Gay advocates have a proposition for Obama
Pressure is building on hot-button issues: same-sex marriage, lobbying for a gay Supreme Court justice and 'don't ask, don't tell.'
By Andrew Malcolm and Johanna Neuman
May 17, 2009
With more states enacting same-sex marriage laws, pressure is growing on President Obama to moderate his stance against gay marriage.
Advocates are urging him to appoint a gay man or woman to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. Even if Obama does not name a gay justice, senators are likely to question the nominee about the hot-button issue during confirmation hearings, propelling it to the top of the political agenda this summer.
Two gay women are among the candidates being considered, according to the New York Times: Kathleen M. Sullivan and Pamela S. Karlan, both of Stanford Law School.
Already, Christian groups are lobbying against such a selection by organizing protests in Washington, where the District of Columbia City Council recently voted to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.
"That would be tantamount to opening the gate for the other side," Bishop Harry J. Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., told the New York Times. "If [Obama] meant what he said about marriage, then I think he has got to stand up and be a president who acts on his beliefs."
Gay advocates are also working to persuade the Pentagon to repeal its Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
This month, national security advisor James L. Jones Jr., a retired four-star Marine general, said changing Pentagon policy on gays in the military would require not the flick of a light switch but "more of a rheostat." And he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that this "complicated issue" needs to be "teed up appropriately and it will be discussed in the way the president does things, which is be very deliberative, very thoughtful, seeking out all sides on the issue."
The New York Times’ Sheryl Stolberg wrote recently that Obama has tread cautiously on these issues for fear of alienating some moderate and religious voters he courted during the campaign, including black preachers who form a core constituency.
But as writer David Mixner put it, gay activists are beginning to wonder, "How much longer do we give him the benefit of the doubt?"
Our guess is that Obama, a pragmatist, is waiting for consensus to build on the issue. After a meeting with gay rights organizations at the White House recently, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said, "They have a vision. They have a plan."
Cheney could be fishing, except . . .
For those who have been wondering why former Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't just go gently into the night -- or at least park himself at that undisclosed location for a while -- now comes the answer. Apparently he really cares.
Liz Cheney, the vice presidential daughter who got a plum job at the State Department during George W. Bush's administration, has taken to the airwaves to defend her father's rants. Ever since President Obama started initiating new policies -- closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison, ending harsh interrogation techniques -- Dick Cheney has made the oft-repeated and truly incendiary assertion that Obama's policies are making the country less safe from terrorism.
On Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Liz Cheney said her father would "rather be fishing in Wyoming" but felt compelled to tear down the Obama administration.
Her basic argument: Waterboarding was not only effective, it was legal, since the Bush administration had the legal documents that said so -- despite international conventions to the contrary.
Liz Cheney also accused the media of a double standard in criticizing her father over his outspoken views, noting that the media embraces former Vice President Al Gore when he speaks about global climate change.
"You want [Cheney] to shut up because you disagree with what he's saying," she told the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, whose column called Cheney "an Old Faithful of self-serving nonsense."
The Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist also asked this question: Can't we send Dick Cheney back to Wyoming? Shouldn't we chip in and buy him a home where the buffalo roam and there's always room for one more crazy old coot down at the general store?
Others in key policy roles in the Bush administration -- former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, even former President George W. Bush -- have maintained a respectful silence during the recent debate over whether the "enhanced interrogation" methods they approved crossed the line into torture.
Not so Cheney, who has become a familiar face on the Sunday talk shows, spewing his critiques about the Obama administration, urging Republicans to recover politically by embracing the very Bush conservatism that cost them control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Asked about Cheney's recent comment that he would rather see the future of the Republican Party in the hands of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh than the more centrist Colin L. Powell, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and former Secretary of state, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called it "an illuminating answer."
The former vice president, Gibbs added, keeps floating ideas that "in many ways the last election was about and the last election rejected. They're essentially going forward by looking backward."
"If the vice president believes that's a way of growing and expanding the Republican Party, then we're happy to leave him to those devices."
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Neuman writes for The Times.
Read Top of the Ticket, The Times' blog on national politics with its blend of news, commentary and analysis, at latimes.com/ticket.
