Why was a college student in the car of drunken Archbishop-elect Cordileone at 12:26 AM, when Cordileone was arrested for a DUI?

Listen very carefully to the announcer of a local San Diego news station:


“According to police, 56 year old bishop Salvatore Cordileon was driving along the edge of SDSU when he entered a sobriety checkpoint he appeared drunk and was arrested shortly after midnight. He was in the car with his elderly mother and a foreign exchange student, a young male adult.”


If San Francisco Archbishop-elect Cordileone were just the simple priest that he claimed to be to at his arrest, his superior would have demanded explanations.


What were you doing driving drunk?


What was a college student doing in your passenger seat at that time of night?


After you dropped off your mother, where did you intend to go, and what were you going to do when you arrived?


Have you ever spent time with, or socialized, with this young man prior to your arrest? If so in what context and what is the nature of your relationship?


The matter would be brought to the attention of the bishop, and it would most probably affect his career and, of course, it would be handled discreetly.


The fact that Cordileone’s mother was present in the car with Cordileone and the young student would not clear the concerns or suspicions from the mind of a superior. Consider the statements of the police:




“Cordileone's mother, who was a passenger, was allowed to drive the mid-size black car home following her son's arrest after officers made sure she had not been drinking and had a valid license, McCullough [the arresting police officer] said.”


and:

"He was a driver that was obviously impaired,” Officer Mark McCullough also stated.



These two statements from police clearly indicate that Cordileone’s mother was sober and capable of driving the car that night. The second statement by officer McCullogugh that “he [Cordileone] was…obviously impaired” raises some serious questions about both the judgment and the laxity of Cordileone’s mother, with respect to her son. She can’t tell, or is unwilling to protest, that he is obviously drunk and poses a threat to human life behind the wheel of an automobile. How objective and outspoken would she be about a possible inappropriate relationship with a young student?


A superior/pastor/bishop would ask all of these questions of Salvatore Cordileone and so, it surprises me that the press does not. Then again, the Catholic hierarchy has much experience in managing the press. This is not a story they want pursued, it would be highly inconvenient in an election year. Especially on the same week that the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), New York Archbishop cardinal Dolan blesses the Republican National Convention and Mitt Romney’s bid to replace Obama as President. If Romney wins, the USCCB’s social conservativism will become national policy and this increases both USCCB [Vatican] power and prestige.



Cordileone is not a simple priest. He is:


“Known as "the architect of Proposition 8," the 56-year-old played a pivotal role in convincing many Catholic organizations in California to help bankroll the 2008 campaign to overturn the state's same-sex marriage law. With his help, Prop 8 supporters raised some $1.5 million, which went a long way toward helping get the measure passed.”



That is why Benedict XVI promoted him to put a lid on gay San Francisco and use that position to influence politicians to deny LGBT Civil Rights. In this election cycle the bishops define morality as being about sex, specifically controlling women and LGBT people. Archbishop-elect Cordileone’s arrest on a DUI can be handled; the fact that a young male student was a passenger in the drunken bishop’s car is a monstrous embarrassment to the USCCB’s agenda. It could have far reaching negative political consequences for Benedict’s plan to stop Marriage Equality in the USA.



Post Script

What can we do now?

1. Determine the identity of the young male student who was a passenger in Cordileone’s car on the night of his arrest.

2. Interview that young male student and publish his story.

The Price of Hate and Compromise

Tonight I sat down to check messages on my computer and I found myself overwhelmed with incredible sorrow as I read the following post, “CA Teen Filmmaker Commits Suicide After Making ‘It Gets Better’ Video.”



The article goes on to say that Eric James Borges a 19-year-old resident of Visalia, CA was, “Not accepted by his birth family, Eric James was striking out on his own, trying to deal with his personal situation, but also wanting to help others. Sadly even involvement with the Trevor Project was not enough to help him navigate the turbulent waters of young adulthood.”

Eric grew up in Visalia, California, a town I know very well because I lived there for 15 years. One year 1989 as associate pastor at St. Mary’s (the wealthy White parish) and 14 years as pastor of Holy Family Church (the poor Latino parish) located at 1908 North Court Street in Visalia.

The website for the City of Visalia speaks of the pro-South culture of Visalia during the Civil War that alarmed the Federal government enough to build a military installation in 1862 to prevent an uprising, centered in Visalia, in favor of the Confederacy.

Visalia, like most rural communities in the USA, is socially conservative. I recall walking down Main Street about ten years ago; a new shop had opened up called, “Prim and Proper.” Another priest, also assigned to Visalia quipped, “That’s Visalia.”

There is much that I loved and still love about Visalia, but there exists a dark side to most conservative rural towns in America. They are very wonderful places to live IF you happen to belong to the majority and conform to conservative ideas/values, or at least appear to conform. Eric’s story is chillingly familiar because it is the story of far too many of us.

Most of us become aware of our sexuality at puberty. Our physical attraction (sexual orientation) slowly “dawns” upon us uninvited, it simply emerges as we grow from children into adolescents. The greatest fear for a young LGBT person at this point in their life, is that they would be rejected by the very people that they love the most in this world, their family and their friends. As survival mechanism LGBT children adapt by denying who they are, they learn to lie about themselves to their parents, siblings, friends and classmates.

The price of all of this is ultimately self-hatred. The Center for Disease Control’s 1999 Youth at Risk Behavior Study, found that one-third of gay adolescents attempt suicide. One-Third! Not reflected in those statistics are the abuse of alcohol and drugs by LGBT youth. Not reflected in those statistics are the large numbers of gay teens that are driven from their homes, or emotionally alienated by parents practicing “tough love.” Parents attempting to force their children to be something they are not, heterosexual. All too often parents have been misled into adopting this tough “love” by clergy.

The fact that the hierarchy of many religions, including Catholicism, promote these attitudes towards LGBT people and makes them accomplices to this moral evil. The prejudice, emotional and physical violence, alienation of affection between parents and their children, the resulting despair and tragic suicides can all be traced back to religious authorities who willfully disregard the insights of psychology.

Pope Benedict XVI, just this week, made the absurd and unsubstantiated statement that; gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined "the future of humanity itself".


In the USA those states that have Marriage Equality laws have substantially lower divorce rates that those that prohibit Same-sex marriage.



Consider the following report from the BBC,

“A UK HIV charity said there was a clear link between happiness and health.
Research has already suggested that gay men are more likely to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts than heterosexual men, and that social exclusion may be partly responsible.


Same-sex marriages are legal in six US states, with Massachusetts the first to allow them in 2003.”

And,

“Researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health surveyed the demand for medical and mental health care from 1,211 gay men registered with a particular health clinic in the 12 months prior to the change, and the 12 months afterwards.
They found a 13% drop in healthcare visits after the law was enacted.
There was a reduction in blood pressure problems, depression and "adjustment disorders", which the authors claimed could be the result of reduced stress.”

And,

“A spokesman for the Terrence Higgins Trust, a UK-based sexual health and HIV charity, said: "There is a known link between health and happiness.
"It's no surprise that people who are treated as second class citizens tend to have low self esteem, which in turn makes them more likely to take risks.
"Whether this is drugs, alcohol abuse, or unsafe sex, treating gay men unequally has lasting repercussions for their health."

Tragically, society (like our President) is “evolving” too slowly to have saved the life of Eric James Borges, 19, of Visalia, California. Hopefully, his death will outrage us to speak louder, work harder and fight more uncompromisingly for full federal equality and protection. For the human dignity that is every person’s birthright.

Petition Asking Cardinal George to resign after defaming LGBT people.

After almost a quarter of a century hearing confessions and counseling individuals and families, I know that sexual orientation is not merely a political, sociological or psychological issue. At core, what this is truly about is discrimination and its hurtful and harmful impact on simple human dignity and the lives of real people.


Bullying, employment discrimination, denial of service in the armed-forces under the recently repealed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, denial of adoption rights, denial of Civil Marriage rights, all attempt to force LGBT people into lives of secrecy, shame, denial, fear and foster self-hatred. The Center for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Study of 1999 found that 33% of gay adolescents attempt suicide. A statistic that we were tragically reminded of last year when several young LGBT students took their own lives. That is the true cost of bigotry in the lives of countless LGBT people, their families and loved ones.


Cardinal George’s comparison of LGBT people who are simply seeking full Federal equality as American citizens with the KKK, a notorious hate group that seeks to deny full Federal equality to minorities, is both an inversion and a denial of the truth. George’s words constitute both a grave injustice and a moral outrage. By vilifying members of a minority group he targets them for prejudice and hate crimes.


A simple apology is insufficient, since an apology is merely a public announcement of one’s personal feelings. I believe that cardinal George is morally required to ask for forgiveness of the LGBT people, their families and loved ones, who he has vilified. His immediate resignation, upon asking for forgiveness, would manifest his sincerity and serve as a reproach to bigotry in our society.

I invite you to sign a petition from Change.org asking Cardinal George to resign as Archbishop of Chicago due to his defamation of LGBT people.

Cardinal George attempts to raise fears about LGBT people.

Cardinal George of Chicago objected to an LGBT parade in that city. Claiming that it would force the cancellation of Mass at a church along the parade route. The Huffington Post reported

"I go with the pastor," George told Fox. "He's telling us that he won't be able to have services on Sunday if that's the case. You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism."

The preceding quote makes it appear that this “poor pastor” desperately called the “good” cardinal for help. Fear that his services might be interrupted, or that Catholics might be targeted for harassment by rioting LGBT parade attendees.


Don’t believe it for a moment. Having lived as a pastor for decades I can tell you how the system works. The pastor in question most probably got a phone call from the Archdiocese “asking” him to write to the cardinal about the LGBT parade routed pass his church. Failure to express what the cardinal wanted to hear in that letter would impact unfavorably on the pastor’s future career.


The pastor lives and works in that community, many of the folks in the parade are either his parishioners, or family members/relatives of his parishioners, he does not want to alienate these people. Furthermore, Chicago is a large city, there are countless parades held there every year and most of them on weekends. Odds are that, like most Catholic priests, the pastor (as well as the cardinal) is gay.


Sadly, I am not surprised by cardinal George’s absurd assertion comparing the LGBT communities struggle for full Federal Equality, with the KKK. My former bishop, the late John Steinbock, compared the LGBT community with, “Stalinist Russia and Maoist China.” The disturbing fact is that it is the Catholic bishops who are using strong-arm tactics against LGBT people who simply seek equality.


It is the bishops who have consistently orchestrated political campaigns against LGBT people and their families. This despite the fact that the majority of U.S. Catholics are supportive of equality legislation for LGBT people, but then again the only opinion on LGBT rights that concerns George is that of the out-going pope.


In the middle of what some have called the Second Great Depression and the Sexual Abuse Cover-Up Scandals that have rocked the Catholic church both in the USA and internationally, implicating even the current pope himself, cardinal George’s chief pastoral concern is not helping the jobless, the homeless or addressing the Cover-Up scandal. It is lobbying, in a vain attempt, to keep LGBT people in the closet socially and second-class citizens legally.

How to beat John Eastman, NOM's new spokesperson, in public debate

The Associated Press reports the following, re-printed by the Huffington Post:


"A law school professor from Southern California was named Thursday as the new chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the most active groups opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage.
John Eastman, a professor and former dean at Chapman University Law School in Orange, Calif., will replace NOM's co-founder, Maggie Gallagher, who will remain a member of the board while devoting some of her time to finishing a book about the same-sex marriage debate.


Eastman, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, ran unsuccessfully last year for state attorney general in California, though he did garner support from some tea party activists."




In confronting John Eastman, the new spokesperson for NOM, I would suggest using material presented in Professors Salzman and Lawler’s recent book, “The Sexual Person.” ISBN: 9781589012080 (1589012089)


The Huffington Post re-published an interesting article by Phyllis Zangano on “The Sexual Person” on 29 September 2010,



"Salzman and Lawler's dense academic argument turns traditional Catholic teaching on natural law on its head. They redefine natural law, saying "nature" is personal and individual, and that sexual activity need not be directed at procreation (contrary to what the Catholic Church has always said).

Salzman and Lawler argue that what is "natural" for a heterosexual is not "natural" for a homosexual, and therefore homosexuals and heterosexuals must act in accord with their personal "natures".

In other words, if it's "natural" for a homosexual to perform homosexual acts, then--for that person--heterosexual acts would be "unnatural" and immoral. For the two professors, homosexual activity is only immoral for the heterosexual acting against his or her nature."


Georgetown University Press offers this review, for more click here,


"Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics."


Professors Salzman and Lawler’s work is a very important tool in our battle for Full Federal Legal Equality, because “Natural Law” arguments form the philosophical foundation for Anti-Equality laws and policies. Salzman and Lawler's arguments transform Natural Law into our ally for full Equality and should be required reading for anyone debating John Eastman, Robert George and other NOM spokespersons.

The Day (and work) after the "End of DADT" Celebrations

As I drove home during LA rush hour traffic I was listening to National Public Radio news. The news commentator observed that the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen had been an important advocate for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, especially in his testimony on several occasions last year on Capitol Hill.


At a news conference held on the day the repeal took effect, Politico reports
the following comments by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Admiral Mullen,


“Today is really about every man and woman who serves this country, every man and woman in uniform, regardless of how they define themselves,” Mullen said. “Tomorrow they’ll all get up, they’ll all go to work, and they’ll all be able to do that work honestly.”



Asked about how the military can guard members of the military against harassment and violence against gays, Panetta noted that the military has a “zero tolerance” with regards to harassment and that military leaders must be on the lookout for potential problems that arise.




I think that the Admiral’s words are the clearest expression of what is at the heart of our struggle for Full Federal Legal rights and protection. It really is simply about people, ALL people including LBGT people, being able to get up in the morning, go to work and live their lives (and relationships) in peace. Without harassment and violence.


Yesterday, we took a significant step forward towards that ultimate goal. It was an imperfect step, transgendered people are not protected by the repeal of DADT and gay/lesbian service member’s spouses/domestic partners are not granted the same rights and privileges of their heterosexual counterparts. However, it was a historic step forward, not only for the Armed Forces and their members but also, for American society.


When I arrived home I found the following article posted to my Facebook wall,


Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, Dies in Suicide


Another tragic reminder that bullying against gay youth is a continuing problem comes with the suicide of a 14-year-old boy, Jamey Rodemeyer, who had asked for help repeatedly.


The repeal of DOMA and the passage of ENDA are necessary and important next steps in our struggle for Full Federal Legal Rights. However, while we work to recapture the House of Representatives and secure victories in November of 2012 that will make such legislation possible, we can and must work on the grassroots level to advance Anti-Bullying laws.


You can be part of this effort by attending your local PTA meetings, School Board meetings and becoming informed, involved and advocate for Anti-Bullying Laws. Write local officials letters, with a postage stamp, members of Congress actually pay much more attention to real letters from constituents than to E-mails.


Anti-Bullying laws will help to avoid tragedies like the one posted above. Remember how you felt when you were very young and first discovered that you were “different?” Remember how alone and powerless you felt? You can be a voice for the voiceless. You can personally make a real and immediate difference in this battle. Finally, Anti-Bullying laws will help all the “letters” in our alphabet soup.

DADT Repeal, Part of Full Federal Legal Equality.

"The President-Elect has promised to lift the ban on homosexuals serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. What we are going to do here today is brainstorm about policy changes that we will make in the Air Force after the ban is lifted."


Through my peripheral vision I saw Airmen manning recording equipment and I looked down at that dime-sized microphone at my desk. I looked around the room at approximately fifty young officers, each at an identical desk also equipped with a dime-sized microphone. I raised my hand and said, "Major, until the Uniform Code of Military Justice is amended we are not free to speculate on policy changes." The Major paused and said, "That is correct." That was the end of the exercise.


Years later, I learned that similar exercises were held at various military bases. Many of those who offered policy recommendations in favor of accommodating homosexuals had their careers “negatively impacted.”


In those heady days, many of us believed that President-Elect Clinton would lift the ban. National Healthcare was given priority and all we got was DADT and DOMA. Still, LGBT people were thrilled that the President mentioned us at all. Oh, we never got National Healthcare either, even now we only have a partially implemented Healthcare Reform Act. Arguably, this is better than what we had, but still far less than Single Payor, or a National Healthcare Plan. So much for bi-partisan cooperation.


The cost of DADT was paid for in destroyed careers and ruined lives of countless members of our Armed Forces. Most of those costs will never be recouped. Moreover, gay and lesbian military personnel were forced to live double lives in the shadow of fear. DADT was a lie. Everyday at the water cooler people talked about whom they were dating. About their wives and husbands. About what they were doing on the weekend, or on leave. Gay and lesbian had to do what they had learned to do as adolescents, what they had learned as a survival mechanism, they had to lie. Heterosexual service members were quite free to Ask and Tell, gay and lesbian service members were not.


Pronouns were changed and reasons were fabricated as to why they were still single, why they chose to live off base. Worse still, some entered into sham marriages in order to protect their careers. I recall one such marriage that ended shortly after the military member reached his twenty years of service. Suddenly, his wife discovered that her husband was gay and that he was divorcing her. DADT had straight victims too.


Thankfully all that ends on Tuesday 20 September 2011 for most of our military. Most, not all, transgendered members of the Armed Forces are still at risk. They must still remain hidden. They are still required to lie merely to survive. At a talk I gave tonight, someone stated that we should have held out for “all or nothing!”


Although I empathized with the person’s zeal for justice, I quoted my old Political Science professor who said, “The reasons why liberals seldom win, is that they want the whole loaf of bread. In politics, you’re lucky to get one-third or one-half of what you want.” The repeal of DADT is imperfect for many reasons.


It is imperfect because it does nothing for transgendered members of the Armed Forces. It is also imperfect because spouses/domestic partners of gay/lesbian service members are not entitled to base housing, insurance benefits, etc. There is still much more work to be done, more battles for equality to be fought.


I think that the frustrations with incrementalism in our community are both reasonable and unreasonable. They are reasonable in that some LGBT organizations have used incrementalism as a license for inaction. One woman used to make a substantial donation to the Cancer Society every year and then, one year, she suddenly stopped her donations. Her son asked her why she stopped. The woman answered, “I discovered that they were only funding research for treatments and not research for cures.” If they found a cure, there would no longer be a need for the Cancer Society, or for continued donations and fund-raisers. Not to mention all the salaried positions. Some LGBT organizations might be afraid that the attainment of Full Federal Legal Equality would render them obsolete. Full Equality would mean an end to the donations and fundraisers that make possible all those salaried positions and benefits packages they currently enjoy. Incrementalism in this light is politically cynical and ethically indefensible.


Incrementalism in President Harry S. Truman’s Executive order desegregating the U.S. Civil Service and Armed Forces did little to immediately end segregation in this country. However, the Armed Forces socialize young enlistees from all over the nation and those enlistees bring their new thinking back to Hometown, USA. Truman’s act changed America’s culture and laid the groundwork for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 and the Civil Right Act of 1964. In that light, the repeal of DADT is an ominous defeat for the forces of social bigotry they understand that this will affect all of American society.


It may also be argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was incrementalism. Since it failed to address the issue of housing discrimination based on race. Title VIII of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 addressed that, but without the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there would have been no Fair Housing Act of 1968. In that sense, incrementalism is an intelligent and necessary strategy. We take a third of the loaf of bread today and then fight for fourth of the rest of the loaf tomorrow and so on, until we have the whole loaf. The NAACP still has much work to do today, even though Civil Rights have come a very long way since Dr. King delivered his “I have a dream” speech at the feet of Lincoln’s statue. There will still be many generations of work ahead for LGBT organizations, long after Full Federal Legal Equality is attained.


We still have to pass ENDA and repeal DOMA. We still have to fight for those in our community who have not yet benefited from the repeal of DADT. Some of these battles will be fought by attorneys in courtrooms, some by you at the ballot box and in your conversations with family members, co-workers and in social settings.


Although imperfect, the repeal of DADT represents substantive progress for our community. Today is a day to draw strength from this battle victory by celebrating this encouraging step forward towards greater legal equality. Even after full federal legal equality and protection for our community is achieved, we will have to continue to work and fight for full social equality.

President Obama: 'I've Met My Commitments to the LGBT Community' No Sir, you have not!

President Obama: 'I've Met My Commitments to the LGBT Community'
No Sir, you have not!


The fact Sir that you can make such an absurd statement betrays a grotesque ignorance of the inequality that remains enshrined in American law on a Federal level. Even more disturbing is your apparent insensitivity and cynicism to such inequality and the suffering, despair, destroyed lives, broken families and, as we witnessed last fall, tragic suicides of LGBT youth.


Let us visit some of those inequalities:


1. In those states where Marriage Equality is the law, Same-sex couples are denied federal recognition of their marriages. This means that the IRS, Social Security, INS do not grant to those couples and their children the rights that are automatically granted to heterosexual couples. In the real world Same-sex, couples and their children are taxed at higher rates. Those couples do not receive the Social Security benefits that they and their spouse paid into over a lifetime. A legally married person in Massachusetts (or any of the other states that recognize [d] their marriage) can have their spouse deported by INS, effectively destroying that family and causing incalculable trauma to both spouses and their children for a lifetime.


2. You signed legislation from the Congress that authorized you to repeal the unjust Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law on 22 December of 2010. To date, DADT remains enforced and members of our community are currently being discharged under this discriminatory law. It is within your power, as President, right now to issue a stopgap order that would effectively end these injustices that are destroying the lives and careers of innocent people. You have chosen not to issue that order.


3. As President of the United States you command, what your predecessor Theodore Roosevelt called “the Bully Pulpit.” You could have used your position to promote the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA] that would have protected huge swaths of members of our community from wrongful termination and denial of benefits. You choose to do nothing.


What is most disturbing is that you have, and continue, to squander the opportunities that the people of this nation have placed into your hands. You appear to place Reelection to the Office, in which you are called to serve, above the interests of the people whose votes; sweat and treasure put you into that Office. Here is the truth regarding your much touted signing of DADT [that you have yet to enact]:


"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs expounded on Obama’s commitment to legislative repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as he acknowledged that the president hasn’t yet reached out to senators to lobby them on the issue.

Asked whether Obama had made any phone calls to “swayable senators” such as Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted “no” on moving forward with the defense authorization bill in September, Gibbs replied that he doesn’t believe the president has spoken to the Maine senator on the issue."



Moreover, what moved Obama on DADT is reported in The Daily Beast,

"It’s critical for LGBT people to remember that a fulfillment that always heads Obama’s list—the dissolution of DADT—happened not since folks were calm with a occasional wink, though since groups like Netroots and GetEQUAL spurred him into action. The boss had been formulation to wait until 2011 to pull for repeal. But Lt. Dan Choi, a plainly happy Iraq War maestro who became a open face of antithesis to a policy, altered a diversion in Mar 2010 by chaining himself to a White House fence and removing vital media pickup. There was nonetheless some-more coverage a subsequent month, when another GetEQUAL romantic heckled Obama’s inaction on DADT during a fundraiser for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

And that’s when things began to shift. According to GetEQUAL’s cofounder, Robin McGehee, a contributor from a White House pool emailed her immediately after a Boxer occurrence to say, “DADT hasn’t even been on this president’s radar, though now it’s a usually thing he’s articulate about.”



Even now, you continue to drag your feet on DADT certification. Your inaction leaves some in our community wondering if you will trade repeal of DADT to our opponents to obtain some political concession.


The best argument that your most ardent supporters/defenders in our community can muster is that you are acting out of political expediency and that you have done more than any other President has ever done for our community; let us take a closer look at those claims. The former argument serves as an apt explanation of why most people use the term “politician” as a slur. The latter argument is easily dismissed by the progress of history and that is due to the real world sacrifices of activists, people of moral conviction, and elected officials like Governor Cuomo who have honestly served our community, the people of New York, our Nation and World consciousness.



The only time we hear from you is when you want to take the credit for other’s work, when you have your hand extended for a contribution, or you need volunteers to staff your campaigns and for us to give you our votes. The rationale, “The other side will work against your interests, he is the lesser of two evils. Therefore, you have no choice but to vote for Obama.” Lesser or greater, both are evil and the only way to defeat evil is to name it as such and reject it. We deserve better, but we will not get better until we demand it and refuse to accept miserable crumbs and excuses meant to quiet us.


Sir, our patience is wearing very, very thin. ACT! Start by announcing your public and unqualified support for Federal Marriage Equality. ACT! Pick up your telephone and call the Secretary of Defense and the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Certify the repeal of DADT and in the interim issue an Executive Order to immediately stop all discharges under this hatefully unjust law. ACT! Pick up your telephone and order the Department of Justice to drop charges against Lt. Dan Choi. IF you did these ALL of these today you would make a good start towards making true your claim, “I've Met My Commitments to the LGBT Community.”


Not until you can sign legislation for the LGBT community, as your predecessor President Lyndon B. Johnson did when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for your community, can you honestly claim that you have met your commitments to us. That requires that you DO for us what President Johnson did for your community. That means that you must take risks, place your comfort and security beneath a real commitment to the ideals you beautifully enunciated as a candidate.