And, for an alternative to the moral "witness" of Bill Donohue, Timothy Dolan, et al.--for an authentic and credible voice that articulates a position of genuine moral leadership about these issues (I'm piggybacking here on what I just posted about Donohue)--here's Glenn Greenwald writing in the Guardian about why what Mr. Obama said this week matters:
Pervasive anti-gay discrimination in the US endures to this day. Doma is still valid law, denying same-sex couples every federal spousal right to which opposite-sex couples are entitled (as a result, there are thousands of gay Americans unable to live in their own country with their foreign national spouse). Same-sex marriage is recognized in only seven of the 50 states. On Tuesday, the day before Obama expressed his support for marriage equality, the state of North Carolina – which Obama won in 2008 – approved a ballot measure to ban both same-sex marriage and civil unions by a landslide majority.
This is why it is genuinely historic that Obama, in the midst of a difficult re-election campaign, chose to become the first US president ever to support same-sex marriage (former Vice-President Dick Cheney, citing his lesbian daughter, did so when running for re-election in 2004). One can question Obama's sincerity; some believe his reliance on gay donors and need for greater enthusiasm among his core voters was his motive. One can quibble with his rationale; some have criticized him for suggesting that states have the right to ban same-sex marriage if they wish. But one cannot reasonably question the importance of his act.
That is to say, the discrimination that the U.S. Catholic bishops and Dr. Donohue want to see enacted against gay and lesbian citizens of the U.S. is already alive and well in the U.S. What they're fighting for under the rubric of "religious freedom" is the "right"--their "right"--to keep it alive and well. And to deepen and extend it.
No matter how many gay teens kill themselves due to the bullying that their "religious" attitudes spur on.
As I wrote yesterday, a full half of the states in the U.S. still do not have laws that protect any gay citizens from discrimination in the areas of employment and housing. Legal protections against discrimination in the area of hospital visitation are non-existent in many states. Take a look at this chart The Guardian has just published on these matters, and you'll see in graphic detail how few states in the U.S.--left to their own devices and without any federal regulations prohibiting discrimination--protect the rights of gay and lesbian citizens in any area.
I have just had a number of visits from a neighbor whose partner died a number of weeks ago. I had blogged about this couple once or twice in the past. As the partner became sicker and sicker in recent years, on at least one occasion, the neighbor who has recently been visiting me to talk about his grief and struggles reported to me that the Catholic hospital in our city denied him visitation rights and refused to give him information about the partner's condition. Though he had legal power of attorney. Though, with a Ph.D. and a career in college teaching, he's hardly an uneducated man or a street person.
After the partner died, my neighbor had to deal with an abysmal reality many of us who are gay and have long lived in committed relationships often face: relatives who had nothing at all to do with the couple all the time the partner was living suddenly descended on their apartment, demanding this painting, that piece of furniture. Claiming that the partner had no legal right to hold onto anything.
Those of us who are gay and lesbian and living in partnered relationships often live in fear--and with good reason--of what our relatives, who have not supported, visited, affirmed, or loved us while we are alive, who have, in the case of most of Steve's siblings, used their "Catholic" values only to attack and condemn, will do to the surviving partner if one of us dies. We live in real fear about who will make what decisions regarding our health care if both of us become disabled or non compos mentis--despite the legal documents we've filed in states that afford no real protection to us, to try in every way possible to prevent our being treated like human garbage in the final years of our life.
And this is what Dr. Bill Donohue and His Excellency Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan want to keep alive for us and subsequent generations of gay Americans? In the name of Christ?
And so I have to agree wholeheartedly with the moral witness offered by Glenn Greenwald, who is all the more credible when he writes about these matters because he has held the president's feet to the fire consistently about matters of principle Mr. Obama ignores in the area of human rights. I have to agree with Glenn Greenwald, when he concludes, re: the president's announcement this week,
There are many disappointments and truly bad acts for which President Obama is responsible, but for one day at least, on this single issue, he demonstrated authentic and important leadership on a civil rights issue that affects millions.
These symbolic actions matter intently. They matter to aging gay citizens of the U.S. whose lives and well-being have often been hampered by serious issues of rejection by family members and society at large. Who can still, as I observed in a comment to a posting a day or so ago, be called "fags" out of the blue by someone walking past them as they innocently shop for groceries in a major American city like Salt Lake City. Though they think of themselves as rather boring aging professional gentlemen not seeking to draw any undue attention to themselves.
Symbolic actions like the president's statement this week matter, too--they matter intently--for generations of gay citizens now coming of age, who ought not to have to live with some of the unmerited suffering that has been heaped on the shoulders of those of us now reaching the ends of our lives as gay citizens of the U.S.
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