State of the Union: Equality
Written by Tymon Manning Thursday, 28 January 2010 08:13
In Wednesday’s State of the Union (SOTU), President Obama plucked on the heartstrings of millions of gay and lesbian Americans by vowing, once again, to repeal the military’s homophobic "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy. Unsurprisingly, and disparagingly, the majority of Republic Congress members chose to keep their hands apart and their bottoms firmly planted.
Obama has endured a torrent of criticism from national news programs to UCSB’s Palm Center, a leading research institute on sexual minorities in the military, for not following through on this cornerstone of change and equality for the LGBT community. It has been postulated –– screamed from the rooftops by some –– that the president’s apparent inaction had little justification.
Regardless of what little progress has been seen by the public on this issue, the SOTU encourages allies and members of the LGBT community to demand action now, especially in light of Former Joint Chiefs Chairman John Shalikashvili’s Wednesday press release that states simply, “It is time to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
But back to the large group of Congress that expressed their disproval of the president’s faithfulness to his word. Many things can be said about the disparity between the Declaration of Independence’s self-truth “that all men are created equal” and the reality of today; not many of these things would be positive.
Thankfully –– tentatively –– we have a president that will declare his loyalty to minorities in front of a crowd he knows will not fully support him. For that, we owe him credit. Now let us see if a real, tangible end to the DADT policy is in sight.
Read the original article in The Examiner
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