Dear Mr President, Mr Vice president, Madame First Lady, David Plouffe, et. al,
Over the last week, my e-mail inbox has been flooded with messages from BarackObama.com. They are mostly requests for whatever the current pet project is this week, including but not limited to Health Care and Energy Policy. At the end of each is a bright blue prompt button that reads “Donate Now.”
So why am I so reluctant?
Last year, at the ripe age of 48, I did something I have never done before. I volunteered for a political candidate. During the Pennsylvania Primary and the general election, I worked a phone bank in the Philadelphia Suburbs and went door to door in get out the vote efforts. After eight years of ignorance and mean-spirited government, I could no longer see myself sitting by as the party in power found more and viler things to do to America. That is what I saw coming in John McCain and to a greater extent with Sarah Palin. I even went further. I donated money to then candidate Obama’s campaign. Bought t-shirts and memorabilia. Even put signs in the front yard. One of the main reasons I went all in?
One of the most horrific things I have heard a president utter was when George W Bush stood at a microphone and tried to get a constitutional amendment off the ground to equate marriage as one man one/woman. He wanted to take an entire segment of the population and give them a separate set of rights. The irony of this was: The week he made this putrid statement, I was visiting Jerusalem and been to the Holocaust Museum. Enshrined early on one of the many walls is the historical moment that began Adolph Hitler’s move to his “Final Solution,” when he proclaimed that Jews (and others) were non-citizens of Germany and therefore not subject to the same rules protecting “real” citizens. To see and hear an American President suggest something similar sent chills down my spine.
Then came Candidate Obama. A man who said he would be a “Fierce Advocate” for gays and lesbians. Who openly said on the campaign trail that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was weakening our military by excluding the best and the brightest, like Dan Choi. Mr Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic. Let me repeat a key part of Dan Choi’s credentials: fluent in Arabic. The candidate who said that “For the record, I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed.” A Candidate who looked at me and my partner as something other than a wedge issue to bring out the lunatic fringe. So while I was working what is basically a call center job that pays a bit better than minimum wage, I clicked that “Donate Now” link several times in 2008. My partner and I were moved to tears on Election night, when the news reports decisively stated that history had been made that moment. My partner, whose mother had been involved in Civil Rights marches in the 60’s and himself a teenager that stood next to her at the infamous “I Have A Dream” speech. I was in Washington DC in January of 2009, surrounded by an incredible amount of positive energy. Seas of smiling faces, thrilled that the reign of stupidity was finally coming to an end, and I had been a small part of that change.
At last, hope. At last.Or was it?
Imagine my dismay when a news item came up just a short time ago in which President Obama's Justice Department issued a stunning brief on the Defense of Marriage Act, once again equating the relationship my partner and I share to incest and pedophilia. President and Mrs Obama, in my life I have had three life partners, and have buried two. Do you have any concept of how hurtful being told the memory in my heart of our years is equal to the crime of child molestation? Then there is the case of Mr Choi. An Arabic Translator. Who returned recently from Iraq, only to be told in May that the Obama administration was about to dump him. The guy who can actually be in the cell where those terrorists we are all so afraid of might be and understand what the hell they are saying. Or are we still more afraid of the fact that the man who could understand the terrorist's confession might have a boyfriend than of a budding terrorist plot against that United States? Or is the man who once claimed to be a “Fierce Advocate” for the gay community and told Rolling Stone Magazine that “I don’t do cower” suddenly mortified that almost 400 translators could be kissing someone of the same gender after telling their commanders what the kid who witnessed an Afghani bombing was saying? Where’s the “fierceness?” Where’s the “hope?”
Were the gay supporters of candidate Obama just props to be used, a basis for coin? Because right now, that is how I feel. When President Obama hastily arranged a benefits package for Federal Employees, it seemed like a lame attempt to staunch bleeding support from the GLBT community. It looked almost cowardly, like a half-assed brushing of crumbs from what was described a year earlier as a potential boon. Because all President Obama would have to do is muster up the courage President Harry Truman displayed when he signed an executive order as Commander in Chief, instituting the immediate racial integration of the US Military. When some of his generals made the expected bigoted objections, Truman’s response was to tell them they could place their resignations on his desk in the morning. None did. That was July 26th, 1948. The 61st anniversary of which is coming soon.
Perhaps I will get an e-mail on that date with a fresh “Donate Now” button at its base. But until I see some real, aggressive, progressive action on the promises candidate Obama made, my gay wallet is closed. Emotions and civility do not seem to make enough of an impression in politics…so it has to be the one that comes in dollars donated. Poetry is not policy. Neither are proclamations. Statements of solidarity are not real change. We spent a lot of time during the campaign discussing “The Audacity Of Hope.” The hope is dwindling. It has been replaced by the toxicity of audacity.
Tim Brough
Philadelphia, PA
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