http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/06/12/mainstream-gay-groups-to-obama-fuck-you Comments On: Big Gay Groups To Obama: <em>Fuck You</em> by Dan Savage en-us Copyright 2009 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0800 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by sex toy]]> Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:42:41 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Gemstone]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:11:39 -0700 The Stranger Posted by jallen0347]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:48:18 -0700 The Stranger Posted by jallen0347]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:48:13 -0700 The Stranger Posted by imy]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:56:37 -0700 The Stranger Posted by avery84]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:59:33 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Paz]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:33:42 -0700 The Stranger
I, like many other gays, supported Hillary and then John McCain. Why? Because Obama has a record of deceitfulness (see caucuses and Rev. Wright rhetoric) and homophobia (see Gavin Newsom snub, etc...) Also, John McCain would NEVER support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and he strongly supports civil liberties for all. In addition, as a moderate federalist, he believes gay marriage should be left up to each state. He is NOT GWB, as the dems wanted you to believe. Not even close... Anyway, what's done is done and here we are...exactly where I knew we would be.
Posted by conductenor]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:55:41 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Anne]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:04:05 -0700 The Stranger
Completely NOT surprised by what's happened. My take has been Obama's a very smart man with great charm and overwhelming ambition. And based on those he has chosen to surround himself with (think back) I suspect he's homophobic and anti-Semitic.

During the election I became a PUMA democrat - the party will no longer hold me hostage with the vague threat of how much worse it will be without them.... while they perpetuate the same shit they accuse the Republicans of doing. Same way they manipulate women with the threat of Roe v Wade being overturned, while at the same time engaging in and endorsing unrelenting misogynistic bashing of both female candidates. Nope - not holding me hostage to my uterus anymore "sweetie".

It was a corrupt election and I was horrified to see the way "my" party behaved. Fuck you DNC.

And Obama? Did anyone pay any attention to the number of issues he flipped on during the campaign? NAFTA? Public financing? Cuba? FISA? and on and on and on...Of course his record shows... uh... nothing much. except he's very good at running for office. The response was generally "he's just saying that to get elected (he doesn't really mean it), just wait - once he's in the White House..." Of course after the election it was modified to "he has a lot on his plate, just wait - once he handles these other issues..." At some point it will be "his first term was just laying the groundwork, just wait - in his second term he'll really start to make CHANGE happen..."

Yeah. Right.


Posted by LAMusing]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:18:57 -0700 The Stranger Posted by seabady]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:20:30 -0700 The Stranger
Come join us at http://theobama-whitehouse.com and start voicing your concerns.
Posted by puntarenus]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:35:25 -0700 The Stranger Posted by allhailmary]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:03:37 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Lonnie]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:57:36 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Lonnie]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:53:37 -0700 The Stranger Comment: Sherry Wolf

To win gay marriage, we need a divorce

Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation [1], looks at a critical question for the struggle for same-sex marriage.

May 26, 2009

POP PSYCHOLOGY has long had a term for the political marriage between LGBT people and the Democrats--it is a dysfunctional relationship.

The Democrats court the votes and money of gays and lesbians, but offer few gains and a stunning share of abuse in exchange. For those LGBT activists wooed by the Democrats, ditching the more militant strategy that got Democrats swooning in the first place for a don't-rock-the-boat approach is the price to play in this torturous display of unrequited love.

While we await the decision of the California Supreme Court on whether or not to uphold the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 on May 26, it is worth taking stock of the political strategy activists have largely adhered to in recent decades. Collaboration with the Democrats, the so-called "party of the people," has impeded progress, not helped it.

Thirty-five years have passed since gay civil rights legislation was first proposed in Congress. Yet LGBT people remain an unprotected class of citizens by the U.S. Constitution. Whereas the denial of the rights of gays to work for the federal government, for example, was carried out with the stroke of President Eisenhower's pen in Executive Order 10450 in 1953, no such swift action has been taken to overturn decades of institutional discrimination.

Since the birth of the modern LGBT movement out of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the Democrats before Obama controlled the White House for 12 years under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. For a lot of that time, both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats as well.

But during this time, as well as under Republican administrations, the Democrats have been opportunist at best, and hostile at worst.

Little compares to the treachery of the Clinton administration. A masterful public speaker capable of Academy Award-style performances of empathy, Clinton could famously "feel your pain," but apparently could not alleviate any of it.

Clinton came into office promising an end to draconian laws against gays in the military. He caved after four days and signed into law what is perhaps the only known order by a commander-in-chief for gays and lesbians to march back into the closet. While initially perceived as a more benign form of discrimination, his policy--known as "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue"--has allowed for a witch-hunt of tens of thousands of military personnel and the discharge of more than 12,500 LGBT people from the military.

Nearly six years into his presidency, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 11478 providing partial relief for lesbian and gay federal employees--not including the 3 million military personnel.

But his action left intact sodomy laws (not overturned by the Supreme Court until 2003), anti-same-sex marriage legislation (which he signed) and the military's unequal status for LGBT people (which he introduced), and it didn't take up the rights of those who are transgender (who experience the highest rates of violence, unemployment and discrimination of any sexual minority). All this exposes the severe limitations of the electoral route for winning civil rights for LGBT people.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TODAY, THERE'S something profoundly disturbing about Barack Obama, the son of a Black man and a white woman, using the racial segregationists' call for "states' rights" when it comes to same-sex marriage.

All the more so since the California court--in initially overturning the state's gay marriage ban in May 2008 and legalizing same-sex marriage until the passage of Prop 8--cited as precedent the 62-year-old decision that overturned anti-miscegenation laws and opened the door for Obama's own parents' legal union.

If Barack Obama--one of the most popular human beings on the face of the planet--were to use his bully pulpit to push legislation (or sign an executive order) that would sweep away all institutional barriers to the freedoms and civil rights of LGBT people, it could be done.

That would be that. LGBT folks would have formal equality--as do women and Blacks--and the state would no longer be able to lend its imprimatur to antigay bigotry.

But this is not going to happen without a massive mobilization of grassroots activists in the streets and sitting in--to challenge the centers of power, including the Democrats at the helm.

Journalist Matt Bai, writing in the Sunday New York Times, cites a Quinnipiac poll showing that 60 percent of Americans under the age of 34 believe it is discriminatory to deny equal marriage rights--and concludes that "the gay rights movement...can now seem obsolete."

Bai is wrong. LGBT civil rights activists cannot operate as if we are the only ones trying to shape the debate in this country. The right wing has proven time and again that it has the money, power and seemingly limitless ability to spew noxious lies in order to get its way. Thus, opinion polls last fall showed Prop 8 was headed for defeat until the right mobilizaed a public campaign in California to discredit gay marriage as a threat to children and religious autonomy.

There is something tempting about the belief that LGBT civil rights like marriage are inevitable. After all, even John McCain's campaign adviser, Republican Steve Schmidt, has come out for gay marriage, and more and more politicians--including Barack Obama--stare at their shoes as they mumble that tired line about their belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Yeah, right.

But the public opinion that is gnawing away at the politicians hasn't shifted on its own. The increasingly positive poll numbers toward sexual minorities is a magnificent expression of how ordinary peoples' actions, not those of politicians, can alter popular consciousness.

Decades of silence, hostility, equivocation and near paralysis by leading Democrats regarding LGBT civil rights is proof that protest and activism--not pleading for whittled-down legislation and waiting for politicians--is the route to progress.

Even in Illinois, the first state to overturn sodomy laws in 1961, gay politicians like Greg Harris defend tepid, second-class legislation for civil unions over gay marriage as the more "realistic" strategy.

Harris' bill, called the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, even caves to lie that LGBT people are trying to force religious institutions to solemnize same-sex unions. No church has ever been required to officiate at ceremonies it doesn't agree with, nor will one ever be. The hand-wringing language in this legislation is unnecessarily apologetic to the right.

In California, the statewide equality group, Equality California, is hemming and hawing over whether to even push for a new pro-gay marriage ballot measure in 2010 in the event that the state Supreme Court upholds Prop 8. The organization is wary of harming the Democrats' midterm election chances, rather than demand they pass civil rights legislation.

Here, it's useful to remember the words of historian Howard Zinn in a recent speech published at SocialistWorker.org:

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary.

To win equal marriage--and pursue all other civil rights--LGBT activists and our allies need to slap the Democrats with divorce papers and organize independently. As sex advice columnist Dan Savage would put it: DTMFA--dump the motherfucker already.
Posted by Lonnie]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:51:15 -0700 The Stranger Posted by support the war? Go enlist, pussy Savage.]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:32:06 -0700 The Stranger haha
you very funny boy!
Posted by gop]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:14:10 -0700 The Stranger Posted by mdg1111]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:00:33 -0700 The Stranger Posted by tlh_nyc]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:48:15 -0700 The Stranger
I know that might be hard to fathom while standing on a bar shaking your tickle-tackle at all your mates, but you are not, to be polite, of great interest to most of us.
Posted by Stupid White Man]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:17:53 -0700 The Stranger Posted by T99]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:20:56 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Jizz-a-belle]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:36:42 -0700 The Stranger
Bottom line: I voted for Obama because I wanted a more equitable tax system, health care for me and my children and a foreign policy that involved something other than starting wars. A lot of gay men voted for Palin because they wanted favors for the rich and could care less about health care for kids. If you want me to get really, really worked up about the DOJ memo, then you might want to prove to me that you care about my rights too.
Posted by mdg1111]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:01:55 -0700 The Stranger Posted by David In Bisbee]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:38:49 -0700 The Stranger