HRC Fire? [Failure!]
For those of us who don’t have our fingers on the heartbeat of equal rights, this previous weekend was the National Equality March. I had wanted to go, but am currently on call for a client, so I followed vicariously the twitter feeds of people at the march, and enjoyed the various blog postings that people put up. And I was quite interested in the Human Rights Campaign dinner with Obama, to see how that was to unfold.
Turns out that Joe Solmonese (head of the HRC, funded by those seeking gay equality) apparently told the the LGBTQI groups to be quiet and quit demanding their rights be recognised because there were bigger things at stake than those of us not rich enough to attend the HRC dinner in the mob could understand. And, paraphrasing Andrew Sullivan — Solmonese informed gay rights activists that they couldn’t complain until January 19, 2017 because the Obama administration had until then to delivery on the campaign promises that Obama and company made. Sure, Obama made the statement that he will end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at the dinner, but why is this promise different from the one he made while campaigning?
In addition to the other rather dubious things that the Obama administration has done, the ignoring of a group of people who campaigned, gave enormous amounts of money, and turned out to vote for him in high numbers seems a bit like the antithesis of democracy. I second Andrew Sullivan’s call:
It’s one thing to understand that we need to have a mainstream civil rights groups that can negotiate with the administration as well as a grassroots movement that can yell and scream. I understand we all have different roles to play. But when the role of the establishment is to betray the rest of us for their own access and black-tie dinners and coffee clatches at the White House, then the rest of us have to stand up and say “no more.” No more.
Tags: Government, homosexuality, HRC, Obama, promise
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