November 30, 2009
As planned, I went to my dad’s funeral this weekend. Some things I learned:
- I would not have recognized my dad if I’d run into him on the street in recent years.
Of course, I’d often wondered what he looked like. Years ago someone told my mom he had a lot of white hair and a white beard, but I never could incorporate that into my mental image. Maybe because of the big Santa-Claus mustache and beard, maybe because his hair is no longer black, maybe because his hairline had receded so much, I have trouble even recognizing the facial features that are so familiar from old pictures.
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November 25, 2009
This morning, I dug through some photo boxes hoping to find the four-generation photo I mentioned earlier. No such luck. I did find a couple of nifty old snaps that may explain why my dad had to fight off lung cancer last year:
 
I’m pretty sure these were taken before I was born–perhaps before my parents even married. In any case, this is not how I remember my dad. Before he left us, he occasionally smoked a pipe, but I never saw him smoke a cigarette. That’s one small difference. Another is that in these photos he’s somehow without beer; maybe there’s a can of Bud just out of shot somewhere.
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My dad may not have been a stand-up guy, but there’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse. Case in point.
November 23, 2009
Grief is never easy, but it’s usually uncomplicated. I suffered long and hard over my grandmother’s death, but I never once wondered what to feel about it. Because my grandfather and I had had a touchier relationship, grieving him was significantly more complicated. I’d already struggled for years to keep my feelings for him separate from my feelings about his political convictions (Rush Limbaugh was favorite of his).
And now there’s this: My dad died last week. It seems that a heart attack felled him suddenly, summarily, as a lightning strike might fell a tree. He was 71 years old.
If I thought that grieving my grandfather was difficult, then I had no idea what lay in store for me in the present circumstances. I haven’t seen my dad in decades. In 30 years or more we’ve traded a handful of greeting cards. Actually, less than a handful: I can count the number on one hand, with fingers left over.
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November 10, 2009
There’s a boycott, or rather a “pause,” going on. As John Aravosis explains here, the idea is to remind the Democrats that they’ve made certain promises, and we expect them to be kept:
Candidate Obama promised during the campaign to be the gay community’s “fierce advocate.” He and the Democratic party have not kept their promise.
Aravosis lists many examples, going all the way back to a campaign event featuring an “ex-gay” minister. The inclusion of Rick Warren in the inauguration seemed bad at the time, but I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt; now that I learn that Gene Robinson was also included, but in an oddly backhanded way, it somehow makes the Warren thing seem worse. More recently, in spite of various promises to do … something … about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the administration has actually stymied at least one attempt to defund it. And a repeal may not even be considered in the next year.
In all, there are 39 things on the list–some more alarming than others, of course.
As Alex Koppelman writes:
It will be interesting to see how the White House responds, if at all. And it will also be interesting–and instructive–to see how members of the LGBT community, and voters of all kinds, respond.
Tonight, just after I read about this “pause,” I happened to get an email from the DNC, asking for my help with health care reform. (Specifically, I’m meant to write letters to the editor.) As you may have noticed, health care reform is very important to me. But I replied and wrote:
Health reform is a big deal. I’m very happy about making a major and historic step toward the goal of universal health care.
It’s ironic, however, that you are now able to send me these emails, urging me to take action to further your agenda because I typed in my email address on a contact form in the process of complaining about the DNC/OfA failure to … wait for it … send out emails urging Mainers to take action on Question 1.
Or maybe you are able to send me emails because I also typed in my email address in the process of complaining about your leadership’s handling of the aforementioned failure — you know, the arrogant and condescending remark that maybe someone who was out of the country without access to email might not have known how to vote … but oh, you know those nervous bureaucracies…
I’m not really impressed with you folks lately. Hope you can manage to pass health care reform without dealing away contraception as well as abortion. In any case you won’t be getting much help from me, since my LGBT friends and I get no help from you.
I confess I’ve gotten a little cranky on this subject, to the extent that my message promises a lot more disengagement than I’m really willing to deliver. But I have signed the pledge to withhold monetary support from the DNC, OfA, and the Obama campaign.
November 8, 2009
November 6, 2009
I ran across this yesterday.
Short version: Y’all goofed, and continue to do so.
Here is the glib, defensive, and condescending message quoted in the above link:
1. An email went out asking activists to make calls to New Jersey. It was insensitive not to omit Mainers from that email. I apologize that no one thought to do that. I can’t imagine it could have cost No On One even a dozen votes, but I still wish someone would have thought of this in time to catch it. Mistake noted.
2. A different email went out to Mainers urging them to vote. As the only thing of substance anyone was voting on in Maine was Question One, and as Democratic activists vote our way, this was a small but positive effort to be helpful.
I would have liked to see that email discuss No One One directly, in case there may have been an email-enabled Organizing for America activist someplace in Maine who did NOT know where Maine Democrats stood on this issue. (Out of the country without Internet access until the night before the election?) But I’m told there was concern that advocating specifically for a ballot initiative, whether LGBT or otherwise, would set a precedent for every other ballot initiative. Bureaucracies are nervous about setting precedents.
No, listen. Seriously.
The “mistake” is not that you neglected to omit Mainers from the New Jersey email. The mistake is that the second email didn’t also urged Mainers to call five people IN MAINE and ask them to vote “our way.” The issue is not that some OFA activist might have been “out of the country without Internet access,” but that someone (or, one hopes, several thousand someones) might have had parents or relatives or friends somewhere in the rural areas of Maine that went overwhelmingly for Question 1. If the governor’s race in New Jersey was important enough for them to make phone calls, surely Question 1 was at least as important.
The nervousness of bureaucracies is well-suited to maintaining the status quo. That’s all fine and dandy for the Republican Party, but you’re not the Republican Party … are you?
Also, again, the DNC got involved in the campaign to stop Prop 8 in California.
In other words, you’re making excuses, and they’re not very good ones.
As the author of the blog post linked above writes:
But regardless, why does the DNC (and the White House) have a problem getting involved when a core Democratic constituency is having its civil rights taken away by the far-right base of the Republican party? We were promised that this administration would be our fierce advocate. Now all we get are excuses.
And the DNC and the White House wonder why they have a growing problem with the gay community.
Perhaps what we have here is a failure to communicate. Or maybe you really just don’t care about the LGBT community–except for our money and votes.
November 5, 2009
This does not make me feel warm and cozy.
I’ve just sent this to the White House:
A few weeks back, I was very impressed by President Obama’s address to the HRC. That he spoke at such an event, all on its own, was a major step forward. I thought that the harshest criticism expressed at the National Equality March was mostly baseless.
But now, after what happened in Maine…
I sincerely doubt that President Obama could have done much to change the outcome in Maine. I understand that his stance has always been that marriage equality is a state-by-state issue.
But I also know that the No on 1 campaign asked the DNC for support and was ignored. Such support would not have been unprecedented, because it was (reluctantly) given to opponents of Prop 8 in California.
And I also believe that the president’s silence on this issue was an enormous mistake. The LGBT community already feels that the White House has not done enough and has not followed through on certain promises. The handling of this issue only serves to reinforce that impression.
We are told that the president had “no opinion” on the issue, which beggars the imagination. When asked “what is your opinion of same-sex marriage?” some number of people may say “whatever, I don’t care.” When asked, “what is your opinion of the particular ballot measure that would reject the same-sex marriage law in Maine in November of 2009?” I sincerely doubt that many people would say, “I have no opinion,” unless they really mean, “you probably don’t want to hear my opinion.” And given that it is, in fact, a matter of public policy, I think the chances that an elected official would genuinely have “no opinion” are vanishingly small.
But even now, the silence continues, deafeningly: this morning, I read that “The White House, asked about the criticism, had no immediate comment.”
Let me boil it down: We ask the White House, “Will you help us?” In response, we hear crickets chirping.
President Obama claims to support equality. He claims to understand that we don’t want to wait for our civil rights. In this case, we were given certain rights, only to have them taken away. There is simply no other way of looking at the situation but this: Yes on 1 was a vote against civil rights, and No on 1 was a vote for civil rights.
If the president wants us to perceive that he supports full equality, then he simply can’t remain silent on this issue. I believe that we in the LGBT community have given more than enough money, time, effort, and support over the decades, only to endure silence in return. The time for that has passed. There is talk now of withdrawing our support from any organization or candidate who declines to stand up for us.
The president has stood up for us. There has been progress. But it’s not enough. I’m sorry to say, it’s just not enough.
We’re sick of hearing the crickets chirping, chirping, chirping.
As I wrote this, I was totally in love with that closing line, but now, looking it over again, I wish I’d spent a little more time on the whole endeavor. Or maybe I should have written the letter here and pasted it there, rather than the other way around. In any case, I think I tripped over my own feet, so to speak. The penultimate paragraph is intended to give credit where due, but it also undercuts the last paragraph.
I don’t mean to underestimate the very real support the president has given us. But I do want to urge him to put a little more political capital on the line for us when we need it, when we think it counts. As I see it–and I don’t think I’m wrong about this–our community has been a very important constituency for the president in particular and his party in general. It didn’t take Maine to demonstrate that we’ve been taken for granted, of course, but it’s piled a whole handful of straws onto the horse’s overburdened back.
Also, I’ve discovered that the president had “no position,” which is somewhat different from having “no opinion.” Had I remembered that correctly, the sixth paragraph would have been somewhat different. Ah, well, post in haste, repent in leisure.
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