Gay Anger at Obama is Boiling Over

We were talking about this last week, but the story is not going away. The mainstream media have been picking it up, it's all over the talk shows. The Obama administration seems to have abandoned its campaign promises to gay and lesbian Americans -- worse than that, the administration appears to have turned on them.

From CBS News:

The anger from gay rights advocates toward President Obama is starting to boil over.

On Monday, Joe Solmonese, the president of the establishment gay rights group The Human Rights Campaign, sent an angry letter to the president objecting to the decision by the Obama Justice Department to file a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

"I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours," Solmonese wrote. "I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you."

The Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, mandates (1) that the federal government not recognize same-sex marriages and (2) that states not be forced to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

Mr. Obama vowed to repeal DOMA as a presidential candidate but he has not taken any action to do so since becoming president. The Justice Department brief calls the legislation a "valid exercise of Congress' power" and says it is "reasonable and rational for Congress to maintain its longstanding policy of fostering this traditional and universally-recognized form of marriage." Obama Faces Gay Groups' Growing Anger

I saw Howard Dean on the Maddow show last night talking about this Justice Department brief. I can't quote his exact words, and I don't think the transcript is up yet, but he seemed to be saying that this approach was a mistake. He was trying to make it sound like Obama himself probably didn't know anything about this, that the problem is caused by Bush-era staff in the Justice Department (as I recall, it was late and I was tired). Whatever, the new guy is blowing it left and right here. He campaigned on a set of promises and the gay community jumped behind him and supported him. There was some complaining when he invited Rick Warren to the inauguration, you might say it set off a few alarms, but I think people expected him to follow through with his promises, or at least create the appearance of trying. I for one took the Rick Warren incident as a sign that the administration was going to try to be bipartisan, to heal the divisiveness that tore the country apart for the previous eight years.

He goes onto single out a portion of the brief referencing a case involving "marriage of uncle to niece" to support the Justice position.

"I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings and as families when we read an argument, presented in federal court, implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones," he writes.

After the brief was filed, Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that while the president has said he is committed to repealing DOMA, "until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system."

But the president, who is wary of opening up a fight over social issues that could endanger his ambitious agenda on health care and other issues, has not asked Congress to do so. And as blogger and gay rights advocate John Aravosis points out, Justice has chosen not to defend laws in the past, undercutting the implication that the department had no choice but to do so.

This Justice Department argument is bad enough, but that's not all the story.

As CBSNews.com reported earlier this month, the president has also declined to take action on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibits gays from serving openly in the military, despite campaign promises to do so. While the administration has suggested it is working with the military to repeal the policy responsibly, the Pentagon says there have not been any serious discussions along those lines.

Many of the staffers in the Obama White House also served under President Bill Clinton, and they remember well how much political capital taking on gay rights cost Clinton early in his administration. But while gay rights advocates signaled sympathy to those concerns early in the Obama administration, their patience appears to be running out. (The picture above comes from a gay rights rally late last month.)

It should be noted that there do appear to be efforts on behalf of gay Americans in the works: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday he is looking to pass hate crimes legislation before the August recess, and the extension of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees is said to be on the way. But these are widely viewed as significant but relatively minor potential victories, and are not likely to quiet the growing anger among gay advocates if they do go through.

When you talk to the people who aren't complaining, they say that maybe Obama plans to implement some of the policies he promised, maybe he has too much to do right now, maybe gay rights are on the back burner. But in the meantime the administration is taking an aggressive anti-gay position, kicking gays out of the military as fast as they can find them, arguing the far right's points on marriage. Hope is feeling, to a lot of people, like foolishness.