Gay Rights in the Obama Administration

This past April the House of Representatives voted to approve an expansion of the Federal "hate crime" laws. Under the legislation "hate crime" will cover gay and lesbian citizens.

Wait, raise your hand if you knew that gay-bashing was not Federally considered a hate crime.

What?

But wait, there's more. The expansion of "hate crime" laws is not even close to becoming official. It hasn't passed in the senate. How could this possibly not just go through with flying (Gay Pride) colors?

Do I remember the Bush Administration's stance on Gay rights? Wait, did they have a stance or a turned head? What about McCain's general approach? Yes, I realize that there is serious opposition to Gay rights, especially with all the progress that same sex marriages are having. It is pretty standard for Republicans to oppose anything related to Gay rights.

But this one shouldn't even require thinking about it. It's not granting any privileges, hardly even a right- defining something as a "hate crime" enables a different Federal approach to brutal crimes against someone because of something core to their identity (ok, that's not an official definition). I think even people who Perpetuate hate crimes against gays would agree- it's a hate crime.

You would think in the senate that this should be a simple "All in favor say 'aye'" kind of thing. If not, it's almost a hate crime in and of itself.

Six states either recognized gay marriage or plan to by next year. Six more provide some form of "spousal rights" for same-sex couples- notably, so does the District of Columbia. Sounds like the U.S. is progressing toward a tolerant, even supportive climate change for gay rights and same-sex couples? Think again.

29 states have made changes to their state constitution banning gay marriage.

29 state constitutions that actually ban gay marriage means 58 senators who come from states that constitutionally deny gays and lesbians the legal ability to declare partnership and intimacy. Does that qualify as a hate crime?

There is progress in Washington, though. President Obama signed an official memo this week creating limited job benefits to gay partners of U.S. government workers. That is, in fact, huge, and directly defiant of states who constitutionally ban gay marriage. Obama deemed the memo a first step toward ending discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Many U.S. businesses already extend health-care and retirement benefits to gay families- but the U.S. government does not. The Obama administration is under pressure to extend thos rights to the almost 2 million federal employees. "Many of our government's hardworking and dedicated and patriotic public servants have long been denied basic rights that their colleagues enjoyed for one simple reason: the people that they love are of the same sex. It's a day that marks a historic step toward the changes we seek, but I think we all have to acknowledge this is only one step," said Obama.

So it sounds to me like Obama is looking to make incremental steps, gradual changes. Probably a smart political move on his part, but I'm sure nothing can really be fast enough for a people who are denied basic rights.

"Those things should happen today, should have happened yesterday and they haven't and until they do there's going to be a frustration," said Joe Solomonese, Human Rights Campaign president a gay-rights group.In fact, Obama did not back gay marriage during his presidential campaign, though he has talked about repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, and redefine workplace-discrimination laws to cover gays.

Wait, workplace discrimination laws don't cover gays? What?

All of this tends to make for an obvious choice- what that choice is tends to differ depending on your socio-political religiosity... either obviously gays should have the same rights as non-gays, or gays are subhuman and should have no real rights at all, god says it's gross afterall.

The political sticking point is that the Democrats are working to pass major legislation on some key issues: climate change, healthcare and finances. Big stuff, and the time is now.

So, where does that leave gay rights legislation?

As Ilan Kayatsky, spokesman for NY Democrate Jerrold Nadler so eloquently puts it:

"Our goal is to come up with a strategy that is more effective to restoring equal rights to gay Americans."

Effective? Restoring? Strategy? Man...

Let's celebrate what we have:

Details of what Obama signed this week include:

* Open up the government's long-term care insurance to gay partners of federal employees;

* Allow federal employees to use their sick leave to care for a gay partner or the partner's children;

* Allow gay partners of foreign-service employees to use medical facilities at overseas posts and get evacuated if necessary;

* Include same-sex partners and their children when calculating family size for overseas housing allocations;

* Extend current anti-discrimination rules in the federal workforce to cover transgender employees.