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• Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:27 PM

  A list from the Great Orange Ghetto

  Obama's history of peeving the GLBT community really dates back to the South Carolina primaries and the incident with Donnie McClurkin in Oct 2007. He's a run down of what Obama has done and hasn't done for the GLBT community since:

  • Inviting ex-gay homobigot Donnie McClurkin to perform and emcee a concert for South Carolina black evangelicals and ignoring the warnings and protestations of several GLBT advocacy groups choosing to try convincing people McClurkin isn't homophobic and that even if he is, that Obama didn't agree with his views.
  • In attempt to balance McClurkin, Obama adds a gay preacher to give the invocation at the concert but refuses the offers of several openly gay African-American ministers in favor of a openly gay white minister, Rev. Andy Sidden. (And we all know whites, especially gay whites, preaching to blacks goes over so well in the AA community.)
  • At the concert, Sidden's invocation was delivered to an almost empty venue well before the concert began while McClurkin had the prominence of emceeing and performing and used his access to the mic to proclaim his ex-gay bullshit on how "God delivered me from homosexuality." It should be noted that ex-gays are viewed by most in the GLBT community to be radioactive and even more deplorable than Log Cabin Republicans because of the profoundly negative impact "reparative therapy" can have on people.
    
    

    [snip]

  • Just prior to the election, Obama released a toothless statement opposing Prop 8 in California, a statement so utterly weak, proponents of Prop 8 were able to chop off the first sentence of the statement and use the rest of the statement in robocalls advocating the passage of Prop 8. Obama didn't condemn the move or make a clear message that he definitively opposed Prop 8.
    
    

    [snip]

  • After the Iowa Supreme Court decision, the Obama White House released a statement on the ruling reiterating Obama's opposition to marriage equality and failed to even use the word "equal" at all. After a mini-blogosphere storm started to form, a "corrected" release was sent out changing the clause "he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive protection under the law" to "he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive equal rights under the law."
  • After Vermont successfully overrode Gov Douglas' veto of the marriage equality bill and after Maine and New Hampshire's bills were signed into law, the White House's response was: " <cricket churp> <cricket churp>"
    
    

    [snip]

  • Obama has passed up several high profile opportunities to suspend separations under Don't Ask, Don't Tell when the discharges of 2nd Lt. Sandy Tsao, Lt. Dan Choi and Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach became publicly notable. GLBT servicemembers continue to be discharged at a rate of approximately two per day.

  Quite a list of accomplishments, especially when gathered together all in one place.

  See http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/6/17/33828/9415/148#c148 or click my sig for the full comment.

  —Roman Berry Read Roman Berry's other letters
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