Obama Gives Bread Crumbs to the LGBT Community

breadcrumbs Yesterday in his first official overture to the LGBT community, President Obama granted a handful of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

During White House ceremony Obama reiterated his “long-standing commitment” to try to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, the law which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

“It’s a day that marks a historic step towards the changes we seek, but I think we all have to acknowledge this is only one step. Among the steps we have not yet taken is to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. I believe it’s discriminatory, I think it interferes with states’ rights, and we will work with Congress to overturn it,” said Obama.

Earlier in the day during a phone conference with reporters, John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management and the administration’s top-ranking openly gay official, echoed that sentiment.

The Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination says that domestic partners of federal employees can be added to the long-term care insurance program; supervisors can also be required to allow employees to use their sick leave to take care of domestic partners and non-biological, non-adopted children. Foreign Service employees, can now use medical facilities at posts abroad, receive medical evacuation from posts abroad, and are now eligible for inclusion in family size for housing allocations.

The memorandum does not give LGBT federal employees health or pension benefits, in fact it really does not give them much they did not already have and until DOMA is overturned or the passage of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act, they are not going able to get much more either.

The memorandum the President signed Wednesday was a far cry from the full frontal assault on the 1996 marriage law, which denies those federal health and pension benefits to same-sex partners, or the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays in the military that Obama the candidate talked so much about during the election and most in the community expected from him.

Yesterdays’ signing and statement of support by the president came, as the LGBT community furious over the Justice Department brief last week seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay California couple that challenged the DOMA and sought to have their marriage recognized by other states, threatened to take down a LGBT DNC fund raiser. And notwithstanding the fact the Justice Department has, in the past, refused to defend statutes that other president considered unconstitutional because they violate the rights of citizens, the Obama Department of Justice still argues that it was obligated to defend the marriage act until Congress repeals it and did so last week by filing a brief saying DOMA is “entirely rational,” that it was a savings of taxpayers money and cited as precedents states rejecting marriages from other states that involved under-age females or close relatives….

Obama’s action Wednesday has placated few in our community… the atrocious brief and its wording with its disgraceful full-fledged support of a demeaning law still exists and President Obama did not repudiate that brief. There is also no foreseeable end to Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell and there was no one in the bully pulpit yesterday calling for its end.

Nothing has changed on those fronts.

And while I am glad the LGBT employees of the Federal Government got some minor recognition, because a victory for one of our community, no matter how small, is a victory for all in our community, I did not see a my president remembering the words of Martin Luther King when he said, “a right delayed… is a right denied.”