Paul Begala: Will President Obama Deliver on Gay Rights?
The president inspired with talk of Stonewall and equality. So what will he do about it? By Paul Begala.
When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the March on Washington in 1963, he used an interesting metaphor. He called “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence ... a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” King said he and the hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall were there “to cash a check.”
In his second inaugural address, on the day we honor Dr. King, President Obama issued a promissory note of his own. “Our journey is not complete,” he declared without equivocation or reservation, “until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
Our president linked Stonewall with Selma and Seneca Falls as latter-day Lexingtons and Concords in the battle for full equality for all Americans. The Stonewall Inn was a New York gay bar. On June 28, 1969, it was raided by the police, enforcing a law that prohibited liquor licenses for bars with a gay clientele. This had happened before; gay Americans were routinely humiliated and incarcerated. But this time they fought back. The riot was a seminal moment in the history of gay rights. So for the president to link it to Selma, where the heroic John Lewis and others were savagely beaten, and Seneca Falls, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and other pioneers of the women’s-rights movement dared to declare their equality, is both historic and heartening.
But almost before his words had finished resonating across the National Mall, his press secretary was walking them back. The president, he told reporters, personally supports gay marriage. But the legality of gay marriage itself? “That’s something that should be addressed by the states.” Of course, states determined the legality of interracial marriage for decades, and so the marriage of the president’s parents was illegal in 19 states. We rightly look back at that time with horror, just as our children will look back on today, when 30 states have enshrined discrimination against gays into their constitutions.
Full article:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/paul-begala-will-president-obama-deliver-on-gay-rights.html
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Not a whole lot as far as I can tell with this Congress. Unless Republicans get with the times and stop their hating on LGBTs, I don't see how, considering the GOP control of the House and the filibuster-prone GOP in the Senate, anything gets through for at least the next 2 years. I can see ENDA eventually getting approved by a more progressive Congress but, unfortunately, not anytime soon. DOMA's fate will ultimately rest on SCOTUS and I have no idea how they might rule. It would depend on one of the moderate/conservative justices providing a swing vote like with ACA. I can see much more progress- both on non-discrimination and marriage equality- being made at the state-level and I'm sure that President Obama will do as much as he can using EOs. Congress has become rather worthless IMHO for anything other than.............
As wrong as it may be, I simply don't see Congress legislating marriage equality. Scrapping DOMA, sure? I predict that for national marriage equality to exist in all 50 states, it will have to happen piecemeal, state-by-state, over a long period of time absent the existence of a progressive supermajority that support it in Congress.
