Statement, reactions, and HR 2517

[solarbird]

Well, Mr. Obama's said his piece. In it, he refers contradictorily to a "memorandum" and an "executive order," but everything I hear still says it's a presidential memorandum, not an actual order. He refers to working on equality in the "months and years ahead"; "years" is not my favourite word.

He also announced support for "The Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act" (HR 2517 / S 1102, introduced 20 May 2009, referred to various committees and subcommittees where it has been since then, text of house version here) which would enable Federal government employees to receive domestic partnership benefits. It would provide Federal employees separate but theoretically equal access to the benefits granted married heterosexual couples; most irritatingly, reading the bill, I note that in the current version of the bill, a legal same-sex marriage would not automatically grant DP status. Legally married same-sex couples would still be required to go through a new set of DP registration hoops. If this bill allowed being legally married to count as DP registration for the purposes of this bill, it would be much more interesting, as it would actually directly work against DOMA's legislative effects. However, it does not, at least as of today.

Pam's House Blend has the video and transcript. Comments there are not positive. Slog has a round-up of reactions. An important one is John Avarosis's, over on AmericaBLOG, who says that in fact that DOMA does not prevent the Federal government from offering health benefits for DPs, and that the Obama administration is lying about that. (Or at least being disingenuous.) Details at the link.

Comments

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

"The Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act" apparently gives federal employees' partners the benefits granted to married heterosexual couples - except for health insurance. Isn't that pretty much the most desirable benefit?

[solarbird]

What? No, that's line one of the "Benefits" definition in the act, which has not yet been passed by Congress and is currently sitting in various committees in Congress.

The memorandum of ineffectiveness that Mr. Obama issued today doesn't do anything but what NPR called "fringe fringe benefits," but it's different to the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Obama's handling of this has been so bad that it can't be on purpose. I think he does *intellectually and theoretically* support gay rights but it's just not a priority for him. So his entire administration doesn't keep tabs on the details of the issue and keeps getting blindsided by the politics of it. I would not be surprised if they actually didn't realize that including health care benefits was possible, but threw the whole idea together at the last minute without sufficient research because they were trying to keep LGBT organizations on the donation train and thought throwing them a bone would matter. That's exactly how much they just don't care about gay civil rights.

If it is just a matter of neglect, the politics are more favorable than if Obama was planning a betrayal all along and had a well-thought out strategy. If he's sufficiently shamed by this and is paying a clear political cost (particularly in alienating campaign donation money) he might actually be willing to do something tangible at some point.