There's a moment - I think it comes to everyone, sometime - when you realize "they just don't get it."
For me, sometime between college and my first few years out in the "real" working world, I realized that for many straight guys, it was just impossible to get them to understand being gay. And because of it, often, the idea of "gay rights" and debating them could often seem more theoretical than real.
When I look at Barack Obama, especially these days, I see that well meaning, liberal straght guy. I knew some (though not many; we were a somewhat conservative school in a conservative time) of them in college; I've met some since. In some ways, they're the biggest letdown, because years of liberal exposure has taught them all the right words. It all sounds so good... it's just so... abstract, from who they actually are.
I'm sure Obama means well; I don't think he has some kind of deep religious or moral objection to gays... but the whole thing about gay issues, for him, is I think kind of an abstraction. And because of that - and his natural "hands off" inclination to politics - I think he's been blind-sided by what gay rights mean for gay people - a passionate cause which cuts to the very core of our existence.
When Obama met this Monday with LGBT folks to "celebrate Stonewall" it was clear "damage control" was the undercurrent - between the dallying to end "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policies in the military, and the pro-DOMA arguments his Justice Dept made in an ongoing case, unhappiness in the gay community, on gay blogs, and out in the world has become palpable. Indeed, as usual, the "official gay advocates" like HRC had been slow to pick up on just how angry everyone was. It didn't help that just a few weeks after the DOMA brief, the Democratic National Committee arranged a gay and lesbian fundraiser, making non-attendance an easy way to show displeasure.
I'm not sure the nice, straight men in the White House quite expected to get here - there's a fallacy in some Democratic, lefty circles, that gay groups, and other minorities, can be placated or quieted and generally know well enough not to complain. It rarely works, but I suspect the Obama folks felt that "extraordinary circumstances" like the economic crisis, insulated them from various "special constituency" issues. Instead, on a number of fronts, there's been growing tension and a sense that things can't wait.
And yet Obama responded on MOnday as his Administration has repeatedly - waiting is hard... but wait.
And I know that many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough, and I understand that. It's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.
But I say this: We have made progress and we will make more. And I want you to know that I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises that my administration keeps. And by the time you receive -- (applause.) We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.
Lots of people have been frustrated with the "be patient" logic"... but what I found more telling was the "than it was for others to
counsel patience to African Americans" line, which underlines a kind of "one cause fits all" approach to minority rights issues. As many people - especially black people - will tell you, Gay Rights is not the struggle for rights for African Americans. The Civil Rights struggle was a complex exercise, complicated by years of ugly history and accumulated prejudice and hatred. "Patience" was really never the issue.
There's an overall coolness here; and I think it's driven by Obama's intellectual, rather than emotional, connections to his own background. The experience of being mixed race, even now, I think, is figuring how to connect, how to fit in. Or to decide not to fit in at all. And when it comes to racial issues, I can see and relate to Obama's cool take - when you sit outside both circles, it's easier to see a bigger picture, take the longer view. Patience. We'll get there.
The real lesson of Stonewall is impatience. Of letting passions fly, letting the urgency and immediacy... and the sense of connection, take hold. And gay anger and impatience is driven by the immediate, emotional connection to issues that aren't theoretical, not some "nice idea" - they are choices that we make that affect our lives, the lives of those we care about. Gay issues aren't like other issues because the gay reality is tied to something so intimate, so personal: who we love, and how we love. It is, really, where emotion, more than intellect, is bound to rule.
How else to explain the anger and impatience over issues like military service and marriage, aspects of the majority culture that are often viewed with something closer to ambivalence among gay people... but that we still fight like hell for? I wouldn't be a soldier, I don't particularly plan to get married... but I am furious. And not alone.
I'm not sure President Obama can ever overcome the fundamental disconnect here; what makes him an effective President - that cool detachment, and an ability to think "big picture" free of emotional distractions - are the ones he needs to set aside, in order to respond better to the sense of urgency on some "social" issues; but do that, and he'd probably disappoint in other, equally significant ways. In retrospect, it's clearer that we never entirely realized what a singular wonder Bill Clinton was - given his ability to deal effectively politically, yet not lose sight of the emotional concerns which drive real people. "I feel your pain"... and maybe he was right about that, ultimately.
And in all of this, Obama's failure to connect with gays exists on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin - there's the lack of gay voices in his inner circle (or really, of the kind of challenging feminist insight that would also help illuminate the ways gender and sexuality share similar dynamics), there's the "guy's guy" attitude emanating from him and his cohorts, and that cool, detached, unemotional manner. It's why Dick Cheney, can, at times, seem so much more connected to gay dilemmas - his clear, emotional bond and acceptance of his daughter's lesbianism, and to quietly reject the right's antigay impulses, shows how key the emotional element is for us.
In all of this is a good lesson for gay folks - we should ask more, work harder, fight more... especially with "well meaning" people who we know Just Don't Get It. We've convinced ourselves, too easily, that on the right/left continuum we can get what we need from liberal straights; in reality, it's probably a bit of both - no one, but those who can understand we feel, can really get the urgency, And they exist all across the ideological spectrum. It's not what you know... it's what you feel. President Obama... can you feel it? Yet?
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