President Barack Obama

In the fall of 1912, as his campaign for president entered its final stage, Woodrow Wilson was speaking in Brooklyn when he was asked for his opinion on women’s suffrage. The issue was very much in the political ether, but Wilson had declined to take a stand on it. According to John Milton Cooper’s excellent biography  of the twenty-eighth president, he responded by insisting that it was “not a question that is dealt with by the national government at all.” The woman who had asked the question was apparently displeased by this blatant dodge. “I am speaking to you as an American, Mr. Wilson,” she retorted.
I am speaking to you as an American: It was a wonderful rebuke, one that anticipated the rhetoric of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who would not rail against America but instead demand to be fully part of it. Wilson, however, was unmoved. And his slippery treatment of women’s suffrage—like his slippery approach on matters of race—did not end once he was in the White House. Running for reelection four years later, he was still playing the same exasperating game. That year, the Democrats did not endorse a constitutional amendment providing for women’s suffrage but, instead, called on the states to extend voting rights to women. Such a half-measure looks cowardly in retrospect, of course; but it also looked cowardly at the time. In November 1916, The New Republic excoriated Wilson for his weak stand on the issue. During his reelection campaign, TNR wrote, Wilson had told a group of suffragists that “[h]e was with them,” even as “he confessed to a ‘little impatience’ as to their anxiety about method.” From this, the magazine concluded that the president had “at best a vague, benign feeling about [the issue], and no conviction whatever that woman suffrage was creating a national situation which called for thorough sincerity, nerve and will.”
An evasive stance on a controversial civil rights issue from a liberal president; an insistence that the issue is primarily local, rather than national, in character; a complete failure of sincerity, nerve, and will: If these things sound familiar in 2010, it is because Barack Obama is taking exactly the same approach on gay marriage.
My colleague James Downie has assembled a fascinating timeline of Obama’s statements on gay marriage over the past 14 years, stretching from 1996 to earlier this month, when the White House responded to a judge’s ruling on Prop 8 by reiterating that it opposes same-sex marriage. What the timeline shows is a pattern that can only be described as illogical and cynical. Obama argues that he is against gay marriage while also opposing efforts like Prop 8 that would ban it. He justifies this by saying that state constitutions should not be used to reduce rights. (His exact words: “I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you’re playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about.”) Obama appears to be saying that it is fine to prohibit gay people from getting married, as long as the vehicle for doing so is not a constitution. Presumably, then, he supports the numerous states that have banned same-sex marriage through other means, without resorting to a constitutional amendment? If so, he might be the only person in the country to occupy this narrow, and frankly absurd, slice of intellectual terrain. Obama has also said he favors civil unions rather than gay marriage because the question of where and how to apply the label “marriage” is a religious one. This argument makes even less sense than his stance on state constitutions, since marriage, for better or for worse, is very much a government matter.
Obama and those around him seem unaware that all of this is a problem; a look at some of the lessons from Wilson’s experience might help to clarify why they ought to reconsider. The first lesson is that history does not look kindly on this type of presidential conduct. Wilson is today remembered as a near-great president, but his indifference on questions of gender and race is more than a bit unflattering in retrospect. Second, like Wilson, Obama is running out of time to stay ahead of history. In 1912, women’s suffrage was hardly an outlandish cause; one of the three major presidential contenders that year, Teddy Roosevelt, came out in favor of it, even as Wilson remained mum. Similarly, on gay marriage, Obama is now to the right of Laura Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, according to a new CNN poll, 52 percent of the American people.
Third, there is the problem of the example Obama is setting for the rest of the world. According to Cooper, when Wilson eventually did endorse the women’s suffrage amendment, on January 9, 1918, it was at least partly because of foreign policy. “As one of the Democrats [who had spoken to Wilson that day] recalled two weeks later, the president told them that passing the amendment would send the right message to the world and would acknowledge women’s service to the nation,” Cooper explains. Months later, addressing the Senate on the issue, Wilson cited the “unusual circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged in the view of our own people and our own consciences but also in the view of all the nations and peoples.” The point, it seemed, was that you could not wage war in the name of democratic ideals while barring half your population from voting. Obviously, the lesson here does not map perfectly onto contemporary politics—Obama would not exactly increase his popularity in the Muslim world by endorsing gay marriage—but neither does it make sense to think of gay marriage as completely disconnected from international affairs. Obama has said that he wants to restore American moral leadership in the world. But how can he claim the mantle of moral leadership when we are being outpaced by so many countries and so many foreign leaders on one of the central civil rights issues of our time?
The final lesson from Wilson is that what a president says and does matters. The day after Wilson’s January 9 statement, the House endorsed women’s suffrage by two votes. Wilson, albeit years late to the cause, would go on to lobby senators and, eventually, the governor of Tennessee, which became the final state to ratify the nineteenth amendment. Obama, meanwhile, seems to have convinced himself that he can’t make a difference on gay marriage, so why wade into the issue? But, while he may not realize it, Obama is already leading on gay marriage; he is just leading in the wrong direction. Every time Obama or a surrogate reiterates his position, it reinforces the idea that gay marriage is a bit too scary for the political mainstream. Worse, Obama’s stance seems to be a way of conveying to the country that he knows a lot of people still aren’t completely comfortable admitting gays and lesbians as full participants in American life, and that this is OK because he isn’t either. It is about the most cynical gesture you can imagine from an allegedly liberal leader—and we deserve better. I am speaking to you as an American, Mr. Obama.
from The New Republic / Richard Just

HIV-positive individuals can legally visit and migrate to the US from today.
President Obama announced the end of the ban at the end of October 2009, but there was a 60-day waiting period before this finally came into effect.
Introduced early in the HIV pandemic, the US travel ban prevented visits to the US by people with HIV except in exceptional circumstances. Although it was widely flouted, individuals with HIV who were detected by US immigration staff were refused entry to the country and deported.
Moves to remove the ban were initiated during the Bush administration when the US Congress voted for its repeal.
Following the removal of the ban, the International AIDS Society confirmed that the 2012 International AIDS Conference will be held in Washington D.C. The US capital has an HIV prevalence of 3% – the threshold for a severe, generalised epidemic is 1%.
HIV-positive UK passport holders who wish to visit the US will now be able to do so by completing the green “visa waiver” form that allows routine entry to the US.
HIV has also ceased to be a bar for migration to the US.
from AidsMap

Louvon Harris (sister of James Byrd Jr.), Judy Shepard (mother of Matthew Shepard), Betty Byrd Boatner (sister of James Byrd Jr.), and President Barack Obama / AP photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. – For this accomplishment, President Barack Obama sought maximum publicity.
There was a bill signing at a wooden desk set up in the East Room, with the media invited, followed by a reception for joyous, champagne-sipping supporters and an address to them, again, from the East Room.
Obama was keeping a campaign promise to gays and lesbians by putting his signature on a bill to include violence against homosexuals in federal hate crimes law.
Of several such commitments to gay and lesbian supporters, it’s the first one he’s kept. Other promises are either pending or stalled entirely, proving a source of continued dismay for gay and lesbian advocates who worked to help him get elected.
As a candidate, Obama promised to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the military. He pledged to work to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, which limits how states, local and federal bodies can recognize partnerships and determine benefits. He also promised to outlaw job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Nine months into his term, those promises aren’t close to being met.
While clearly pleased by Wednesday’s signing ceremony, which was attended by many members of Congress who came to witness the fruits of a decade of effort, Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said there is still a lot of work to be done.
“We look forward to the days ahead when we will join together again to celebrate full equality and recognition of our community, including in employment, the military and in the full recognition of our families,” Carey said.
The expanded law now also covers crimes motivated by gender identity or disability.
“No one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability,” Obama said, referring to Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., for whom the law is named.
Shepard was a gay Wyoming college student murdered in 1998; Byrd was a black man chained to a pickup truck by three white men and dragged to his death in east Texas that year.
Obama’s relationship with gay activists has been rocky since his election. They objected to the participation of evangelist Rev. Rick Warren in Obama’s inauguration because of Warren’s support for repealing gay marriage in California. Obama responded by having Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the denomination’s first openly gay bishop, participate at another event.
As president, Obama hasn’t taken any concrete steps to urge Congress to overturn the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He restated the pledge this month in a speech at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay civil rights advocacy group.
“I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Obama said, offering neither a timetable nor specifics on how it would be done. He noted that legislation is pending in the House, and that he is working with the Pentagon and Congress on ending the policy.
“We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country,” he said. “We should be celebrating their willingness to show such courage and selflessness on behalf of their fellow citizens, especially when we’re fighting two wars.”
On job security for gays and lesbians, Obama said “we’re pushing hard” for it because “nobody in America should be fired because they’re gay.” He said “it’s not fair. It’s not right. We’re going to put a stop to it.”
Obama also pledged during the campaign to work for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. But administration lawyers did the opposite, defending the law in a court brief. White House aides said the lawyers were only doing their jobs by supporting an existing law.
Obama has expanded some federal benefits to same-sex partners, but not health benefits or pension guarantees. He has allowed State Department employees to include their same-sex partners in certain embassy programs available to opposite-sex spouses.
from The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will focus “at the right time” on how to overturn the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.
“I don’t think it’s going to be – it’s not years, but I think it will be teed up appropriately,” James Jones said.
The Democratic-led Congress is considering repealing the 1993 law. Action isn’t expected on the issue until early next year.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently wrote Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked to share their views and recommendations on the contentious policy. In Sept. 24 letters, Reid also asked for a review of the cases of two U.S. officers who were discharged from the military because of their sexuality.
“At a time when we are fighting two wars, I do not believe we can afford to discharge any qualified individual who is willing to serve our country,” Reid wrote.
Jones said Obama “has an awful lot on his desk. I know this is an issue that he intends to take on at the appropriate time. And he has already signaled that to the Defense Department. The Defense Department is doing the things it has to do to prepare, but at the right time, I’m sure the president will take it on.”
As a candidate, Obama signaled support for repealing the law. To the disappointment of gay-rights supporters, he has yet to made a move since taking office in January. The White House has said it will not stop the military from dismissing gays and lesbians who acknowledge their sexuality.
Last year, 634 members of the military were discharged for being gay, or .045 percent of the active-duty U.S. force, according to an Aug. 14 congressional report.
The largest number of gays who were ousted under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came in 2001, when 1,227 were discharged, or .089 of the force.
The House is considering legislation to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow people who have been discharged under the policy to rejoin the military.
Jones appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
from The Associated Press