The Politically Dispensable Faggot

I recommend that you read all of this article by Elizabeth Schulte. I want to highlight the following parts, which parallel one of the arguments I made in "We Are Not Freaks," concerning the profound damage done to the cause of genuine acceptance and equal rights by "nice liberals" and similar types.

Schulte writes:

The comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Peter Pace speak volumes about the bigotry against gays and lesbians that flourishes in the upper ranks of U.S. military.

Speaking about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays and lesbians, Pace offered this in an interview with the Chicago Tribune: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies, 'It's okay to be immoral in any way.'"

...

The "Don't Ask" policy went into effect in 1993 as one of the first acts of the newly elected Clinton administration.

When Clinton ran for election in 1992, he promised he would repeal the existing policy of excluding gays and lesbians from the military. He made this promise after several veterans of the first Gulf War broke their silence and made public announcements of their sexuality to protest the existing antigay policy.

Expectations were high that there might be significant progress made on gay rights. But Clinton broke his promise almost immediately after winning. Instead, he introduced "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993.

He tried to explain it away by arguing that, "Because [the military] is a conservative institution, it is right for the military to be wary of sudden changes...it is also right for the military to make changes when the time for change is at hand."

Clinton's duplicity didn't stop there. In 1996, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that barred the federal government from giving any legal recognition to married gay couples. DOMA denies lesbians and gays some 1,000 federal rights and benefits that married heterosexual couples have--ones with often life-altering consequences, like being able to sponsor a spouse who is not a U.S. citizen for permanent residence.

In the absence of any real pressure from gay rights activists and comfortable in the calculation that he would have the support of the liberal gay and lesbian organizations whose focus is elections, Clinton decided to satisfy his supporters on the right.

"In retrospect, 'don't ask, don't tell' was an astonishing act of political cowardice," Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone magazine. "Telling gay men and women that they had to hide who they were in order to earn the privilege of getting shot at for our idiot military adventures was almost worse than open bigotry. It essentially institutionalized the Closet."

Today, the first instinct of the leading Democratic presidential contenders is to skirt the issue of gay rights.

Hillary Clinton initially responded to questions about whether she agreed with Pace that homosexuality was "immoral" by telling ABC's Jake Tapper, "Well, I'm going to leave that to others to conclude."

She quickly readjusted, saying she opposes "don't ask," but used the most conservative arguments to do so. "This policy doesn't just hurt gays and lesbians," she told a meeting of the Human Rights Campaign, "it hurts all our troops, and this to me is a matter of national security, and we're going to fix it."

Sen. Barack Obama followed Clinton's dodge when a Newsday reporter asked him whether he agreed with Pace. "I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters," he said. "That's probably a good tradition to follow."

Later, he cleared up his position (sort of), stating, "I don't think that homosexuals are immoral any more than I think heterosexuals are immoral" in an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live.

But the incident is telling about who leading Democrats see as their audience. Neither Clinton nor Obama want to anger social conservatives.

John Kerry took the same attitude in the 2004 election. At the time, he was getting advice from Bill Clinton, who suggested he support ballot initiatives that would ban gay marriage from state constitutions in order to get the conservative vote, according to Newsweek.

...

When it comes to fighting for gay rights, the Democrats may want to sit on the fence. But there's no room on that fence for anyone committed to equal rights for lesbians and gays.

Read the entire piece.

See also: George W. Bush: Traitor

We Are Not Freaks

The "Visionary" Obama: As Rotten as the Rest of Them