Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Give Us Money or We'll Continue to Do Nothing for Your Cause!

So last week there was this idiocy:

President Obama called the Defense of Marriage Act "abhorrent" on the campaign trail and won praise from gay rights advocates for promising to reverse the whole act, not just one section.

But for now, Americablog finds, his Justice Department is defending it as the law of the land — and defending it forcefully, with analogies to incest and child marriage.

The government's motion to dismiss is below; here's John Aravosis:

It's pretty despicable. And before Obama claims he didn't have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we'll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was "abhorrent."


Pretty disgusting stuff. Also probably not the time for this:(Image via Pam's house blend)


We've actively turned our back on promises to fight for your rights... now give us money! The good news is that big names have started make their discontent known with their wallets, the only gesture that politicians truly understand:

Two prominent gay figures, activist David Mixner and widely read blogger Andy Towle, have pulled out of a Democratic National Committee fundraiser later this month amid growing calls to confront the administration at what was supposed to be its first large scale opportunity to bring in gay cash.

"I will not attend a fundraiser for the National Democratic Party in Washington next week when the current administration is responsible for these kind of actions," Mixner wrote of a motion to dismiss a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act that drew a parallel between same-sex marriage to incestuous marriage. "How will they ever take us seriously if we keep forking out money while they harm us. For now on, my money is going to battles within the community such as the fight in Maine or the March on Washington! I am so tired of being told by Democratic operatives to 'suck it up' because so many other profound issues are at stake," Mixner wrote.

"I've had concerns about the lack of movement from the administration on LGBT issues for some time now but I wasn't comfortable attending after that DOMA brief came out," Towle, who writes the widely read Towle Road blog, said in an e-mail.

And today a few bigger names dropped out, a sign that the whole fundraiser might be scrapped according to John Aravosis of Americablog:
It's over, folks. A lot of us have been saying that if Marty Rouse, the Human Rights Campaign's National Field Director, were to pull his attendance from next week's DNC $1,000 a person gay fundraiser, then the fundraiser would effectively be dead. Well, HRC official Marty Rouse just pulled out as a result of the White House's homophobic DOMA brief in which they equated gay marriage to incest.

The DNC was hawking the attendance of "HRC's Marty Rouse" for a few weeks now, among other gay luminaries, in order to build attendance at the event.
It's great to see this kind of push back, and it needs to be a lesson for the rest of the progressive movement on how to effectively pressure your side into action. Chaos like this makes politicians think twice before enraging their supporters, and that's always a good thing.

1 comment:

  1. yeah, this is pretty disappointing. more groups need to start registering their displeasure, and soon, or there's a good chance obama will be remembered as a disappointing one-termer whose only real strength was driving the conservative rank and file mad on a daily basis.

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