Musing's musings

"How many years..."

"...can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?"

Bob Dylan penned those words the year before I was born, but they ring just as true today. But it's the next couplet from "Blowin' in the Wind" that's on my mind today:

Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?

That's what I'd like you to tell me, President Obama. How many times are you going to keep turning your head and pretending that you don't see the signs telling you that your silence on gay rights has gone on far too long? How many times are you going to send insincere notes of condolence to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines that you sat idly by and let be discharged from the military under a policy that you promised to end? How many times are you going to suck up to the forces of hatred and bigotry and division, in the misguided hope that you might be able to gain their support?

And how long, gay and lesbian and bisexual Americans, are we going to sit idly by and let him get away with this kind of crap? This man came to us, time and again, for money and for support during his two-year campaign for the presidency. And we showed up, time and again. He promised us that he would be a "fierce advocate" for our rights. Can we honestly say that he has even tried living up to that promise? No. For proof, I invite you to examine the White House web site. Can you find any page there, or even a bullet point, that speaks to a single gay rights issue? I've looked and looked, and I can't.

UPDATE: OK, taylormattd at Big Orange caught a boo-boo. There is actually some language on that page about gay rights issues. Not much, however, as he pointed out, and not that the president has actually gotten around to doing anything about any of the issues he listed there.

We have, yet again, been used and tossed aside by a politician who has cynically calculated that we will just swallow the outrage and come crawling back in two or four years when he will again ask for our time, our talent, and our treasure. In all likelihood, he will again cynically promise to do better on our issues this time. Many of us will believe him.

I, however, will not be among them. Because unless I see some concrete action on one or more of the following, Barack Obama will not even get my vote in 2012, much less any more concrete forms of my support:

Mr. President, I need your voice

The following is an e-mail I sent to the White House last night:

To quote your recent e-mail to me, Mr. President, I need your voice. You wanted me to speak up in favor of your health plan. Well, Mr. President, I want you to start speaking up on gay rights. You and your staff keep telling me how fierce an advocate you are on gay rights. When were you planning to start proving those repeated assertions? Vermont legalizes gay marriage--you say nothing. Iowa legalizes gay marriage--you say nothing. The Department of Defense fires an Arabic linguist because he's gay--a policy you promised to do away with--and you say nothing. The California Supreme Court twists itself (and the law) into a pretzel to uphold an amendment saying that only marriage between one man and one woman is valid, but the 18,000+ marriages that don't fit that definition and that took place before the amendment was enacted are still valid. And you say nothing.

Are you starting to see a pattern here? I sure am.

Now, I'm not surprised at the shape of that pattern. I was never under the impression that you were a liberal or a gay-rights supporter. But an awful lot of your supporters kept telling me that you were both, and that if I'd only wait a little while longer, you'd show me how wrong I was.

Well, Mr. President, I've been waiting for forty-five years thus far. Just how much longer do you think I'm going to have to wait? Because, as happy as it makes me to be able to rub the noses of those people who told me you'd be a great president for gay rights in your failure to live up to that promise, I would be far happier to have them rubbing my nose in my epic fail after you stepped up to the plate and proved me wrong.

A common excuse that's offered in your defense is that you've just started your term and there are plenty of huge problems on your plate to handle, so gay rights will just have to wait. My answer to those people is one I'm sure you're familiar with, because it's from Martin Luther King's famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease .... For years now I have heard the words [sic] "Wait!" ...This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

I'm not waiting any longer, Mr. President. And if you expect to keep my vote in 2012, you won't, either. Show me some concrete progress on those issues you campaigned on, and we're OK. But keep putting me off with empty words and insincere promises, and I'll be looking for a better candidate to support in 2012.

I'm not expecting any reply, directly or indirectly. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

I won't be going to California any time soon

Yes, the outcome was what I anticipated it would be: upholding Proposition H8, but also upholding the 18,000 marriages that took place before it was approved. That still doesn't mean I'm inclined to do anything that supports the ignorant people who voted (albeit narrowly) in favor of that bigoted piece of misguided legislation.

I haven't had a chance to read all of the 186-page opinion (I managed to download a copy before the servers crashed), but I have to say I'm not thrilled by the Court's reasoning thus far. And I'd love to see how they managed to twist themselves into pretzels to come up with a ruling that (a) upholds the validity of the 18,000 existing same-gender marriages and (b) at the same time upholds the constitutional amendment that says, quite plainly, that only opposite-gender marriages will be considered valid in California.

The silver lining in this particular dark cloud is that the decision is likely to trigger an appeal to the federal courts, which could poke our allegedly "fierce advocate" of a president into taking some real action on getting rid of DOMA at the federal level so those 18,000 California marriages might mean something in the other 49 states even if they don't mean anything where they were performed. And I do think California voters will be voting on this question again in 2010, though hopefully this time those of us who recognize that separate most definitely is not equal will do a better job of presenting our case and pointing out just how many lies and half-truths the other side is putting out there.

But until this odious claptrap is removed from the California lawbooks, I won't voluntarily be setting foot in that state.

The last full measure of devotion

The image is of the Freedom Wall at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. I took the picture the last time I was there, a couple of years ago this coming fall. Each of the 4,000 gold stars on the wall represents 100 Americans who gave their lives in that war, and today is the day on which we collectively pause (or should, in between the barbecues and the baseball games) to remember their sacrifices.

Today's a day on which I find myself thinking of C. Valerius Catullus who, long ago, had to make a perilous journey across the Mediterranean to the Troad, where his brother was buried. He wrote about it as follows:

multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras frater ad inferias
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi
nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale.

Carried past many peoples, across many seas,
I come, my brother to these doleful rites,
That I might give you at last this gift in death,
And to speak in vain to mute ashes,
Since Fortune has taken you yourself from me.

Oh, poor brother snatched unjustly away from me,
For the time being do you now accept, wet with
Fraternal tears, these things which ancestral custom
Has handed down as the sad gift for the dead,
And for all eternity, my brother, hail and farewell.

--C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina ci, my translation from the Latin