Hate to say "I told you so"...

When I said it during the presidential elections - that I was not pro-Obama, because he was clearly not planning on doing anything to move gay rights along - his staunch supporters, in between bouts of gushing syrupy praise over their new Messiah, told me I was racist. After all, what reason other than the fact that Obama was black could I have for not LOVING him? I reminded them that, actually, Obama is of mixed race as, technically, so am I.

And then the elections were over and we had a new president. Hurrah! Even I was glad. Not because Obama was the living, breathing cure for AIDS that his blind fandom had painted him to be, but because he wasn't George W. Bush.

Time passed, and he did lots of things. Mostly good things. He even did a bunch of things he said he'd do if elected. He did nothing to promote same-sex marriage. Fair enough - that's exactly what he promised he'd do: NOTHING to support an idea he doesn't believe in. Even if he DID believe in it, once upon a time, not even that long ago. No surprises there; a politician changing his mind about an important issue in order to garner favor.

A couple of people I know, people who were staunch supporters of Obama...people who are gay, voiced their "disappointment" in him. How, I asked them, could they be disappointed in a man who had stated, in no uncertain terms, that marriage is for heterosexuals, only? How could they be angry and surprised that a man who would invite one of the nation's most vocal homophobes to deliver the inaugural invocation speech would end up to be less than a friend to his gay voters? How, I asked them, could they be so naive?

"He's doing a lot of good,"they'd answer, "He's still pretty amazing. Give him time. He just needs time. He'll come around. He's trying to bring people together."

How, I wondered, could smart people, people I liked and cared about and usually respected, have deluded themselves into believing that denying a whole sector of society our civil rights was a strategy for "bringing people together"? How did otherwise rational people convince themselves to still talk about their love for a president who did not even acknowledge as legitimate the love two people share for a lifetime, on account of their genders? How and why do smart people become stupid?

In October, I blogged about the hypocrisy of the whole "the world isn't ready...just wait" argument. I spoke about Del Martin, who died after 50 years of waiting for the world to be ready. Still, people I knew, people I liked, people I respected said to me, "But, the president is AWESOME. Just wait. you'll see. He's done a lot of good."

If we had a president who was denying women the vote, or blacks an education or Asians the right to work, I would not tolerate the stupid, naive, ignorant excuse-making of his supporters. Our president thinks its perfectly okay to let fags go to war -maybe even die defending this nation - as long as they keep their mouths shut about who they like to fuck. That is the long and short of it. This week's DOJ actions say it all. That's inexcusable. At worst, our president is a homophobe. At best he's a spineless coward.  Any gay person who defends Obama's lack of movement on the gay rights front can just call himself Uncle Tom: you're like a black person who thinks Rosa Parks was uppity and Dr. King had a big mouth. It feels dirty and obscene to even type those two examples, but they're the best and most accurate comparisons I can think of. If you're a gay person and you think other gays who refuse to support a president who continually denies us our civil rights are stirring up trouble or "don't understand what Obama is doing", you're a fucking idiot, and you should probably turn in your toaster.

And you know what? I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.