One Liner of the Week Award: Yuval Sheer

So, one of my favorite people in the whole world is Yuval Sheer. Yuval is an old friend of David's and happens to be married to the equally delightful and amazingly talented Admi Marom. Yuval, a brilliant blogger that can be found at www.icechewer.blogspot.com, often has hilarious and insightful quips about life.

A few days ago I wrote a blog called Health Care Companies Can Suck My Dick. Yuval read the blog, and this was his response:

"Brandon, I don't think they will suck your dick since It's a pre-existing condition."

And that, ladies and trannymen, is the One Liner of the Week Award.

Congratulations Yuval on your distinguished honor.

Health Insurance Companies Can Suck My Dick

After spending half a year working at the Center for Media Justice and basically deepening my distaste for the media to the point where saying FOX out loud is enough to make me projectile vomit down the nearest news anchor's open mouth, I have been reduced to scanning the headlines via Yahoo and watching CNN on the treadmill at the gym. I figure I can learn all of what I need to know in terms of distorted media biased issues reporting from one of those sources, in small spurts, without risking nausea or a brain tumor.

Today, though, I was reading an article on Yahoo that talked about the upcoming speech that Obama is planning to a joint session of Congress. First of all, joint sessions of Congress are extremely rare occurrences. The only time they happen regularly is during the State of the Union. Otherwise, they are generally reserved for things like announcing a formal declaration of war, the end of a war, the death of a someone of near God-like stature, or the annual Congress Christmas Party and Intern Rubdown.

In the aforementioned article, it happened to say, punnily, that one of the opposition points of the conservative lobby and GOPers is that they are worried about the health of private health insurance companies.

Excuse me? The HEALTH of private health insurance companies? Did United Healthcare come down with tuberculosis, AIDS, or malaria and I missed it? No? Until then shut the fuck up talking to me about some goddamn entity that exists on paper as having any health needs whatsoever. I have health needs...I need to be healthy; I need to be able to get sick and not have to worry about dying from a heart attack when I get the doctor bill; and I need to not have to decide whether or not I should spend money on electricity or Zoloft.

Health of health insurance companies. Nigga please.

This is the one time in all my life that I have heard Democrats advocating for a full on market system that will force private companies to play by the rules of capitalism by competing with a new and larger player that will force bloated, vampiric, profit mongering private health insurers to stop price gouging, price setting, and profiting from the illness, death, and misery of people and start looking at ways to keep people healthy, reduce costs and provide the most effective treatment for the lowest price. That is how the fuck you stay in business in any other damn industry...hey health care...suck my dick...I don't give a shit about the CEO of United Heath care raking in a salary of $124.8 million (and yes kiddies that is what former United Health Group CEO Bill McGuire made in 2005).

This is also the first time I have ever heard Republicans talk about protecting the market from competition. Excuse me...is Rush Limbaugh back on those pills? Is Trent Lott back to advocating for the return of the Dixiecrats? Is someone up in the Senate Office building smoking crack rock? I find it highly amusing the inviolate free market economy beliefs of Republicans are about as deeply held and inviolable as 13 year old boy at Neverland Ranch.

There is no health care reform without a public option. Period. Without a public option the health care reform becomes a minor tweak of the health care system where teeny changes will be made, that will save money in the short term, will not address the fundamental underlying problems with the system, will result in bloated health care premiums over the long term, and will inevitably lead to a return to the status quo or worse...the collapse of the U.S. economy under the burden of health care costs. States are already seeing this happen, for example, in Minnesota, the majority of every new tax dollar raised goes to offset state health care costs. When all of our money is going to pay for bloated programs that do not work and to premiums and systems that create poor care and massive numbers of underinsured or uninsured, why the hell wouldn't we do anything and everything possible to address the real issue: CREATING A HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND SYSTEM ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, AFFORDABLE TO EVERYONE, and SOLVENT!

Anticipating Obama's speech to Congress, I can feel the spirit of my Big Mama sitting with me. I am about to pull on my house coat, lube up my slippers, chew on some tobacco, and cut a switch. I am going to sit in the gallery in Congress, spitting in to my chaw bucket, and slappin' my switch menacingly on the bench...staring down at Obama and daring his narrow black ass to back off a public option. And the minute some cock-eyed, short dicked, Cadillac insurance carrying Republican member of Congress (or Blue Dog Democrat for that matter) opens his or her mouth to as much as yawn during or after the speech, I am going to lay into their asses like their Mama's should have and scream at the top of my lungs, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You...You Don't Like A Public Option? Then YOU PUT THE 40,000,000 uninsured on YOUR health care plan."

Don't worry GOPers and Blue Dogs...the ass whoopin' you got comin' is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

No it ain't. Bend over and take it bitches. Cuz you have earned this whoopin', and I hope Obama tears your fat asses up.

Health Care for All or Gay Couples' Rights?

This is a repost of an article by Professor Lisa Duggan. I adore Prof. Duggan. I met her in Minneapolis after attending a reading from some of her academic works. Like a total Nerd Superstar, I brought a copy of her book on identity politics for her to sign. This article brings to mind the piece that I wrote back in May called Obama and Gay Marriage or Shut The Hell Up and Let the Man Run the Country. . I absolutely agree with Lisa's viewpoints, and thank you to Joseph DeFillipis for bringing this to my attention.

Health Care for All, or Gay Couples Rights?

August 19, 2009
Posted by bullybloggers in Political Rants and Raves.
http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/health-care-for-all-or-gay-couples-rights/

By Lisa Duggan

The battle royal has now been engaged over the question of whether health care reform will include a public option, with insurance industry flacks and free market ideologues drumming up hysteria and hauling out the loonies to denounce any public option as “socialist” (I wish) and “Nazi” (say what?), while mild mannered liberals defend it for bringing “choice and competition” to the health insurance markets.

It’s a hard war to watch, given that the so-called public option is a pale shadow of single payer–the approach that might provide universal quality care without siphoning buckets of money into executive salaries and profits for the health care robber barons.

But here’s my question for today: Where are the homosexuals? While all the mainstream gay groups and lgbt media and bloggers are rehashing Prop 8 and planning a march for equality in October, honey, Rome is burning right here right now. Much of the furor over marriage rights in the United States is fueled by the desire for access to health care–employment and marriage being the primary routes for insurance coverage. In countries with universal health care, the battle over same sex marriage rights has been much less intense and consequential. Gaining universal access to health care in the U.S. now would meet the widespread need that is now largely expressed in campaigns for partnership recognition. In addition, it could address the crying need for adequate health care for masses of queers who have no wish to marry. In the large balancing scale of benefits–free universal health care, or single payer, would do more for The Gays than marriage equality. So where are the gay groups and activists? Where have they been for the past decade when organizing for single payer might have helped push it onto the national political agenda, before it was so unceremoniously replaced by the “public option”? And where are they now that the public option may be replaced by the even paler, more impotent health co-op plan?

Are gay groups and activists serious about gaining concrete benefits for queer constituencies–homeless kids, transgender sex workers, lgbt populations that are unemployed, elderly, migrant or immigrant, disabled and sick? If so, then it would make a lot more sense to spend $50 million in donor funds pushing for free universal health care, than even thinking about spending that sum to redo the Prop 8 referendum next year. Should we rename the current organizations to peg them as the Gay Couples Rights Movement?

Access to health care is a national emergency, for queers folks more than most. It’s past time for us all to mobilize on the front lines of this political battle–it matters more to more queers than marriage ever will.

Fading Hope or Reality Check?

So, I read today that in an Associate Press-Gfk Poll the general fountain of hope that Obama inspired has turned from a gusher to a sprinkler. His approval rating is still 55%, which is very good, but in many areas the euphoria has worn off and he has seen double digit drops in various confidence ratings in various areas. Though, in my most cases, a majority of Americans still believe that he is doing the right thing in the right way.

Basically, I want to go out and find those folks that truly believed that Obama was somehow going to magically with a wave of his Presidential dick make everything all better, and smack them in the face. Instead of electing a President, they thought they were electing a Fairy Godfather who could kiss the booboos of the Regan/Clinton/Bush years...the trickle down economics...the Bush trillion dollar tax cuts...the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...the decline in American prestige...the global economic meltdown...the health care system...the education gap...the housing market...and the credit market...and make them all better. Whip out a bottle of neosporin and a great big old band-aid and in seven days it will heal right up.

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

Since stepping into the White House, Obama has done something that the last four presidents have not done. He has told the damn truth. He has said...look people...this shit is going to be tough...it is going to be rough...and if you all really want it to be fixed...you are going to have to dig deep into your pockets and your privilege and make it better. Those that have immense wealth that THEY DID NOT EARN...are going to have to pay a share relational to their income to help make things work again in this country (and P.S. no one and I mean no one does any level of labor that is equal in value to a million dollars a year...NO ONE). He said that to fix health care, we are going to have to do something radically different than has ever been done before. He said to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to restore confidence in America, we are going to have to close Guantanamo, end torture, and start valuing civilian lives overseas. He said in order to get the economy back on track, we are going to have to get real hands on. A free market without oversight and without regulation is exactly what got us into the mess we are in...and so it is going to take money to fix a money problem and regulation to fix a regulation problem and not a wishin' and a prayin' and magic bean buyin'.

But time and time and time again it is a Republican and conservative lobby and coalition of regressive wealthy ignoranmi that are hell bent at protecting their own asses and fighting to regain political power at the cost of AMERICAN lives, AMERICAN health, AMERICAN prosperity, and on the backs of the working poor. Ain't not a damn thing changed on the right. So it is time for the left to step the fuck up and be unafraid to confront the bullshit head on.

It is time for the majority in Congress to use the damn nuclear options. Shut out the voices of Deep South Senators that openly engaged in acts of White Supremacy and yet have the nerve to accuse Judge Sotomayor of playing racial politics when all she did was speak the damn truth. It is time, right now, for Obama to be brave. He needs to pull a Lyndon B. Johnson and hold his party's ass to the flame. He needs to make it clear to any Blue Dog Democrat that breaks ranks that he will, without question, use his position and popularity on behalf of a primary challenger to replace their fucked up asses come the mid-term elections next year. It is TIME that those that believed there was an easy solution to decades of excess, waste, unchecked capitalism, and unregulated corporate greed and community rape to wake the fuck up and become part of the solution instead sucking on the rotted tit of media spawned regressive hype and fear mongering by the GOP and its minority conservative core in America.

Obama will fail if we haven't matured enough as a nation to realize that the people out of power want to get back into power no matter the cost even if the cost is YOUR health insurance, the life of YOUR child sent to the desert or the mountains to die, YOUR job because deregulation and the maiming of unions has led to massive outsourcing, and your home because a lack of oversight allowed mega banks to gobble up bad assets knowingly and use outright deception to make a quick buck on your back.

Wake the hell up America. Obama is NOT our hope. WE are our HOPE, and if we HOPE to not slide back down the Regan-Clinton-Bush I and II road...then it is high time that we step up, let Obama know we are here and ready to do the work, make the sacrifice, and BACK HIM THE HELL UP, so he can get our nation and its people...meaning ALL OF ITS PEOPLE FROM THE HOMELESS TO THE KARDASHIANS back on its feet.

Faith without works and hope without courage are empty words and empty minds fill able by those willing to lay you down to build their own foundation.

Health Care is a Human Right: FUCK RON PAUL!

I was thumbing through Yahoo's news today, as I am wont to do, when I came across some bullshit. Ron Paul, erstwhile Presidential candidate, and Libertarian tardo declared, with a straight face, and a net worth of between $2 million and $7 million dollars that health care is not a human right.

As a matter of fact, read his pure tardations for yourself or click here to listen to him spout his idiocy in an interview:

As far as the Texas Congressman is concerned, health care is not a right. "I don't have a right to medical care," he emphatically states. In his view, the constitution only guarantees citizens "life, liberty and (the right to) keep the fruits of my labor."

The Texas Congressman, of course, is Ron Paul. He is the type of bassackwards anal wart in power that makes my blood boil. But, thankfully, it is not only common sense, and my belief in the innate value of human life, that states that health care is a human right...so does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the guiding document of the United Nations, of which, nominally, the U.S. is a member. The Declaration states: that every human being has the right to health, including health care.

Pardon me if I go ahead and get behind a guiding document acknowledged as the basis for global human rights doctrine and signed on to by every legitimate nation on the planet Earth versus the words of a hyper individualist college educated and medical school trained white man from the South, which basically signs him up for every form of social and political privilege and advantage available to a human being. He doesn't have to worry about little issues like human rights because his entire exists demands recognition of his right to determine what is or is not reality or just. I repeat: FUCK U.S CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL OF TEXAS. YOU FUCKING OVER PRIVILEGED JACKTARD ROTTED INVERTED SCROTUM HAIR.

Some of you may have noticed that my blogs, lately, have become a tad bit more angry than usual. I believe there is a direct relationship between an ending patience with certain people in my daily life, which, relationally, uses up any excess patience I have for assholes that have the power to vote yea or nay on my ability to life a full and healthy life. And, frankly, I don't give a damn if it costs 28 quadraseptabastanktrazillionplex dollars to ensure that every single person in this country has the same access to quality health care as the 535 members of the United States Congress that enjoy the BEST POSSIBLE HEALTH CARE PLAN ON THE PLANET EARTH. If a Senator sneezes they can pretty much get the Chief of Surgery to hold a tissue and said God Bless you, without paying a single co-pay, if it tickles their fancy or gets them hard. Hell they can get the surgeon general to be their personal fluffer if Viagra doesn't work.

Ron Paul, it must be hard to stand on top of a mountain of spaghetti, sucking down meatballs, all the while looking down from the mountaintop to the starving masses and declare, proudly, that they don't have a right to eat. You know what happens in that situation Mr. Paul? The motherfucking masses eat the damn mountain from underneath you and then eat your grizzly boney old ass as an after dinner snack.

Health care is a human right. It is a fundamental goddamn human right, and it is not only a shame but unconscionable that the richest nation in the history of the planet should have the WORST health care and the WORST infant mortality rate and the WORST life expectancy of any industrialized nation...hell of most nations. PERIOD.

I Want to Punch Perez Hilton In The Face Too!

Every day you have to take the good with the ugly. Sometimes there is a dash of the down right ridiculous in the mix that makes you step back, have a shot of something to blind your sperm, and start again.

Today was one of those days. I am going to alternate the good, the ugly, and the ridiculous.

Let's start with the good.

This afternoon I was communicating with an acquaintance of mine, Sñr. Noris Chavarria, when he told me that he had just been looking at my blog. Now, I just met Noris week before last at the Sol Awards Gala at the Battery Park Cafe. I was impressed that he had come across my blog, so I asked him where he had encountered it. He told me that he had come across it on another blog, MiApogeo.com. Curious, I tuned my browser to MiApogeo.com, which is an amazing pan-Latino news source on the web, only to find a listing of the top seven LGBT Latin@ bloggers to watch. I was listed as #2 right after my friend and compay Andrés Duque. I almost shit myself in surprise. I was listed with other blogosphere luminaries as Charlie Vázquez of Spittles the Clown fame, and Gloria Nieto, who I met when I was barely 21 years old and had fallen in dire love with Lonnie Tapia, one of Gloria's protégés in New Mexico.

That was definitely a highlight of the day. But, hand in hand with a taste of glory comes a little reality to keep you grounded.

This weekend past, I received my benefits package from Bard College. Now, one of my regular bitching moments is about David and the fact that he hasn't had health care since leeching was a popular practice. In order to add David to my health care plan,we had to sign a statement assuring Blue Cross Blue Shield that we are, indeed, domestic partners. It was necessary for us to take said form to a notary public and sign it in front of said notary. We can't get married but we have to jump through hoops and rope cattle to get a decent dental plan. Anywho, during our first trip to Chase this morning to do our due diligence, I had forgotten my ID, and so it was a no go. Mission aborted. Fall back, regroup and plan a new route of attack.

Basically, we decided to come back after nap time.

So, after David had lapsed into unconsciousness after a particularly grueling hell day at the gym, we ventured back to Chase. I had my ID, we signed the form, said “I do,” and badda bing badda boom...we were an official couple in the eyes of God and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. Amen.

David was so tickled that he loosened his death grip on the debit card and suggested we amplify my summer wardrobe beyond the two pair of shorts I had that I purchased two summers ago. We swung through Daffy's, which owes me new retinas from the assault on my eyes from the ultraviolet and ultra ugly clothing they had on the rack. We decided to try our luck at Old Slavy, excuse me, Old Navy instead. Now, we had carried our precious declaration of domestic partnership form in a manila envelope, which also held extra copies of a document I had created for a work meeting last evening. I was holding the envelope, wondering why I was carrying around said extra documents, when I suggested to David that we just chuck the thing. He said that he would carry it as he didn't want to waste paper. I poo-pooed him and dropped the envelope in a trash receptacle at the NQRW stop at 57th and 7th.

We got to 14th Street and Union Square when we realized that our notarized love declaration was inside the abandoned envelope.

Talk about STOOOOOPID.

We hopped the train, retrieved the document, and decided that God didn't want me to have new shorts if he was willing to let me do something as dumbass as all that business.

We headed home, and I finished up my work day. It was then that I was told the second best news of the day:

This weekend, Perez Hilton was punched dead in his eye by Will.I.Am and his bodyguard for talking smack about the latest Black Eyed Peas CD.

From deep inside me welled up a great feeling of diabolical joy....from my toes to my cockles to my cock, I was rigid with delight. I was immediately filled with a joyous jealousy...joyous that he had gotten his fat ass ugly bitchtastic face smacked...jealous because I wanted to smack the hell out of him too.

A girl can dream. But...the joy could only last for a short time.

My best friend and I have been like two ships passing in the night or two trains on a Metro rail line in DC. I haven't decided which one yet.

I had plans tonight to meet RJ at five til seven at Sokka Gokkai International in the village for gongyo (chanting). RJ and I have been trying to see each other, without success, for several weeks now. RJ and Noel have been dealing with some difficult family stuff lately, so I left home early, stopped at the Trader Joe's Wine Shop and picked up a gift bottle of wine for RJ. I arrived at SGI five minutes earlier than I was expected. 6:55 came and went. At 6:57 I sent RJ a text asking him where he was. At 7:05 I went upstairs, late, for the service. I sat in the back, so I could scan the crowd and keep an eye on the door in case he came in. The service ended, and I left. I sent RJ a text saying that I hoped he was OK, but I was on my way home.

He finally responded, once I was on the train, saying that he had been at gongyo. I told him that I had waited for 15 minutes for him before going in, and he let me know that he had gone in early and had been chanting. DOH! I didn't see him inside, and we missed each other...again. I am going to go and sit outside of his damn house and wait for him to come out because, at this point, this is ridiculous.

Anywho. I came home, made a delectable din din, poured a glass of wine, and wrote this blog.

I still want to punch Perez Hilton in the face.

PS I forgot to mention that there was a hot Latino Daddy at the gym today that had an ass I would have happily pounded so hard he would have had to order a new assring when I was finished with him...that is until, in the locker room, I saw him checking out David's ass...and when he saw me see him checking out David's most definitely eye candy worthy ass...Mr. Hot Latin Daddy lost his damn mind and rolled his eyes at me. Cabron puto hijo de una maldita chingada!

I would still fuck him, but I would have to beat his ass afterwards. Some gays have no damn common sense.

Breaking News: PTSD Tragedy in Iraq

I have written in the past about my personal struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I never fought in a war, lived in a town that was being shelled by Israel, or sat in a cafe when a suicide bomber blew out the front door. I grew up from a very young age (roughly 3 or 4) until age 13 with a very verbally and mentally abusive home environment. Though the circumstances that created the mental illness in me called PTSD are wildly different than the causes of PTSD in refugees and soldiers returning from war...the result is much the same: anxiety, depression, programmed reactions, hyperactive fight or flight instincts, and a host of secondary mental illness (that can include addiction and any number of other mental health coping mechanisms). .

Like many people who suffer from PTSD, I was initially misdiagnosed, put on the wrong pills, and continued suffering from, what was then, an undiagnosed affliction. Thankfully, five years ago, I was diagnosed correctly, given the right medicine (don't be surprised when one of my kids has the middle name Zoloft), and found a life where PTSD plays a very very very minor roll.

I wish the same could be said for the poor, tragic man that opened fire in a Camp Liberty stress clinic today and killed five of his comrades in arms.

While at the gym today, I was watching CNN, and I heard the breaking news that a solider had killed five and wounded several others. The soldier was most likely seeking help from the stress clinic. Unfortunately, help did not arrive in time. These are the stories of war that we hear too little about...the impact on the soldiers...the way that the hearts and minds of thousands and thousands are ripped apart by what they are forced to see, feel, and do.

Tomorrow, there will be people who are calling for this soldier's head. There will be some few that will advocate that he receive help. Others will simply boil it down to him pulling a trigger and the rest is filler.

I have a sister I love with all my heart and a brother who makes me so very proud.
This sister has served three tours of duty in Iraq, and this brother has served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. My little brother, who is just 21 years old, has seen and done things in this life that I can not imagine. For a time, every blog entry on his Myspace page was dedicated to a friend that had been killed in the war. My sister, who enlisted before the war started in order to pay for college, is a brilliant and beautiful woman who once wrote to me telling me about a bomb exploding near where she was sleeping. She was, at the time, also about 21.

When the story broke on CNN today, I didn't see a nameless/faceless soldier. I saw Shannon. I saw Julius. I saw my cousin Vincent. I saw my ex-boyfriend and friend Rada. I saw people that I know and love and who, except for by the grace of God, were not the solider that opened fire today. But they could have been. How easily they could have been.

Right now, I am torn between tears and ridiculous anger. George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals. They fabricated a cause for war and have sent hundreds of thousands into battle. They have the blood of tens of thousands on their hands. They have the weight of hundreds of thousands of wounded and damaged bodies and souls and minds on their hands. And though the justice of the land seems to be unable to reach either of them, the justice of God is waiting, and I can only pray that he shows them some of the mercy that they refused to show the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the young men and women that they sent face their deaths, fears, and nightmares.

It is Bush's fault that this young man walked into a clinic today and pulled the trigger. The solider who opened fire should be taken into care not custody. He should be give the time, space, and quiet to heal and to face the crushing guilt that will come down on him when the full realization of what he has done hits him. He has created a jail cell around his heart and mind as a way to survive what he has already survived. He does not deserve a jail cell around his body.

It should be Dick Cheney and George W. Bush that face courts martial, and George W. Bush, the man who surpervised the most executions of any governor in modern history (and perhaps in the history of the United States) should reap what he has sown. God can be merciful, today, I can not.

My heart and sympathy goes out to the families of those slain today. The blood of your children was shed today, and it never needed to happen. It is time that this nation wake up and understand that mental illness is REAL; it is as real as a broken arm or cancer or any other physical ailment. It is time that we pass health care reform that forces parity between mental illness and phyiscal illness. It is time that we END THIS SENSELESS war. How many more soliders, civilians, militants, HUMAN BEINGS have to die before it ends? How much blood must the beast have before it is sated? How much blood has to be spilled before we, the people of the United States, demand an end. The blood is on our hands as well, and it will take a generation to wash it away.

(Here is a link to an article posted on yahoo regarding today's events in Baghdad)

Obama and Gay Marriage or Shut the Hell Up and Let the Man Run the Country

So, I have seen numerous articles lately yellin' and screamin' and lambastin' Obama for not speaking out on the subject of gay marriage. Though President Obama has made his support for civil rights clear, and though he has made mention in the past that he supports civil unions, and though every indicator shows that if the Democrats in Congress got their thumbs out of their asses and passed a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act he would sign it, still, certain, largely privileged white middle class gays, seem to think that Obama should stop his work on the economy, health care, two wars, and poverty in order to take up arms on the gay marriage front. Get a damn life people.

Obama is doing EXACTLY the right thing by NOT raising the queer marriage issue back into the national spotlight. The Republicans used, quite effectively, the spectre of gays getting married as a successful wedge issue for...well, almost fifteen years. Clinton, bowing to pressure from the right, signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law instantly catapulting the marriage issue onto the national stage. Marriage, in general, is a state's rights issue. Obama, who, I will remind everyone, was a constitutional law professor, is being extremely savvy right now. Since he has taken office three states, and a fourth one soon, have instituted the right to marry for same sex couples. Our constitution has a little itty bitty clause in Section Four part II called the Full Faith and Credit Clause, which reads:

Full faith and credit ought to be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings, of every other state; and the legislature shall, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings, shall be proved, and the effect which judgments, obtained in one state, shall have in another.

That means if you get married in Vermont then Minnesota must recognize that legal union. Since the U.S. Constitution requires full faith and credit, and since the U.S. constitution supercedes state constitutions, it doesn't matter if Minnesota has a constitutional amendment banning same sex unions (it doesn't actually)...once a nice quiet lesbian couple in New Hampshire decides to move to Utah...and is denied recognition of their marriage...they appeal..until they get to the highest courtin the land, and .a ruling by the Supreme Court will quickly annihilate those pesky state constitutional bans on same sex marriage. Sort of like Lawrence versus Texas. Remember that one people? With a quick little vote of the Supreme Court, anti-sodomy laws were invalidated across the country (and, ps, it was this court...with this composition...that struck down the anti-sodomy laws...all indicators are that Obama will be selecting three new justices sometime in the next few years...shift of balance of power...duh).

Of course, raising the issue of same sex marriage to the federal level again will rally the Republican base, create an INSTANT wedge issue between certain elements of people of color communities and the Democratic Party (which, of course, will split Obama's base), and it will raise again the spectre of a U.S. Constitutional ban on same sex marriage. It has been made clear that such a ban will never pass, but siphoning off precious political capital right now to fight off a re-energized Republican base and a split Democrat base on this issue will make it nigh on impossible for Obama to push the Republicans out of the way on the health care reforms we need, social security, social safety network issues, immigration and the border, and a whole host of other social justice issues that DESERVE and WARRANT immediate attention.

Obama knows that it is only a matter of time before a critical mass of U.S. states have approved queer marriage, and that, by such approval, will trigger a series of judicial events that will result in the extension of marriage rights to all queer folks in every state. At that point, the Defense of Marriage Act, if it has not been repealed, will be low hanging fruit and easily plucked off. How the hell would members of Congress justify “protecting” federal marriage rights when the Supreme Court has closed the case on the states rights side of the issue.

I am so damn frustrated with these half baked queer pundits that can't see past the ends of their own wedding rings to see the big picture. Obama is NOT standing in the way of queer marriage. He is keeping his party in check around the issue by NOT creating a situation where he has to worry about legislators turning their attention away from the issues that we NEED to address. It would be foolish, stupid, and untimely for Obama to stop what he is doing to focus on marriage when the fantastic efforts of local and state organizers are doing the work, swiftly, and with much success.

The road isn't easy towards justice, and, unfortuantely, in the system under which we labor there are times when STRATEGY dictates form (which it ALWAYS should). Folks that are running around pissed off because Obama hasn't hosted a mass queer wedding in the Rose Garden are demanding form without any strategy or strategic thought behind it.

Let's be clear: Obama is not perfect, but he is working on the bigger picture...which, right now, means getting the almost 10% of people in this country that are unemployed back to work. That means ending two wars that are draining tens of billions of dollars a month out of our economy and killing innocent soliders and innocent Iraqis and Afghanis. That means changing our health care system so that it makes sense and the 40 million uninsured in this nation have access to health care. THOSE are the issues that Obama should be focused on. THOSE are the issues that he is focused on. And the largely white gay men that are attempting to UNSTRATEGICALLY force his hand are going to do nothing but lay the groundwork for a base splitting circus that will, in the long term, hurt the queer movement and result in a retardation of the amazing work around marriage equality that has already been done.

Back off.