Here's a little reality for them to imbibe (especially those who are transgendered):

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/17/gay_rights/permalink/069887b10eba4c1569bfd1b759d7fc0f.html (Aravosis twists John Berry's words around -- luckily, Alex Blaze gives an accurate account of what Berry really said)

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/americablog_interrupted.php (Alex Blaze documents Aravosis' scumbaggery and misrepresentations on this and other issue -- and mentions his attacks on transgendered persons)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/3/16228/75954/303/207183 (Aravosis' bizarre vendetta against Howard Dean, for the apparent crime of letting go one gay DNC staffer and replacing him with another gay DNC staffer)

If you're going to critique Obama, please try to keep it reality-based. You're not going to be influencing minds if it looks like you're easy prey for any mendacious jerk who pushes your buttons.

Last night, he put up a post claiming that the rights Obama granted today already existed:

I just asked OPM Director John Berry, on a White House media conference call, whether in fact federal agencies already have the right to give these benefits to gay employees. The answer, “yes.” So what’s new about tonight? Obama is going to “tell” the agencies to give the benefits – as if any agency in the Obama administration would dare tell a gay employee no to a request for time off to attend their partner’s funeral?

But as Alex Blaze, who was also on that call, shows, Aravosis had to twist John Berry’s words around pretty damned hard to get that particular frame to obtain:

Third, John Aravosis asked him what’s actually changing with these guidelines. Federal employment is already supposed to be based on merit, not on factors unrelated to job performance. Aravosis mentioned a woman who worked for the federal government who got leave to take care of her same-sex partner.

Berry responded that previously such benefits to gay employees was “subject to whim of the supervisor.” They were optional, and now they’ll be mandatory.

So in Aravosis-speak, optional and mandatory are apparently the same!

Arrrrrrrrrgh. I’m glad I’m not an alcoholic, or else I’d be in the Sterno right about now out of sheer frustration.

And Blaze also mentions this:

Fourth, I got a question in and wanted to know about protections for trans people mentioned in the Advocate. Since Berry mentioned several times that only job-related factors will now be considered in federal employment, and said how sexual orientation isn’t included in that several times, I asked if the new directions will specifically mention gender identity, gender expression, and/or transgender people. He responded:

Gender identity is a non-work-related factor, and in the guidelines [to federal agencies] we will be making that clear.[...] Gender identity will be added and made very clear in our guidelines.

That’s at least one positive out of this memo: specifically mentioning transgender people when it comes to federal employment.

Exactly. As far behind as the Feds are with regard to gays and lesbians, they’re in the Dark Ages when it comes to transgendered persons. Now the T in GLBT is getting some long-overdue Federal recognition — and protection.

There’s much more at Blaze’s piece. It debunks a lot of bullshit being paraded around lately.

Jon Aravosis, who we last saw fomenting hatred against then-DNC Chair Howard Dean for getting rid of one gay DNC worker and replacing him with another (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/3/16228/75954/303/207183), has done it again. His framing of the DoJ’s brief against the Smelt DOMA challenge (a framing that even a critic of the brief finds questionable: http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/thoughts_on_the_doj_doma_brief.php#comment-186752) ignores some basic facts, facts that you have to read Laurence Tribe to find out.

Here's Tribe on the DoJ's DOMA brief on the Smelt case that Aravosis touts (http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid90000.asp):

As someone who wants to see DOMA dismantled and invalidated, I would love it if this ninth circuit case would evaporate into the ether.

Even though I personally believe that DOMA is unconstitutional, I think that this particular lawsuit is very vulnerable; it’s not anywhere near as strong as the one that was brought in the federal district court in Massachusetts [a suit filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders].

In an environment where the Supreme Court is still quite conservative, what makes a suit a strong one is that it finds a point of entry in which it’s possible to invalidate a law in a number of its applications by using more of a scalpel that might appeal to five justices rather than a bludgeon that will almost certainly ask more of the court than it is willing to do.

What’s strong about the Massachusetts case is that these are concrete situations of people who are legally married under the laws of states like Massachusetts or Vermont, and who are being discriminated against by the federal government with respect to federal benefits simply because they are same-sex couples. There’s no other difference between them and other couples in that state, and the court could agree with that without accepting any of the broader theories advanced in the [Smelt] lawsuit in the central district of California, which is basically a bet-the-farm lawsuit that almost dares a conservative Supreme Court to slap it down.

[...]

There are ways for the president to get rid of DOMA. He can advocate for its repeal, he can eventually urge the solicitor general to join in a more surgical attack, but he certainly isn’t obliged to go along with every plaintiff who brings a lawsuit.

The important point here is that the solicitor general traditionally seeks to dismiss lawsuits against federal laws whenever there is a plausible basis to do it. A lot of the outcry about the administration’s position doesn’t take that institutional reality into account.

Please?