Obama Pledges Again to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’/Gay Rights Marchers Press Cause in Washington

Obama Pledges Again to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/us/politics/11speech.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — President Obama on Saturday renewed his vow to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but failed to offer a timetable for doing so — an omission likely to inflame critics who say he is not fighting aggressively enough for gay rights.

“I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Mr. Obama told an audience of nearly 3,000 people at a fund-raising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay advocacy group. “That is my commitment to you.”

The president’s emphatic declaration, on the eve of a major gay rights rally here, brought a huge roar from the crowd at the star-studded black-tie dinner, where tickets cost as much as $1,000 and entertainment was provided by the singer Lady Gaga and the cast of the new Fox comedy “Glee.” But outside the room, the president’s words met with a chillier reception.

Bil Browning, a blogger for Bilerico Project, a Web site aimed at a gay audience, said moments after the speech ended that the site was flooded with critical comments by people who said they had heard nothing new. “I could have watched one of his old campaign speeches and heard the same thing,” one wrote.

Even inside the room, reaction was mixed. Terry Penrod, a real estate agent from Columbus, Ohio, said some gay rights advocates were being impatient with the president, while Raj Malthotra, 29, a management consultant from Washington, said he thought the speech was a rehash of Mr. Obama’s past promises.

“For him, it’s buy more time until he needs our votes again,” Mr. Malthotra said.

Mr. Obama campaigned as a “fierce advocate” of equal rights for gays, he said, and he used Saturday’s speech to lay out his vision of the day when, as he said, “we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women are just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman,” and when “no one has to be afraid to be gay in America.”

Yet the president’s relationship with the gay community has been a conflicted one. He does not support gay marriage — as a matter of Christian principle, he has said — and he got off to a bad start with the gay community when he invited the Rev. Rick Warren, who opposes same-sex unions, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

In the nine months since, Mr. Obama has made only limited progress on the issues that are important to gays. He has pushed for hate crime legislation, and a bill, approved in the House on Thursday, now appears headed for passage. He has put forth a package of domestic partnership benefits for federal workers, but faced criticism that the effort did not include health benefits. He has said he would push to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states, but it remains on the books.

But of all the issues Mr. Obama has vowed to address, the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is perhaps the one that stirs the most emotion. Mr. Obama said Saturday night that he was working with the Pentagon and with House and Senate leaders to repeal the policy, but many gay rights supporters have accused him of dragging his feet.

In the days before the speech, many advocates for gay rights said they hoped he would lay out a timetable for overturning the policy or otherwise offer specifics on how he will achieve his goal.

“An opportunity was missed tonight,” Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents gay and lesbian soldiers, said in a statement afterward.

Mr. Obama spoke for about 20 minutes inside the packed Washington Convention Center; outside, a small band of protesters on the sidewalk carried banners urging the president to live up to his promises. Among them was Mark Katzenberger, a software trainer from San Francisco, who said that despite his disillusionment with Mr. Obama, he would probably vote for him again.

Capturing the feeling of many in the gay community, Mr. Katzenberger said, “Even our friends sometimes need a kick in the butt.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.




Gay Rights Marchers Press Cause in Washington
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/us/politics/12protest.html?th&emc=th



WASHINGTON — Impatient and discouraged by what they see as a certain detachment by President Obama on their issues, gay rights supporters took to the streets Sunday in the largest demonstration for gay rights here in nearly a decade.

The rally was primarily the undertaking of a new generation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocates who have grown disillusioned with the movement’s leadership.

Known as Stonewall 2.0 or the Prop. 8 Generation (a reference to the galvanizing effect that the repeal of California’s same-sex marriage law had on many young people), these activists, in their 20s and 30s, are at odds with advocates urging patience as Mr. Obama grapples with other pieces of his domestic agenda like the health care overhaul and the economic recovery.

“I think this march represents the passing of the torch,” said Corey Johnson, 27, an activist and blogger for the gay-themed Web site Towleroad.com. “The points of power are no longer in the halls of Washington or large metropolitan areas. It’s decentralized now. You have young activists and gay people from all walks of life converging on Washington not because a national organization told them to, but because they feel the time is now.”

The rally on Sunday and a black-tie gala on Saturday hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights advocacy group, made for a glaring dichotomy. Mr. Obama, who spoke at the dinner, had the crowd on its feet reiterating his pledge to end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and declaring his commitment to gay rights as “unwavering.”

But at the rally, some gave the speech low marks for lacking anything new and failing to acknowledge several major issues confronting the movement. In the words of Billie Myers, a musician who spoke to an eager crowd of tens of thousands on the west lawn of the Capitol, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t like your speech.”

The president did not lay out a timetable to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, voice support for any of the battles going on at state levels to allow same-sex couples more recognition under the law nor mention the march.

“He knows this march is happening, and he can’t even acknowledge it?” said Robin McGehee, 36, a co-director of the march. Ms. McGehee took issue with people she believes are giving the president a pass.

“In our community, there are people working hard to build a relationship with the president and people screaming in the streets for their rights,” she said. “There is an urgency with the people on the streets and a sense of ‘Oh, he’ll come around’ with the people who ate dinner with him.”

The Human Rights Campaign, which helped organize the last gay rights march on Washington in 2000 but had virtually no involvement in Sunday’s event, stirred up some controversy over the weekend after its president, Joe Solmonese, wrote a letter to supporters urging them to take Mr. Obama at his word. “It’s not January 19, 2017,” he wrote, referring to what would be the last day of Mr. Obama’s presidency if he were to win a second term.

While generally supportive of the president, many marchers said they felt that he had not delivered on campaign promises he made to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans.

“I think he has a lot on his plate,” said Rachael McIntosh, 25, of Worcester, Mass. “But I’d hoped we’d be a priority.” Ms. McIntosh raised a sign that read “Nobel Peace Prize. Earn It!”

Organizers of the march encountered considerable opposition from within gay political circles and from those who argued that it was hastily planned and would divert resources from campaigns at the state level.

Representative Barney Frank called the march “emotional satisfaction” for its organizers and said of their intention to pressure the Obama administration, “The only thing they’re going to put pressure on is the grass.”

The organizers were rating the march a success, saying that at least 150,000 people had attended, though the authorities gave no official estimate of the crowd size.

The marchers included many who were not gay but attended to support gay friends.

Lisa Kimmey, 25, drove all night with gay friends from Chicago so she could attend the march with them. “If I can get married, if I can get my partner’s health insurance, then everyone else in this country should be able to. It’s 2009, and it’s unbelievable to me that they don’t have that,” Ms. Kimmey said.

Dave Valk, 22, the student outreach coordinator for the march, said he believed that many people his age were embracing gay rights as the civil rights struggle of their time. “There are a lot of people getting involved not just because it’s a gay rights movement but because it’s a generational movement,” he said. “People feel like they’re part of a shift, that this is important.”

Ashley Southall contributed reporting.