I won’t deny that I am absolutely angry with Obama:

But not just with Obama, with many people right now. I must preface the rest of my blog with three points of import.

The first being that I don’t speak for all of us, this is my opinion and it’s greatly steeped in the injustice that I’ve seen and the homophobia and bigotry that has been slung my way over my life time. Not to mention the even greater acts of bigotry, violence, bashing, bullying and murder that have been committed against my fellow LGBT Americans.

The second being that, I do not claim to be and expert in civics but I know what I know. If you find anything logistically incorrect where that is concerned, feel free to correct me or point me to where I can find the information to correct myself.

The third being that this was actually constructed as a reply to a twitter user who wrote the following:

@atxthumper that’s true but I believe instead of getting angry at Obama why not either let it work it’s way through the courts, which will ultimately end up at the Supreme Court or pressure your Congressmen on supporting repeal. Personally I think many gays are angry at the wrong person. Obama stated he wanted to work with congress to repeal it, he said this from day 1. He did not set a timetable of when this would be done.

That having been said, this is why I and many other members of the LGBT community are angry with Obama.

This summer and early fall, several things have happened that gave me and many other members of the LGBT community a spark of hope, only to be later let down by our president. I’ll focus on just 2 of the major events.

DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional: google link

If you don’t know, the “Defense Of Marriage Act” was passed in 1996 which basically made it legal for states to discriminate. From that point on, several states have added to their own state constitutions language that bans same-gender couples from marrying one another and partaking in the, over 1,300, Federal Rights, Protections and Benefits of Marriage. The courts ruled. The Obama administration so badly wants to try to work through congress on this issue that, rather than allow the ruling itself to stand, decides to continue to fight the ruling which should have been yielded to to begin with. Unconstitutional is, in fact, unconstitutional! We could have legalized marriage in every state fairly quickly if the administration would have just left well enough alone.

DADT Ruled Unconstitutional: google link

If you’ve been locked in a closet somewhere (pun intended), you may not know that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT – full text link) is a law that keeps LGBT Americans from serving our great nation and NOT one that protects them in any way.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a misnomer. The phrase is a summery of 1 of the three points of policy. The law itself allows the chain of command to actually seek out information about someone’s sexuality simply for suspecting that they are LGBT. In truth, and to the credit of many military units, there are quite a few units who do not investigate unless they were presented with evidence or unless they were told by the soldier. However, many is not all. There are over a thousand cases to date where a soldier wasn’t asked and didn’t tell but their command investigated anyway.

In these cases, the lives of soldiers who wanted nothing more than to defend our great nation have been completely ruined. In those cases, the discharge is not necessarily an honorable one. Under any discharge that is not honorable, those soldiers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to find work in the civilian world. They also become a burden on society as many of them end up in our welfare system.

Now that DADT has been declared unconstitutional, Obama is doing all that he can to keep the courts from enforcing a lift on the ban so that he can continue to work with congress. Meanwhile we still have people who would gladly give their lives for our defense, still suffering under this law.

So, why are we angry at Obama? It is his duty to uphold the constitution, it says so right there in the oath that he takes. Every minute he spends working with congress on repealing these items is another minute that our LGBT Americans are suffering. It is another minute for those who wish to continue to see this suffering to come up with another way around it.

Unconstitutional is unconstitutional. It’s as simple as that. Now that we know for certain that these policies are unconstitutional, they need to be repealed. They should have been repealed the very second that those judges made those rulings. At the very least, there could have been a moratorium on booting soldiers out of the military while all of this is happening.

We are calling congress, we are rallying, picketing, protesting and boycotting on a daily basis. We are working as hard as we can. We are simply asking that our leader puts as much work into is as we do.

In short, we are angry at Obama because, rather than put an end to the suffering of our families, friends and soldiers he chooses to roll the dice and try to work through a system that can just as easily work against him than for him.

I know that my friend who wrote the original tweet might disagree with me on these points and that’s fine. I’m not going to like her any less for having her own opinion. I just wanted to share mine with her and with you all.

Obama can easily defend the constitution by removing these unconstitutional laws. He has the court’s blessing to do so. When will he stand up, be accountable and lift the ban on inequality?

Till next time, I’m out.

Ed