Movements on DOMA

By Dan Kirk on 06/12/2009 @ 01:26 PM

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It’s amazing how busy life can get at times, and the last few weeks have been really, really busy for me. My Domestic Partner (since we were foolish enough not to get married before Prop 8 passed) is going through a Bone Marrow Transplant at Stanford University. This is the last step of the process to deal with his Mantle Cell Lymphoma. Right now he’s getting the high-dose chemotherapy that will kill his immune system right before they transplant healthy stem cells in to replace them.

After the transplant, we have to live in the Stanford area for 28 days. It’s over two hours from our home in Sacramento, and travelling back and forth every day for his appointments after the transplant would be impossible (and very dangerous for his health). Fortunately for us we are staying in a house of a friend of a friend for free. Otherwise we’d be out thousands of dollars.

Robert’s been on state disability since last September. That runs out this September, and in preparation he filed for federal SSDI. The SSDI won’t kick in until a year after the initial disability, which is fine because we have the state coverage. The problem came in when he had to turn in the paperwork.

He couldn’t go.

First off, even if he’d felt really, really good that day, I may not have let him go. There’s a busy waiting room there, filled with lots of people, and thus lots of germs. The biggest risk to the transplant process is his getting sick before the transplant starts, so of course we were being really protective. As it was, he was feeling awful the day we had to turn it in, and so I went for him.

Like thousands of other gay couples across the nation, I got to experience the discrimination of DOMA first hand. Social Security doesn’t have a problem with a spouse coming in and filing the paperwork as well as answering the questions they have to ask. When you’re ‘just a friend’ though, they have issues.

Eventually they did take the paperwork, but I was listed on their documentation not as his ‘spouse’ but as his ‘friend’. They wouldn’t answer any questions I had because I wasn’t legally related to him (in the eyes of the federal law). All I could do was drop them off as if I was some messenger hired to do the task.

Sure, the task at hand, turning in the paperwork got done, but I think every gay person can understand the bitterness the whole experience left in my throat. Because of this 1996 law, written before even Domestic Partnerships or Civil Unions were on the scene at a statewide level, much less full marriage equality, I’m reduced to being only a friend to the most important person in my life.

That exact feeling is why I’ve worked with Yes on Gay Marriage to repeal DOMA. During the last general election, I ended up supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama in big part because of his stance on repealing not only Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but DOMA as well. The biggest gaping whole in his Presidency so far, has been not only his lack of progress in the other direction, but his steadfast support of both those laws.

In the last few weeks, gay and lesbian service members felt the knife twisting in their backs as the Obama administration successfully supported the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in federal court. Trying to play both sides of the coin, they did their best not to say the policy was right, but they still defended the policy and got the court to agree. While hundreds of gay and lesbian people are being discharged from the military just because of their sexual orientation, Obama promises to end the policy, but his only steps to do just that have been to form a ‘study’ of the issue.

Even the people he has doing the study are the people that believe Don’t Ask Don’t Tell should remain in place. If you’re going to have a study on how to implement it, shouldn’t the people doing the study support what they are supposed to do? Instead, we have people who don’t like gay people and don’t want us in the military ‘studying’ how to implement a repeal of a policy they don’t repealed.

Which leads to the question: Is this what President Obama is doing with DOMA?

While running for the US Senate in 2004, Barack Obama wrote a wonderful op-ed piece in which he related his support for the LGBT community. He had a lot of good things to say in that piece including unequivocal opposition to DOMA. His language was strong, and everything the LGBT community could wish for in a candidate (not only for Senate but for the office of President). His closing statement is, in part, fairly ironic.

“Despite my own feelings about an abhorrent law, the realities of modern politics persist. While the repeal of DOMA is essential, the unfortunate truth is that it is unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress. …”

Four years after he wrote that piece, Washington is a changed place. Mr. Bush is no longer President, and the Republicans no longer control both chambers of Congress. Yet the repeal of DOMA is no closer than it was when the piece was written. Sure, the writer is now President, but instead of finding the repeal of DOMA to be ‘essential’, it is something we in the LGBT community should ‘wait’ and ‘be patient’.

That’s a far cry from ‘essential’.

This last week, as reported in the Huffington Post, Barack Obama’s administration defended the DOMA policy in court. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/obama-defends-antigay-def_n_214764.html ) Yes, the man who called DOMA ‘abhorrent’ has no apparent problem with defending it in court and saying that “Under the law, the answer must be no” (in reference to the motion calling for DOMA to be ruled unconstitutional based on the ‘full faith and credit’ clause of the constitution.

Why would a man who has said he is supportive of repealing DOMA, who has called it ‘abhorrent’ go this far to support the policy? Part of it might be that he is doing his job, fulfilling the oath he gave to support and defend the Constitution, etc. Of course, DOMA isn’t in the Constitution, and if he believes the law is wrong, he should at least be making full efforts to change that law. Instead, he’s doing all he can to support it while putting out no effort to change it.

Why?

I think this might be at least part of the answer: http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/01/massive-opposition-to-obama-doma-repeal/

“In less than 24 hours, thousands of people responded, according to NOM. The organization reported that so many e-mails were sent to Pelosi that her website started rejecting e-mails sent by traditional marriage advocates.”

Maybe part of the reason is us. Our opponents can get supporters to take five minutes out of their lives to send an email, write a letter, or make a phone call. Meanwhile, we on this side let ourselves get caught up in our daily lives and don’t spend those five minutes making sure the leaders in Washington know our position. Also, it’s not enough that they just hear from us once, but any time DOMA comes up as an issue.

This came as a reminder to me that it had been a while since I took an hour to write a blog entry, and that I needed to do better. Having a loved one going through a Bone Marrow Transplant wasn’t really an excuse. There are moments in the day when I can take five minutes to write the White House and tell them that I am disappointed they filed a motion to uphold DOMA in that court case. I could take even fewer minutes to call Nancy Pelosi’s office and ask why they haven’t moved on the repeal of DOMA.

We can’t take this issue for granted. If the voices our leaders here tell them to not touch DOMA, they won’t touch DOMA. Sure, we can have lobbyists go to Washington and tell them something different, but unless those lobbyists are backed up by the voices of every day people like you, they are wasting their breath.

And we’ll still be just a ‘friend’ in the eyes of the federal government.

Dan Kirk has been active in the LGBT rights movement for sixteen years, starting with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” debates in the early 90s. Helping to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act has become one of his highest priorities.