Asterisk

Almost nine months ago, John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay of AMERICAblog initiated their “Don’t Ask Don’t Give” campaign, asking LGBT people to stop funding Democratic party campaigns until they actually make a concerted effort to keep their promises. I finally found a chance to join the cause last week when I received a fundraising email signed by Brad Woodhouse, Communications Director of the DNC. Below is my response to his donation request.

Mr. Woodhouse,

In response to your request for a small donation, I must unfortunately reiterate what so many others have said in the last few months. The Democratic party will not see one penny from my pocket until and unless substantial gains are made in the field of LGBT rights.

In 2008, the LGBT community helped give you the White House, the House of Representatives, and a super-majority in the Senate. What we’ve discovered is that there is little difference between a Democratic-led government and the Republican-led government of five years ago. Instead of taking a clear and decisive pro-civil rights stance, you thanked us by running the other way and choosing ***anything*** but LGBT civil rights.

• You punted repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, with a compromise that doesn’t actually repeal anything, has yet to be voted on in the Senate or signed by the President, and reportedly is being considered for veto by President Obama.
• You’ve put off the Employment Non-Discrimination Act until it’s logistically unlikely this year, with Speaker Pelosi characterizing the bill as “controversial” rather than rallying Democrats around this clear issue of civil rights.
• Repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act isn’t even being considered, no matter how many times President Obama says he’s “urged” Congress to do so.
• Ending the discriminatory anti-gay blood donation ban has been discussed and rejected with no real push from the DNC to follow the science and penalize risky sex rather than responsible gay men in monogamous relationships for thirty years.
• Bids to institute state-wide marriage equality have failed in part because of the lack of leadership and funding from the DNC, most notably in Maine last year.
• Even a bill to offer safety to all school children has failed to find congressional footing because members of Congress get squeamish at the bill’s specific mention of LGBT kids who are many times more likely to be bullied, depressed, isolated, and suicidal than their straight peers.

So no. You will not get my money, you will not get my time, you will not get my voice, and you will not get my vote until you show me that you consider my rights as important as yours.

Candidates who have shown leadership for these completely reasonable LGBT demands retain my support and vote, but until I see substantial leadership and not excuses from the national party, my response remains the same:

NOT. ONE. CENT.

Cordially,

Matthew D. Algren

For far too long, Democrats have viewed LGBT people as nothing more than a committed source of funding and a reliable voting bloc. It’s time to teach them that we’re more than that.

Take the pledge.

Here’s why.

Last night, the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee made a historic vote against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. By a count of 234-194-10 and 16-12 respectively, both legislative bodies added an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that would set up a structure to end DADT.

In the House, the rhetoric was thick. Here, for your edification, is an only slightly biased Point/Counterpoint from the floor.

Point: By Representatives Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN), Todd Akin (R-MO), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Buck McKeon (R-CA).

Counterpoint: By House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

To be clear: The House did not vote to repeal DADT tonight. Neither did the SASC. In both cases they voted to add an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that creates a structure for possible, potential, if-a-bunch-of-other-conditions-are-met repeal of DADT.

Even if we get over all those hurdles and tick all those boxes, even if/when DADT is repealed, lesbian and gay soldiers will not be permitted to serve openly in the military. Rather, we’ll return to 1993′s status quo where military policy will not permit lesbians and gay men to serve openly.

There is hope–I think quite reasonable hope–that President Obama will take care of that as soon as Congress’s procedure is completed, but we need to stay on message. This fight won’t be won until LGB people are permitted to serve with honesty and integrity, just as their straight counterparts are required to do.

In other words, it’s not Woo-Hoo time. Cork the champagne, put away the noise makers, and tear down the “Mission Accomplished” banner. We have at least 8-12 months of actively fighting Republican attempts to keep discrimination alive (including a vote by the full Senate in June) before we can declare victory.

On yesterday’s edition of ABC’s World News Tonight, Bob Woodruff hosted a segment about Jeff Sheng‘s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell art exhibit/ photobook. He recently took portraits of currently serving lesbian and gay servicemembers whose lives have been changed by DADT, with their identities obscured and faces hidden.

Sgt. Anthony Bustos, one subject of the photobook entitled “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Volume I”, took the opportunity to come out of the closet. With six months left in his enlistment, the Army medic (previously known as “Matt” of Lubbock, Texas) wanted to explain why he would not be reenlisting.

[edit: ABC has deleted the video; here's the transcript.]

Sgt. Bustos’ coming out (congratulations!) comes in an important week for DADT repeal. This is a loooooong post, but we have a lot of important ground to cover. Stay with me!

On Monday morning, someone at the White House noticed that DADT repeal was going to be pushed whether they liked it or not, and got to work crafting what is, as Jeremy Hooper at Good As You points out, best described as a compromise of a compromise.

Compromise #1: The LGBT community wants repeal and open service now, and the White House offered a year-long study on implementation with the possibility of open service voted on next year.

Compromise #2: Congress (after a little prodding) wants a vote in 2010, so now the White House is giving support to a vote this week with implementation after several conditions are met at a later, unspecified date.

photo by Jeff Sheng

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin rooted through the proposed amendment yesterday and learned that indeed it does not directly permit gays to serve openly in the military. The amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill begins with several steps:

1. The implementation study already underway must be completed and turned in to Defense Secretary.
2. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must tell Congress that the Defense Department has prepared regulations for implementation.
3. They must also assure Congress that the Military-Industrial Complex won’t go blooey if lesbian and gay soldiers are allowed to talk about their spouses and kids.

photo by Jeff Sheng

At that point, DADT will officially be repealed. BUT. The amendment does not include a provision requiring the government to allow lesbian and gay soldiers to serve openly. Rather, by only striking DADT, the policy will simply be moved from the legislative branch back to the executive branch, where it was until DADT was passed in 1993.

Next the commanders of the military will presumably implement a regulation permitting lesbians and gays to serve openly. Given how deeply anti-gay animus continues to be with older commissioned officers, that’s not a presumption I’m terribly comfortable making.

The best-case scenerio, of course, is that once the ball is squarely in his court, President Obama will issue an Executive Order requiring the military to allow lesbian and gay soldiers to serve openly using the regulations that were prepared in Step 2. This would to a certain extent mirror President Truman’s order to integrate African Americans into the military with 1948′s Executive Order 9981. I just hope the President has enough foresight to go a step further than Truman and include a deadline. We don’t want it to take another military disaster to force integration.

photo by Jeff Sheng

Remember, it’s important that the amendment be placed by the Senate Armed Services Committee before the Defense Authorization Bill goes to the full Senate. This lowers the bar considerably, since it would then take 60 votes (assuming filibuster) to remove DADT repeal, a threshold that the Senate would be much less likely to meet. The committee vote and the full Senate vote are expected this week. Word from the House of Representatives is that they indeed have the votes to pass repeal as early as next week.

But before we break out the champagne and celebrate a major victory, it’s important to remember that this compromise, if passed, is only a first step. We aren’t there yet, and as Lt. Choi said in a video released by GetEqual last night, we can’t celebrate until and unless lesbian and gay servicemembers can serve openly without fear of losing their jobs.

As so many have said, the best chance for DADT repeal is inclusion in the Defense bill. No action this year would mean that DADT probably wouldn’t be repealed for another generation, and this compromise would remove that concern, or at least decrease it. Let’s face it, a watered down and incomplete version of an earlier watered down and incomplete version with several strings attached and no deadline may be the best we can get.

This right here is why I hate politics.

I will say this, though. If this compromise passes and President Obama kicks it down the road again, there won’t be enough jails to house all the homos lined up on the White House fence.

And yes, I’m volunteering to be the first.

(All photos by Jeff Sheng from his photobook “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Volume I”. Buy it here. Hopefully we’ll see their faces in Volume II.)

The Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld finally got Obama Spokesman Robert Gibbs to confirm what we’ve known for several months.

Despite indications (not promises, just indications) to the contrary, President Obama will not push Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell until after the Pentagon’s study on how it would enact repeal is finished. That study is not due until after mid-term elections this November, and it’s important to note that nobody expects the Democratic majority to hold. Some are even predicting that Republicans will take over the majority in the House.

The President isn’t interested in DADT repeal until December 1, 2010 at the very earliest, and the possibility of DADT repeal being debated, submitted, and voted on in both the House and Senate in the six weeks between December 1 and the start of the new session in January is exactly nil.

All of this despite the fact that congressional sources indicate that we have the votes in the House and are only a few away in the Senate. All of this despite the fact that according to every scientific poll taken in the last year, a ridiculous majority of Americans across most segments of the population (including conservatives) think DADT should be repealed. All of this despite the obvious fact that the most likely shot at repeal comes with its inclusion in the defense authorization bill to be released in May.

The bottom line is that President Obama doesn’t want DADT repeal to be an issue in this year’s congressional elections, and that in 2012′s presidential election, DADT is more valuable to him intact than it is repealed. Campaigns in somewhat conservative districts won’t be bothered with having voted for LGBT rights this year, improving the Democrats’ chances this November.

Then he begins his 2012 presidential campaign, in which he points at the Republicans who kept DADT repeal from happening in 2011-2012, having mitigated 2010′s conservative district problem with the national scope. He’ll be able to agree with most Americans that DADT should be repealed, making it either a non-issue or a positive issue in his campaign. He gets the gay vote with the same strategy he used in 2008. If he gets reelected, he can get to DADT sometime in his second term or not, depending on the makeup of Congress in 2013.

It’s a cynical strategy to be sure, but it’s the one I think he’s going with.

And he wonders why we’re hollerin’. (And will continue hollerin’. We aren’t going down without a fight.)

Many people thought that GetEqual would let the dust settle after Monday night’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell protest in California. Many people were wrong. Oh, how they were wrong.

Tuesday afternoon, Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. Jim Pietrangelo, who cuffed themselves to the White House fence in protest of DADT, were joined on the fence by four other veterans.

From left to right, the six servicemembers were Petty Officer Autumn Sandeen (Trans advocate and Pam’s House Blend barista), Lt. Choi, Cpl. Evelyn Thomas, Cpt. Pietrangelo, Cadet Mara Boyd, and Petty Officer Larry Whitt. These six servicemembers represent all branches of military service. (GetEqual grand poo-bah Robin McGehee is below on the right.)

This was a peaceful and relatively small protest, but the DC Park Police went absolutely nuts, closed the park, pushing the crowd of mostly tourists and the media back several blocks, much further than is customary. It was really nervous-making for a bit there; historically, bad things happen when governments prevent reporters from covering anti-government protests. Fortunately, John Aravosis of Americablog.com was present to film the pushback.

While the crowd and the press were being pushed back, officers began arresting the protesters. Three were gone before the media were let back in, with Lt. Choi and the other two arrested shortly thereafter.

Park Police spokesman Sergeant David Schlosser later fell on his sword for the action, blaming rookies in the force for making the decision. I have to say, it’s surprising to hear that rookies are guarding the White House and making major decisions like this in such a sensitive area. And I don’t see anybody who looks rookie-age in the video above.

Huh.

At any rate, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs addressed the police issue on Wednesday. (I’ll get to the rest of his comments in another post.)

Okay, so back to the protesters. Like last time, they were held overnight. (Does anybody know if that’s customary in DC? I have a hard time believing that it is.) They were arraigned Wednesday, with Sandeen, Thomas, Boyd, and Whitt being released and their cases closed under a “post and forfeit” agreement.

Choi and Pietrangelo were arraigned separately because of last month’s offense, and after sorting out a stay-away order, the judge set their trial on both offenses for July 16, 2010.

Metro Weekly‘s Chris Geidner posted these brief comments from several of the servicemembers outside the courtroom.

So was the protest successful? I think so. The issue is being talked about, and it’s definitely on the President’s radar now. People are asking why the President is absent on DADT repeal this year when he was so adamant about it in January.

Between the pressure of the California protest directly to President Obama and the DC protest at the White House, the President’s script is being questioned and it has become less politically savvy to ignore LGBT rights. I don’t think we’re there yet, not by a long shot, but we’re quite a bit closer than we were Monday morning.

As for Lt. Choi, he’s back in New York for Army training this weekend.

Released from DC Jail, judge orders stay away from WH. Going to Army training wknd tomorrow.

— Dan Choi (@ltdanchoi) April 22, 2010