Follow-up: Obama administration responds to Judge Kozinski

[solarbird]

Back in November, I posted about the Obama administration's reaction to an administrative ruling by Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court ordering spousal benefits be awarded to the same-sex spouse of one of the court's employees. The ruling was made with full awareness (and a discussion of) DOMA, and asserted that DOMA was not relevant in this ruling for various reasons. The Obama administration had ignored the decision, so Judge Kozinski issued an administrative order backing the decision, giving the Obama administration 30 days to respond.

The Obama administration has now responded, issuing a press release that basically chants DOMA DOMA DOMA DOMA and ignores the Judge's ruling that this odious piece of legislation doesn't apply here. John Aravosis at AmericaBlog is intensely displeased.

On a related topic, Newsweek makes "Obama Does Nada on Gay Rights" one of their top 10 predictions for 2010, seeing as how it's an election year and Mr. Obama's complete inaction ("almost nothing," as Newsweek puts it) to date has demonstrated that he wants nothing to do with the "culture wars." This would indeed be the normal part of this cycle. We have that against Representative Frank's assertion that there would indeed be movement on DADT, at least, in 2010. Either way, we'll see.

Comments

[darkphoenixrisn.livejournal.com]

With the exception of the party's small progressive wing, the Dems could care less about LGBT equality. Their whole pitch to the LGBT community comes down to, "vote for us because the Republicans are worse." They know they don't have to really do anything and they can still get the LGBT vote.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

I'm getting the feeling that it's going to take another decade or so for the current generation that's helping really hold this progression back to die off, then some more real progress will hopefully start to follow. Until then it just feels like there's going to be a lot of lip service paid with no real concrete results.

[solarbird]

Yeah, pretty much. Assholes.

[avram]

Has "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" been done away with yet? Repealing that polled pretty well, last I looked. Maybe Obama's saving it for 2010 so he can throw the gay community a bone without doing anything unpopular with conservative Dems.

[solarbird]

Has "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" been done away with yet?
No. There was no action on it in 2009. As per the last paragraph, Barney Frank is talking about action on it in 2010, but there has been no leadership on this from the White House, and, in fact, the White House has declined even to respond to public requests for priority guidance from the Democratic leadership in Congress.

Repealing that polled pretty well, last I looked.
75% in favour. A majority of self-described Republicans favour the repeal, even. But no action.