Defending the Indefensible DOMA

"In recent years, several States have guaranteed gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry as a basic civil right."

Right off, I feel nauseous reading this opening volley in the current Justice Department's Brief filed in the US District Court Case challenging the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act." It sickens me since I know where this is leading.

This is how you start an argument against same-sex marriage as a basic civil right?

It is the height of cynicism, worthy of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or George W. Himself, to assert that the issue at the bottom of all this is no issue at all - and never was.

This business about "several States [having] guaranteed same-sex couples the freedom to marry" sets the disingenuous tone of this argument, which is carried through the entire brief:

"You uppity perverts should just shut the hell up and be grateful that a few backward states have so graciously - but wrongly - granted you the right to offend us 'real' Americans with your existence and to mock our real marriages-made-in-heaven with your godless fake ones!"

Such heartfelt sentiment was to be expected from the Bush Administration. But - appallingly - it seems to have spilled over into the allegedly gay-friendly Obama Justice Department.

It is, in fact, partly the work of one W. Scott Simpson, a Bush holdover (Mormon by coincidence?) who is named as Senior Trial Counsel on page 1 of the brief filed June 11, 2009.

Since that filing just weeks ago, other Repugnicans have used different language to convey the same sentiment and to advance the same political agenda. In Pennsylvania, for instance, State Sen. John Eichelberger (R. Bumphuk County), has introduced a Constitutional Amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the commonwealth. When asked in an NPR interview if the state's only policy toward same-sex couples should be to punish them, Eichelberger relied on his Repugnican talking point cheat sheet to declare, "They're not being punished! WE'RE ALLOWING THEM TO EXIST," damn it!

No big surprise, perhaps, in the land of "man-on-dog" Santorum to hear a Repugnican saying such things out loud. But what the hell is the Obama Administration and a Democratic-controlled Justice Department doing using those same talking points in a case against DOMA? Isn't this is one of the federal benchmarks of institutionalized homophobia that Obama vowed to use the full force of his office to repeal?

Fanning the flames of outrage over Obama's crass betrayal of his LGBT supporters on this key issue was the Administration's quick response to the initial uproar that only began to surround it. Disturbingly, vocal criticism of this action was quelled by deft political manipulation of the media by Obama's White House response team.

Due to the tedious legal language of this motion it took a few days for anybody to digest and convey to the rest of us how truly damaging its implications are to the struggle for LGBT civil rights. A few days was time enough, however, for Obama and his handlers to smack together a headline-grabbing proclamation of some "positive" crumb they could toss out there to distract their fuming LGBT constituency while at the same time not draw too much blow-back from the repugnant right. What they came up with and announced with enthusiastic fanfare is that partners of LGBT federal employees will now be eligible for spousal benefits!

Flash! Boom! Brilliant! Take a bow, Mr. President. A grateful queer nation thanks you for allowing us to exist in your government. And the Repugnicans of 2009, having become inured to our existence on this planet, will raise no fuss since this small gesture is clearly devoid of any meaning or substance and it can just as easily be undone.

The Fed's granting of spousal benefits is not just mimicking what most private sector employers of any size have already been doing for decades. It is actually just little more than a totally empty gesture since it lacks the single most important measure granted by other employers - health insurance coverage! (I don't know what LGBT spouses do get out of the new acknowledgment of their existence - maybe an invitation to the annual employee picnic?)

But the maneuver worked. The media bought it, hook line and stinker! Nary a peep in the press about how the LGBT civil rights movement may be set back by decades if Obama allows the offensive action of his Justice Department to go forward and if it succeeds in supporting the constitutionality of DOMA. And now, if the straight majority catches any word about the LGBT population being at all upset with our liberal President then WE come off looking like a bunch of whiney ingrates!

There is so much wrong with this deeply offensive motion and the politics surrounding it. So much has been written about it already by legal scholars and critics, some of whom are ardent LGBT Obama supporters. If the President does not soon and strongly disavow it (preferably firing Simpson and Co. in the process) then we can only assume that this is where his true sentiments lie. Regardless of the elegant lip service he pays to us when he needs our votes we will have to see him as being no more enlightened than the most repugnant Bush Administration official.

How can we not feel as though we've been made fools of again?

The crass cynicism of the motion does not stop with opening clause, of course. It carries all through the long and twisted brief painting a background scenario of the issues in the dankest tradition of historical revisionism. Reading through the motion you are asked to suspend your disbelief and ignore the turbulent experience that brought us same-sex lovers to this contentious point in our long struggle for equal rights. You are, in effect, asked to swallow the fantastical idea that the State legislatures of this great nation have spent the last decade or so reasonably and civilly considering the idea of encoding same-sex marriage into their laws on a benevolent "experimental" basis.

In this Bizarro World scenario it was not a hard-fought civil rights trench battle - declared a "culture war" on "perversion" by opportunistic Religio-pugnicans in the 1980s - that has actually raged on the public scene for over forty years. We have not been oppressed by ignorance and hatred for centuries, or claim to have ever been victims of mass violence, murder and often driven to suicide. We were never a people forced to deny our deep personal identities and conform impossibly to societal roles enforced by the tyranny of majority opinion. And we are not now forced to accept an inferior legal status steeped in religious tradition and other irrational forms of prejudice.

It is, in fact, only a deep but baseless sense of heterosexual entitlement that continues to deny homosexuals our rights to life, liberty and our pursuit of happiness as American citizens. Homosexual activity was decriminalized in America in 2003 but homosexuals in relationships are still oppressed by the assumed supremacy of those who claim to be purely heterosexual. But this boast is obviously a lie perpetrated even by self-righteous closet cases who enforce it until caught having homosexual relations themselves.

The sense of this brief in support of DOMA is that our benevolent state governments, in their wisdom, voluntarily looked down upon their citizenry and discovered that people were forming "nontraditional" relationships among themselves. The states apparently saw this and wondered how they could help us. Their approach was to be "cautious" so as to preserve the peace of the land by not upsetting those citizens who might not understand. A few states were chosen or volunteered to act as "laboratories" where the novel concept of tolerance would be tested using those poor misguided souls who wanted to "marry" each other (for goodness sakes!) as guinea pigs.

After the opening clause, this is how that concept is introduced in the Justice Department's motion:

"Yet, as same-sex couples in these States have won what they understandably view as a vital personal right of surpassing importance to their happiness and well-being, other States have reaffirmed the traditional understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman as husband and wife, an understanding held as a matter of profound moral and religious conviction by many of their citizens."

Since this is a case against the federal government, the Obama Feds are arguing that it should be dismissed on the grounds that the States, in taking on this "experiment in alternate forms of marriage," effectively relieved the federal government of any responsibility for its citizens in regard to marriage. It's the usual Repugnican cop-out, mouthed even by former VP Darth Cheney, that it should be up to the states to decide whether his lesbian daughter can have what he takes for granted as a non-lesbian everywhere across this country (think he really believes that?).

The most infuriating thing about all this is that the Feds did not HAVE to do or say anything concerning this case. Rather than going to the disgusting lengths they did - later using the tired old repugnancy of equating homosexual activity to incest, bestiality and child abuse - they did not need to file a brief at all. The original case, Smelt & Hammer v. USA, is a very weak one. It was never our best chance to defeat DOMA and it could be thrown out of court still on purely technical grounds.

The hearing for Obama's motion for dismissal of this suit is scheduled for August 3, 2009.

It can be withdrawn - and Obama should see to it. Pronto!

Repugnican Healthcare Horror Show!

Let's pause for a moment to check in on how goes the Repugnican campaign to convince us Americans that healtcare reform would not be good for us...


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Feel the O U T R A G E ? ! ! ! ! !

Since last Wednesday, June 10, I have been operating with blinders on, working on a super big deal deadline-driven project that required me to focus! focus! focus! for my day job. For six days I dutifully blocked out all background noise: TV off. No radio or newspaper. Only an occasional glimpse at the fleeting news alerts that popped up in my email, which I noticed when I had to check in to see if any communications had come in from the folks I was working with on this heavy loaded thing. The only time I was able to tear myself away from this task was when I could no longer focus my eyes and found myself stretching my fingers in pain and still hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard. When that happened I would creak away from my desk and plopped down in bed for a few hours rest only to jump back into the fire when I woke up.

You get the picture.

So, now that all that is behind me (for the most part) and I am ready to start catching up on those lost and foggy days, what happens? I find out that, during my work-induced stupor the equivalent of a freakin' nuclear bomb was dropped on this country's LGBT population. It happened last Friday!

How did I miss it? Where were the outraged queers I would expect to hear screaming in the street, their angry cries piercing the air and blasting through my apartment windows?

Our hope is lost! Obama has betrayed us!

His Justice Department mowed LGBT America down last week: kicked us to the curb, burned us to a crisp with the brief they filed in a suit brought against DOMA. A suit they came out on the wrong side of. OUR President, Mr. Hope and Bliss, who had pledged to destroy the hated beast, DOMA, has done worse than turn on us. With no warning or even a simple "by your leave," he has apparently joined forces with those who feed and worship the DOMA dragon that lives for one purpose and one purpose only - to crush us, the American LGBT population.

I can't bring myself to read too much about this disaster as my work is not yet completely done and this just pisses me off so bad that I am already STEAMING way too much about it. I cannot afford this upsetting imposition on my time just yet.

The best thing I could think of doing was to ignore most of the reports that are streaming through the cybersphere and to go right to the source so I could see for myself what it is that has everyone on the net buzzing with righteous outrage. I located a copy of the brief and began to read through it and - god damn it!!! - It's bad. Really really bad. I can't begin to think about how ripping angry I will get when I have the time.

In a couple of days, when I CAN afford to start processing this catastrophe, they are going to hear from me. Oh boy, are they gonna get a letter! Obama first. And then the boneheaded jerks who put their names to this brief - some nobody called Tony West (such a gay name!), who is Assitant Attorney General, and James J. Gilligan, Assistant Director (Little Buddy? Is this a joke?). Their names appear right under "Respectfully submitted" on the official Obama Adminstration brief, viewable at "Obama's Motion to Dismiss Marriage case."

Also taking responsibility for this brief is another big nobody, W. Scott Simpson, (Doh!) Senior Trial Counsel. His email is even listed right on the brief, scott.simpson@usdoj.gov and fax: (202) 676-8470. And phone: (202) 514-3495.

If anyone has the kind of time I don't have right now and if they want to vent their anger over this shit as much as I do, well, it seems like this guy is just asking for it by putting his contact information out there.

Repugnant Party Politics

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice is just one of the latest triggers to set the Repugnican Party trash-talk machine a-sputtering.

(Why is it that a nominee's personal experience, race or gender is only an issue when it is not a straight white male being considered? hmmmmm... Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito would never let their personal backgrounds influence the way they think or how they apply the law. No siree. It's a white thing. Minorities just wouldn't understand.)

Making such a significant decision that will shape the legal and social landscape of this country for years to come is one of the most powerful functions that the victor in any US Presidential campaign gets to perform. So it is perhaps no surprise that the biggest sore losers in the race would be going so totally spastic over Obama's pick, especially coming so soon as it does after the bruising the repugnant GOP took in the recent election.

Of course, you could pick any issue in the news of the day and relate this same observation about this New Repugnican Party: whatever the Obama-led Democrats are doing or proposing is automatically met by vicious knee-jerk opposition from the GOP's designated repugnant mouthpieces. And when it's time for a vote, the remaining elected Repugnicans in Congress, on orders from the home office follow the party line and "Just Say No."

In a democracy, the minority party (or more preferably parties) in opposition to the ruling party can always be expected to clash over differences in policy and ideology. But it is safe to say that no sitting President of any party has ever been so publicly vilified so quickly - starting from day one of this new administration. That Obama has not enjoyed the traditional "honeymoon" as prior Presidents have had with both parties is only undetectable because of the overwhelming support he has earned within his own Party - who, with the progressive independents who helped oust the despised Repugnicans eight months ago, now constitute the majority opinion of Americans.

Though not unexpected, the immediate full-blown obstructionist posture the New Repugnicans have adopted after the 2009 election signals something radically different in American politics from what we have ever seen before.

It is now obvious that their current stance represents no mere difference in vision among members of Congress in different parties and the Executive branch of government which can only be held by one party at a time. It is clearly the substance of a calculated political Master Plan devised by Repugnican Party strategists as a means to keep the extremist voter base emotionally engaged. Having let slip their monopolistic grip on power, they can ill afford to lose the only numerically significant voter base they have: those who can be easily manipulated to vote against their own self-interest simply by exciting their most irrational fears, prejudices, and undeserved feelings of entitlement.

The unconscionable political twist they have added is a provision of deniability to those elected members of Congress who actually have constituencies to whom they can be held accountable. You may have noticed that most Congressional Repugnicans, currently in office, tend not to speak out publicly with anything near the level of vehemence that their unelected mouthpieces do with no inhibition in the least.

In fact, most of the official rhetoric used in responding to the Democratic agenda - the floor speeches in the House and Senate - is empty at best. It is either pointless and bereft of any workable ideas or it consists of blatant regurgitation of the garbage that brought us to this point of desperation (i.e. "blah blah blah... don't tax rich people or corporations... blah blah blah.").

A look through the official Talking Points posted at GOP.gov is revealing in that it relays those points in the restrained way their party's legislators are commanded to address them in their official roles. You will not find there any off-the-wall sound bites like "We want Obama to fail!" But the crafty effect of the Talking Points overall is to frame every issue in baseless projections about the future effects Obama's agenda will have on the US economy if super-rich people have to continue paying taxes.

This provides the required cover for those schmucks who have the job of casting votes as elected Representatives to do so with no further explanation and the potential to say "I told you so" later when some of the measures do not fully achieve the goals set for them. At the same time the language in which they are stated allow the Talking Points to be picked up and run with by the designated mouthpieces at Fox News and elsewhere.

Of course, the Talking Points are primarily intended to have an audience of one: the syndicated Repugnican fathead, Rush Limbaugh, who has proved his seemingly super-unhuman capacity to cast the fearful projections in the most extreme light allowable within the rules of the FCC, which were compromised under the Bush Administration (for just this purpose?).

With few exeptions (the insane Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-MN springs to mind) Congressional Repugnicans are dutifully following the script and sticking to the role assigned to them. That is: to keep their mouths shut other than just saying "nay" (witness the totally partisan House vote on the first economic recovery bill).

As though by long-advanced planning it is now the function of those unbridled Limbaughs, Hannities, Becks and the whole Faux News gang of loudmouth idiots and unelected jerks WHO REPRESENT NO ONE but their commercial sponsors, to do the dirty work of keeping the base engaged until the next election cycle.

Even the token/puppet Repugnican leader, Michael Steele, was forced to bow his head in submission to the Master Plan and retract his critical remarks about the ignorant arrogance of Rush Limbaugh. Failing to bow down to Limbaugh would have thrown a monkey wrench into the plan and no doubt cost the hapless Steele his patronage job.

The unelected backroom Repugnican strategists - including their once-acknowledged evil-genius leader Karl Rove (Bush called him "the Architect") - have even applied a mid-level layer of deniability to their blueprint for rebuilding the Repugnican power structure.

Former office holders like the has-beens Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney are given a special role to play that ostensibly adds a level of credibility to the Repugnican cause since they have not yet signed any lucrative contracts with Fox News or another GOP propaganda organization. Since the Party cannot risk losing any more seats they currently hold, and since the ones filling those seats are only assigned one word to use ("no") these stand-in losers have to make themselves available to spout the party line on talk shows where they are interviewed by the has-beens who have signed up as talk-show "entertainment" hosts.

The Repugnican Mater Plan is a gamble, of course, that is firmly rooted in a confidence in the ignorance of the American masses. While the Democrats in and out of office have to look like they are actually trying to do something to fix the unfathomable mess they stepped into, Congressional Repugnicans just have to stand by and offer nothing but complaints about the partisan nature of the Democrats' actions (the nerve!) and just make sure to just show up and use their one-word vocabulary when the yay or nay vote is taken.

The only other complaint they make is that the President is trying to accomplish too much ("accomplishment" a forbidden word in their vocabulary and the idea of it is totally outside their realm of experience as highly paid "servants of the people").

The "unaffiliated" GOP mouthpieces on radio and TV are doing their part extremely well: conjuring the most extremely damaging, discredited and absurd fears about Obama's "socialist" agenda, among all the other ridiculous lies they make up on the spot. Of course, they are counting on the tried and true Rovian tactic by which the spewing of so much insipid crap, regurgitated as often as possible, creates solid truth in a calculated percentage of the thick ditto-heads of their listeners. This is how the Party will be guaranteed a reliable number of votes in the next election.

The rejected candidates who are assigned those stand-in roles in the game plan also deserve credit for dutifully mouthing and affirming the lies spread by those wired-in players on talk shows and taking the heat for those who still hold their seats in Congress. They have little to lose personally since they have been written off as potential candidates for office in the future, though this fact is contrary to the image they would like for themselves.

The Repugnican strategists are not interested in re-running those losers. Their past failures as politicians make them expendable pawns in the game. They can always find fresh meat heads to fill the roles of political candidates who can be thrust into the national spotlight that will be distracted by the novelty without having to repack all the known baggage of a Sarah Palin, say, or that dorky governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, who they suckered into following Obama's first major address and became an instant laughing stock.

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If you want to keep up with the Repugnican trash-talk sputterings but can't stomach the thought of actually listening to Rush Limbaugh's daily three-hour spew, the good folks at Media Matters for America are providing a real-time digest, dispatched by the hour, every day of the week. You won't believe this fathead's mind-boggling audacity! From what I can tell Limbaugh's role in the Repugnican Master Plan is modeled on that of Japan's Tokyo Rose during WW2.

Spinning The Proposition 8 Decision

The State Supreme Court Ruling in California legalizing same-sex marriage for those already married - but nobody else - should be proof enough that the left coast referendum process is fundamentally retarded.

This stupidly divisive waste of time and energy - not to mention $$ in this weak economy - ends up in a cop-out decision by the high court, guaranteeing either an ugly re-play of the voter campaign or - best case scenario - setting up a case to be taken by the US Supreme Court.

Though such a case could and should, in one fell swoop, strike down all restrictive state marriage laws in the country , it only comes about because the State Court took the easy way out, tried to have it both ways and just passed off a politically risky decision to somebody else to decide. Why don't they just do their damn jobs and issue a real opinion?

Margaret Cho's reaction is the best I've heard. She said, "I blame Miss California!"