee – let alone out of the United States House of Representatives.

With polls showing 70% in favor of killing DADT and New York Congressman John McHugh (R) who now serves as Obama’s nominee as Secretary of the Army agrees that DADT is uesless.  McHugh said to the RollCall just two weeks ago:

“I have no interest as either a Member of Congress or as … secretary of the Army to exclude by some categorization a group of people otherwise qualified to serve.”

The Democrats in Congress and the White House needs to pony up their debt to the GLBT as we have faithfully and financially ponied up to them for the last 40 years.   And, sorry – abut a “memo” just doesn’t cut it.

My wallet to the DNC and the DFL is closed.  Next Sunday, the average fair of Democrats are going to be marching down Hennipen Avenue in the 40th Anniversary of Gay Pride – I will not be cheering for any of them.

Happy Gay Pride, America!