Gays still face blatant bias
It is both stunning and enraging that the last two Democratic presidents have promised great changes but delivered the same centrist pablum on many important issues. The villains: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Obama, like Clinton, promised while campaigning to abolish the ignominious anti-gay military policy of don’t ask-don’t tell. In office Clinton and Obama reneged. Now Obama defends indefensible bigotry and discrimination.
He calls the policy “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.” He buys the military argument that gays undermine morale and esprit de corps.
Under the anti-gay policy the Pentagon has discharged 12,000 soldiers. About 800 of those let go were especially valuable as specialists in Arabic.
The policy wastes talent. It also wastes money training people to be fired.
The Supreme Court is also obtuse, refusing to review a case of discrimination against Army Capt. Jim Pietrangelo. Pietrangelo, fired under the policy, served six years in the Army and fought in Iraq.
“This decision is an absolute travesty of justice,” Pietrangelo pointed out. “The justices should be ashamed of themselves. It is nothing short of rubber-stamping legalized discrimination.”
If the military is so worried about sexuality it should focus on the shocking number of rapes women soldiers suffer from men soldiers.
Boobus Americanus
We hear much blather from politicians about the “wisdom” of the people. The truth is otherwise. The people are so often wooden-headed.
Case in point: the voters of California enacted an absurd law that someone goes to jail for life after committing a third felony, even if that “third strike” is as harmless as stealing a few videos. Murderers, on the other hand, are often paroled after 10 to 15 years in jail.
Or take gay marriage. The people of California voted it down. The votes was un-Christian, opposing love and happiness.
The California Supreme Court, after first ruling that gay marriage was constitutional, reversed itself. It ruled 6-1 to sustain the “wisdom” of the people.
Judge Carlos Moreno had it right in dissent. He wrote that the majority “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority.”
There you have it: that dread tyranny of the majority. In a democracy the people rule. The people, however, are often asses.
As Moreno noted in his dissent: Proposition 8 requiring “discrimination against a minority group…strikes at the core of the promise of equality” in the state Constitution.
Or look at referendums in Colorado and Maine where the voters approved anti-gay and lesbian laws.
Nevertheless, the worldwide trend is to approve gay marriage. Norway is the most recent nation to become enlightened on the issue. But tradition-bound America, arguing against a fundamental right, might take 50 years to come to its senses.
A recent poll by the New York Times and CBS shows just 42 percent of Americans approving same-sex marriage. But it is never a question of what polls show. The point is what is right. Gay marriage is right.
Katha Pollitt in a Nation article wrote: “All this fussing about stabilty and children are smokescreens for deep emotional, irrational aversion to homosexuality.” She is so right.
Julian Bond, distinguished battler for black rights for decades, was angered by the California vote. He wrote:
“The state that proudly declares ‘the future starts here’ took a backward step while reinforcing the truism that minority rights should never be subject to a popular right…What is at issue is the arbitrary denial of a civil right to some people.”
Obama turncoatism
On this issue too Obama is crushingly disappointing. He strongly favored gay marriage while campaigning. Yet now his administration files a brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act. The brief falls back on the hoary argument that hetrosexual marriage is the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.”
Gays are understandably outraged at Obama turncoatism. As Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, puts it: “I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings…when we read an argument…implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones.”
Obama threw a tiny bone to gays, extending benefits to same-sex partners in federal jobs. But: he left out the more important health and retirement benefits. Obama, the Man of Hope, is as retrograde on gayism as G.W. Bush.
Obama, like Clinton, promised while campaigning to abolish the ignominious anti-gay military policy of don’t ask-don’t tell. In office Clinton and Obama reneged. Now Obama defends indefensible bigotry and discrimination.
He calls the policy “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.” He buys the military argument that gays undermine morale and esprit de corps.
Under the anti-gay policy the Pentagon has discharged 12,000 soldiers. About 800 of those let go were especially valuable as specialists in Arabic.
The policy wastes talent. It also wastes money training people to be fired.
The Supreme Court is also obtuse, refusing to review a case of discrimination against Army Capt. Jim Pietrangelo. Pietrangelo, fired under the policy, served six years in the Army and fought in Iraq.
“This decision is an absolute travesty of justice,” Pietrangelo pointed out. “The justices should be ashamed of themselves. It is nothing short of rubber-stamping legalized discrimination.”
If the military is so worried about sexuality it should focus on the shocking number of rapes women soldiers suffer from men soldiers.
Boobus Americanus
We hear much blather from politicians about the “wisdom” of the people. The truth is otherwise. The people are so often wooden-headed.
Case in point: the voters of California enacted an absurd law that someone goes to jail for life after committing a third felony, even if that “third strike” is as harmless as stealing a few videos. Murderers, on the other hand, are often paroled after 10 to 15 years in jail.
Or take gay marriage. The people of California voted it down. The votes was un-Christian, opposing love and happiness.
The California Supreme Court, after first ruling that gay marriage was constitutional, reversed itself. It ruled 6-1 to sustain the “wisdom” of the people.
Judge Carlos Moreno had it right in dissent. He wrote that the majority “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority.”
There you have it: that dread tyranny of the majority. In a democracy the people rule. The people, however, are often asses.
As Moreno noted in his dissent: Proposition 8 requiring “discrimination against a minority group…strikes at the core of the promise of equality” in the state Constitution.
Or look at referendums in Colorado and Maine where the voters approved anti-gay and lesbian laws.
Nevertheless, the worldwide trend is to approve gay marriage. Norway is the most recent nation to become enlightened on the issue. But tradition-bound America, arguing against a fundamental right, might take 50 years to come to its senses.
A recent poll by the New York Times and CBS shows just 42 percent of Americans approving same-sex marriage. But it is never a question of what polls show. The point is what is right. Gay marriage is right.
Katha Pollitt in a Nation article wrote: “All this fussing about stabilty and children are smokescreens for deep emotional, irrational aversion to homosexuality.” She is so right.
Julian Bond, distinguished battler for black rights for decades, was angered by the California vote. He wrote:
“The state that proudly declares ‘the future starts here’ took a backward step while reinforcing the truism that minority rights should never be subject to a popular right…What is at issue is the arbitrary denial of a civil right to some people.”
Obama turncoatism
On this issue too Obama is crushingly disappointing. He strongly favored gay marriage while campaigning. Yet now his administration files a brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act. The brief falls back on the hoary argument that hetrosexual marriage is the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.”
Gays are understandably outraged at Obama turncoatism. As Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, puts it: “I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings…when we read an argument…implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones.”
Obama threw a tiny bone to gays, extending benefits to same-sex partners in federal jobs. But: he left out the more important health and retirement benefits. Obama, the Man of Hope, is as retrograde on gayism as G.W. Bush.
posted by Jake Highton | 7:32 AM
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