Tonight at 5:45, President Obama is going to sign an executive order extending benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees. I’m getting conflicting reports on what this means for health benefits – hopefully that gets clarified before the signing ceremony.
I’m glad Obama is finally making a move on gay rights, but I’m still disappointed that DADT and DOMA action are being punted who-knows-how-far down the field. Giving same-sex couples the basic right to be open about who they are and have their relationships legally recognized has always seemed like a no-brainer to me. Having said that, the fact that DADT and DOMA still exist is not what really bothers me at the end of the day; the president might be capable of multitasking, but the practical side of me knows that if Obama tried to get rid of them right this second, he could pay for it dearly by having the homophobes in Congress drag their heels on health care or economic reform.
What does actually bother me is that we don’t really know when he’s going to take action. If he were to get up and say, for instance, “Listen, we’ve got to get health care reform done, and then I can fix this,” I think that would go a long way to tamping down some of the anger in the gay rights community. On The Rachel Maddow Show a few weeks ago, Ana Marie Cox (in a video whose link eludes me at the moment) noted that from her conversations with White House officials, they are sincere in their desire to get rid of DADT, but they’re doing a shitty job of articulating their strategy. That got underscored this morning when Sen. Harry Reid gave a press conference whose subtext was “we don’t really know who is in charge of repealing DADT – the White House or Congress.”
Well…they should probably get that straightened out ASAP.
