DU has spent a considerable amount of energy focusing on the President's formula of being both for absolute equal rights for all, his support for 'marriage compatible' civil unions and his 'spoken' opposition to same sex marriage.
This is a good thing. It is the messy part of the Democratic Party, its' conscience wrestling with itself.
Some supporters of the President have tried to paper over the President's position in order to diminish the inconsistencies.
Given that 'Brown versus the Board of Education' has already established that ANY separation is an inherent diminution of status it must be accepted that the President's position lacks 'consistency' and we should not try to defend it.
The President's position is inconsistent, it is a pretzel.
Every President maintains some inconsistent positions, including great PresidentsOrdinary Presidents regularly employ such inconsistent pretzels, Republican Presidents like W was a pretzel from the day he took office until he left.
But even the greatest Presidents maintained convoluted positions
President Roosevelt In 1942 FDR signed executive order 9066 to intern Japanese-Americans that lived in Washington, Oregon and California.
The reason that FDR signed the order was because a Beck like nut job, General DeWitt ignited racial hysteria against the Japanese:
I don't want any of them
here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.<[br />
The superficial reason for the internment was worries about espionage. The real reason was economic, either for gain or to express resentment.
What made this such a particularly painful 'pretzel' for those of us that have a deep affection for FDR and his huge contribution to history is that we now know that there was never a concern about Japanese espionage. If you remember TORA TORA TORA you will remember the factual accounting of how American code breakers had already broken Japanese codes and SOS Hull had already read the declaration of war before the Japanese had delivered it.
While virtually all of the Japanese (and to qualify as Japanese you only had to have one great grand parent to qualify) in Washington, Oregon and California (where no serious espionage existed) only 1% of the 150,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii (where espionage was real) were interned.
LincolnCan there be any greater Presidential pretzel than the Emancipation Proclamation. Drafted and kept in a drawer for a year waiting for a Union battlefield victory so that it would make it look less opportunistic this great step in American history was a great principle wrapped in blatant political manipulation.
It freed only the slaves of those states who were in rebellion against the Union. In order to placate the border states and not provide a reason for them to join the Confederacy their slaves would remain legal.
GLBT anger at President Obama's compromise on acceptance of civil unions as a substitute for same sex marriage This is a righteous anger.
We have seen this kind of anger before.
Would you tell Malcom X to control his feelings or modulate his expression? That is a confrontation that I would have paid to see.
Would you tell Gloria Steinem to be happy with the pace of incremental advancement? Again a viewable smackdown.
Anger by the oppressed for the continuation of its second class status is a welcome sign. In the American context is has often been the penult step before full legal civil liberties have been achieved.
Anger from the GLBT community, whether at DU or Log Cabin Republicans is useful for the Democratic Party. It keeps us aware and stiffens our resolve. I certainly have been informed by the anger of DUers of GLBT DUers. I am sure it has made me a better Democrat and as many much better Democrats at DU would be able to advise any device that makes grantcart a better Democrat is badly needed indeed.
My message to GLBT DUers I DO NOT FEEL your pain. Your pain has been purchased by the personal experience of rejection, marginalization, patronization, discrimination, intimidation, objectification and mocking hypocritical moral condemnation.
I will not add to that pain by further patronizing you by pretending that any straight person in Amercian could understand its particular sting any more than I would tell an African American that I have felt their pain.
I will try to understand it and take it seriously.
In order to understand it I will listen to it.
I listened before.
I listened to what you have said about President Obama.
I will listen in the future.
I will try not to dismiss your arguments but give them weight and consideration.
If I do not comment I ask that you consider that I am listenting to it, appreciating it and even though may be at a loss to engage your comments, I will always reach out to you as a person.
In listening it has occured to me that it is possible that one of the reasons that this may be particularly painful for some GLBT DUers is that because no national figure like Dr. King or Malcolm X has emerged to become a nationally recognized leader of the community and so in supporting the President some may be doubly hurt because they invested personal support in him hoping that he would atleast partially fill that void and become not just a supporter but a national spokesman for their cause. That this could be a further reason to feel cut off as a person makes me sad.
As I still support the President and that remains absolutely unshaken I hope that you will see that as a particular charachter fault and it means that I do not abandon my friends and allies lightly and that the same fault means that there are no circumstances that I would consider myself less an ally of GLBT interests even if you consider my position inadequate.
To the supporters of the President It is not necessary that in supporting the President that we unravel every pretzel.
I have no absolute answer why the President has accepted a position that is quite obviously contrary to the broad principle against seperate regimes that the Board of Education settled but it has to be accepted that it is a compromise on an important principle.
The judgement of President Obama's effectiveness on the issue of equal rights for GLBT will be decided on DOMA, DADT, increasing presence of GLBT in prominent government positions and increasing the federal government's response on issues where it is directly responsible. My guess is that by focusing on an unshakeable committment to equal rights and limiting himself to those things that are directly related to the federal government the President has determined that he can get more done than by taking a higher profile in non federal issues. In the end the judgement, like LBJ, will be made on what he actually gets passed.
GLBT folks that I know don't expect that straights will have all the same opinions on all the same issues. They do have an expectation to be taken seriously.
Fredric DouglassFredric Douglass was bitterly disappointed in Lincoln.
He was disappointed that after Sumter slavery wasn't made the issue.
He was disappointed that AA soldiers received lower pay and were not originally used in combat.
He was disappointed that once being promised a commission as an officer and then having had it revolked without reason.
On the night when the Emancipation Proclomation was to be delivered he said
"We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky...we were watching...by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day...we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries."
Instead of a bolt he got a pretzel but it was still a giant step forward.
After each of Douglass' disappointments he would stop recruiting Blacks for the Union Army. As the pain receeded he went back out and recruited tens of thousands of Blacks to join the Union cause.
The reason is because he knew that the reason that Lincoln had to jump through hoops and have half measures was not because this was Lincoln's preference but because of people who owned slaves.
On April 14, Fredrick Douglass spoke to both the bitter frustration that Lincoln provided to the African American community and their latter understanding of the man Douglass would
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=39He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.
. . .
Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.
It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States. Despite enourmous disappointment the coalition remained together and committed. Douglass real enemies were those that would sacrifice anything to prolong slavery.
And in the same way, through situations that may leave some "grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered" we stay absolutely committed to defeat the reactionary forces in this country that are committed to stoping the full and complete implementation of all civil rights for all.
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