After all the shitty news on DOMA today, we need a little disco to lift our spirits and fight another day (protest tomorrow anyone?). It is Pride month after all… Enjoy Shena Winchester’s new video “My Fantasy.”
I’m sorry Obama, but you are no longer invited to my party… I’m nolonger a fan.
LGBT groups have issued a joint statement today condemning the Obama administration’s challenge to DOMA. Press release below:
We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act against Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits. The administration is using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used. These arguments rightly have been rejected by several state supreme courts as legally unsound and obviously discriminatory.
We disagree with many of the administration’s arguments, for example that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress’s power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental. We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be “neutral” with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states.
There is nothing “neutral” about the federal government’s discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of “neutrality” ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.
When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.
Signed:
American Civil Liberties Union
Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
Human Rights Campaign
Lambda Legal
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce
If anything the statement doesn’t go nearly far enough. It doesn’t even address the cases citing incest and underage marriage that were used to defend DOMA. As Pam Spaulding put it so well on Pam’s House Blend:
Friends, is this is the watershed mark, the line in the sand, the utter moral betrayal of this administration in black and white? Does this mean that we are not only expendable to this Administration, but that it has decided we can also be vilified as a constituency at will and not receive any blowback? That’s balls. A brief with language like this could have been written by Liberty Counsel it’s so homophobic; that it’s written in legalese doesn’t blunt the arguments being made here. It will be used to cause lasting damage to future civil rights gains.
FORMER Miss California Carrie Prejean appeared on the Today Show this morning with Matt Lauer, claiming she was set up and the ONLY reason she was no longer Miss California was because of her answer on same-sex marriage. For a glimpse of the real Carrie Prejean, watch…
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Below is a sampling of some leaked emails sent by Prejean to her boss Keith Lewis, director of the Miss California USA pageant:
From: cprejeanXXXXSent: Friday, May 29, 2009 7:57 AMTo: Keith LewisSubject: Re: Messages
You do not cooperate with me, and you pick and chose the the things YOU want me to do. That is not happening anymore. Stop speaking for me. I have MY own voice. What are u gonna do fire me for volunteering for the special olympics hahaha ur crazy No I am doing this appearance. You do not need details. Its for the SPECIAL OLYMPICS!!! You just need to know I will be doing it alright
You will not facilitate this appearance
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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From: cprejeanXXXXSent: Friday, May 29, 2009 7:40 AMTo: Keith LewisSubject: Re: Messages
I expect you to be forwarding me ALL email requests and interview requests to me. I know how you are and its not right if you are selecting things for me. Thanks for your cooperation And fyi I am a presenter of medals at the special olympics in a few weeks for the summer games. So now u know I am doing this and I expect your full support. Also I was asked to fill in for a dj on a local radio show.. Ill be reading from a show biz script monday. I am doing this
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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From: cprejeanXXXXSent: Friday, May 29, 2009 7:42 AMTo: Keith LewisSubject: Re: Messages
Just as you need details for things so do I. Also nice move trying to make money off of my appearances Also.. Do not try and silence me by saying I do not have a comment about the prop 8 ruling. Maybe you don’t. I do
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Doesn’t sound very Christian to me. Wait a minute… Rude. Arrogant. Self-righteous. On second thought…
In an interview with Air America’s Ana Marie Cox, Senator John McCain re-affirmed his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). When Cox compared DADT to Truman’s forced de-segregation of the armed forces as a civil rights issue, a testy John McCain replied: “Well, you are entitled to your opinion. But I don’t think so.”
An excerpt from the interview below:
MCCAIN: My opinion is shaped by the view of the leaders of the military. The reason why I supported the policy to start with is because General Colin Powell, who was then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the one that strongly recommended we adopt this policy in the Clinton administration. I have not heard General Powell or any of the other military leaders reverse their position, just like when on other issues, that people are expert and knowledgeable of, I rely on their opinion. But this is unique. These military leaders are responsible for the very lives of the men and women under their command, and that’s why I am especially guided, to a large degree, by their views.
COX: Now, you know that Truman de-segregated the military through executive order. And he did it against the wishes of some people in the military. There were some studies that had been shown and some panels that suggested that integration was actually good for the forces.
MCCAIN: Let me tell you again. Colin Powell was asked exactly that question, as an African-American. He was asked that question exactly, and he answered it hundreds of times. And he said, “I do not equate ethnicity with sexual orientation.” I agree with him.
COX: Well, actually, there’s something to that, because obviously, right now there’s no segregation at all of gay people and straight people because we don’t know who is gay. So I guess I have to ask…
MCCAIN: But the two issues are not comparable. So I’m not sure why you’d bring that up.
COX: I think they’re comparable in that they are both civil rights issues.
MCCAIN: Well, you are entitled to your opinion. But I don’t think so.
The full interview will air on Saturday 9am. An audio clip is available on the Air America website.