Heterosexual Closet of Silence

My wife and I watched the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade yesterday. Some of the lurid outfits discomfited, but the cacophony of colors, music, and cheering were entertaining and inspiring. Many couples carried placards disclosing the length of their relationships, often 20, 30 and 40 years.

What a horrible injustice that these relationships of multiple decades are denied equal legal standing. It’s wrong. By any sensible definition, these relationships are marriages. Calling them civil unions is a Clintonesque dodge.

Thoughtful, kind people genuinely disagree about same sex marriage. Some will never agree. Similarly thoughtful people tacitly tolerated slavery, anti-Semitism, sexism and other forms of prejudice when they knew it was wrong. The arc of history bends toward human justice and equality. For gay rights in America, the question is when?

Don’t look to Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration according to Frank Rich’s New York Times column.

The political courage to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and achieve full equality will come only when more non-gay citizens of both parties find the courage to “come out” of the closet of silence.

The gay rights movement began in 1969, when a police raid of a Greenwich Village gay bar, called the Stonewall Inn, sparked riots.

Five year earlier, more than 1,000 northern whites, mostly college students, volunteered to travel to Mississippi and help black voters register during the 1964 “Freedom Summer”.

It’s time for more non-gay Americans to join the seminal civil rights issue of this generation!

- SF

UPDATE: July 1, 2009 — AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACT

On Tuesday, a military board told Lt. Dan Choi — an Iraq War veteran and Arabic linguist — that it was recommending his discharge from the Army for”moral and professional dereliction” under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Lt. Choi is taking his fight to repeal the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to Congress.

I signed the letter below to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Lt. Choi is going to personally deliver to her. The letter is being launched on Lt. Choi’s behalf by the Courage Campaign, Knights Out and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

90,000 people have now signed this letter.  Please join me in signing Lt. Choi’s letter before Friday July 10th, by clicking on the link below:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/RepealDADT

- SF

Fiscally Irresponsible Democractic Congressional Leadership

An overwhelming majority of economists supported the public stimulus plan. An even larger majority of economists, budget experts, investors and citizens are concerned about the sustainability of a federal budget deficit that will exceed 12.0% of U.S. GDP.

The Obama Administration separates the short term obligation to stimulate the economy from the longer term imperative to restore fiscal balance to the federal budget. Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Reid have been slow to embrace long term fiscal restraint.

President Obama intended to announce a bi-partisan task force to address entitlement reform. Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic leaders oppose benefit reductions. The future of the task force is uncertain.

Congress is working on a $410 Billion Omnibus Bill to fund the federal government to the end of its fiscal year in September 2009. The bill includes $8 Billion of earmarks for 8,500 pet projects. Senator Reid defends the earmarks as a legitimate method of directing funding.

While true that earmarking places greater control on funding disbursement, it has become synonymous with abuse and waste. Why do it? Ordinary citizens don’t care that Republicans used earmarking to deliver pork to their districts for 6 years when in control of the House, Senate and White House. Earmarks are easy targets for populist anger. Eventually, one party must resist its worst instincts and reform itself. Doing so would demonstrate that Congress is serious about spending restraint and deficit reduction.

Congressional Democrats have an opportunity to define entitlement reform. It’s not a question of whether it happens, but a question of when and how. Speaker Pelosi would be wise to lead rather than obstruct the process.

A moral society does not borrow from future generations to pay for current consumption. Americans are desperate for competent, principled leaders willing to make difficult and unpopular decisions. Unless Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and other Congressional Democrats embrace deficit reduction, they are headed for a short tenure in the majority.

- SF