Below The Beltway

President Obama addressed the Human Rights Campaign last night and pretty much said the same things he was before he got elected:

President Obama, struggling to keep promises he made during last year’s campaign, renewed his pledge to end the military’s ban on openly gay service members as he appeared at a fundraising dinner for the nation’s largest gay advocacy group on Saturday night.

“I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Obama said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner. Recounting the ongoing effort to bring full civil rights to gays and lesbians, the president said: “I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight.”

Obama did not offer specifics on how he would advance the cause of allowing gays to serve openly in the military, or of same-sex marriage, two areas where his inaction as president have disappointed many gay supporters.

But on the eve of a major gay rights rally in Washington, an event aimed in part at pressuring Obama and Congress, the president was met with a standing ovation and resounding cheers. Obama acknowledged the frustration of some activists, portraying himself as a forceful ally in a lengthy fight. And while he said that gay rights are only one part of his agenda, which is loaded down with domestic and international challenges, he said that would not deter him.

“My commitment to you is unwavering, even as we wrestle with these enormous problems,” Obama said. “Do not doubt the direction we are headed and the destination we will reach.”

Just days after winning the presidency, Obama vowed that he would be “a fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans.”

But nine months later, many in the community say he has done little to make good on that statement. They accuse the president of putting their agenda on the back burner — behind Wall Street regulation, health care, climate change and a series of foreign-policy issues. And although his sweeping rhetoric is appreciated, many are concerned that he has so far offered little beyond the symbolic and the incremental.

Many gay rights activists are disappointed that Obama has not moved forward on two major issues: ending the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, under which gay soldiers can be discharged for their sexual orientation; and his failure to work toward ending the Defense of Marriage Act.

“As someone who supported Barack Obama early on during the primaries, and raised nearly $50,000 for him during the campaign, it gives me no pleasure to burst the pink champagne bubbles of hope,” John Aravosis, a gay rights activist and popular blogger, wrote in the Huffington Post. “But President Obama’s track record on keeping his gay promises has been fairly abominable.”

Here’s the whole speech:

Notwithstanding Obama’s warm reception last night, there are some, such as Andrew Sullivan, who aren’t impressed:

He says he will end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but he has done nothing, and he offered no time-line, no deadline HRC for action and no verifiable record that he has done anything, despite his claims that he has.

He says he is ending the HIV ban, but it is still in force, a year and a half after it was signed by George W. Bush and passed by massive majorities in both houses.

He says he favors equality for gay couples but said nothing tonight to support the initiatives in Maine or in Washngton State or the struggle in Washington DC for marriage equality. That’s a test of real sincerity on this matter. He failed it.

He says he wants to end discrimination in employment even as he is firing more gay people solely for being gay than any other employer in the country – as commander-in-chief. And if an employer is firing gay people all the time, is it tolerable to accept as a response that he will stop doing it one day – but gives no time-line at all to hold him to?

(…)

[T]he sad truth is: he is refusing to take any responsibility for his clear refusal to fulfill clear campaign pledges on the core matter of civil rights and has given no substantive, verifiable pledges or deadlines by which he can be held accountable. What that means, I’m afraid, is that this speech was highfalutin bullshit. There were no meaningful commitments within a time certain, not even a commitment to fulfilling them in his first term; just meaningless, feel-good commitments that we have no way of holding him to. Once the dust settles, ask yourself. What did he promise to achieve in the next year? Or two years? Or four years? The answer is: nothing.

John Aravosis was similarly unimpressed:

What did President Obama say new tonight? Absolutely nothing. What did the Human Rights Campaign get in exchange for once again giving our president cover for all of his broken promises to our community? Absolutely nothing.

I like HRC, I know a lot of people who work there, I’ve defended them when others in the community have been highly critical of them. But it is criminal that any gay rights organization would invite an embattled president to their dinner, giving him political cover for repeated broken promises and slaps in the face to our community (like the DOMA incest brief), and then get absolutely nothing in return. HRC’s actions only feed the suspicions of critics who say that the organization is more interested in fundraisers than in advancing our rights.

The cynical truth of the matter, of course, is that Obama knows he can act this way because homosexuals have nowhere else to go politically. Even if he only moves the Democratic Party, and the country, marginally on issues like DADT or gay marriage, the Republican Party has demonstrated time and again that it’s definition of individual liberty has an exceptions clause drafted by the Religious Right which excludes any consideration for the rights of gay people. Its not all that different from the Jim Crow era when the Democratic Party was a “white person’s only” club.

Obama is playing you people for fools because he knows you have nowhere else to go, and until the Republican Party gets its head out of the Bible, he’s right.