As you’ve probably heard, the Justice Department filed another brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act on Thursday, prompting criticism from gay rights advocates who say the Obama administration should allow the law to be struck down instead of defending it. Indeed, less than a month after signing a bill to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Obama again finds himself under fire from the LGBT community. With the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday coming Monday, Equality Matters President Richard Socarides drew this analogy in The Huffington Post:
“The repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was a breathtaking accomplishment. President Obama will get credit. But from this point forward he has a choice. If he builds on it, he could become the MLK for the gays. But if he continues to allow the Justice Department to file these briefs opposing full equality, he will squander an historic opportunity.”
I find it shocking that Obama could be compared as the “MLK of the gays.” To give some perspective, let’s pretend that Dr. King had the same approach to racial civil rights as Obama has towards gay rights. If King felt like Obama, you might have heard him say things like:
1) I don’t believe in interracial marriage – just maybe interracial civil unions.
2) I believe Truman desegregated the military too quickly. He should not have used the power of the executive order, and should have instead waited for Congress to act. Once he did have the power, he should wait months for military leaders to confirm its an OK thing to do.
3) The government should defend discriminatory laws against African Americans in the courts because – after all – those laws are the law of the land, and we have a duty to defend them no matter how discriminatory they are.
Obama is not a member of the LGBT community. He has never been imprisoned for fighting for equal rights. He has never peacefully protested for LGBT rights. Obama has never called for a boycott of anti-LGBT businesses. And further, unlike King, Obama is a national leader with actual statutory power – and he’s not come close to achieving the success for LGBT rights as King did for African Americans while he was just a regular citizen who devoted his life to a focused cause.
In my opinion, to compare Obama to MLK in the issue of civil rights is an insult to Dr. King’s memory, work, and legacy. Obama has 100 times the power that MLK did, and has achieved only a fraction of the results. We should honor the remarkable achievements of MLK without elevating Obama to the equivalent of the Nobel Prize of Civil Rights. At best, Obama has been a half-hearted advocate for the LGBT community, and no where close to our MLK.
Great comment Justin. Now if we could just get President Obama to read your comment, maybe it would have a positive effect on him.