Posted: 07.09.09
We all know that the President has a lot on his plate—some very weighty issues, and many of his priorities we support wholeheartedly—but LGBT equality cannot wait to be the dessert course on even the most carefully planned four or eight-year presidential menu.
This administration prides itself on being “the most open and accessible administration in American history,” and the White House website invites us to make our voices heard. Visiting http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ shows us the great variety of ways to speak up—by phone and TTY/TDD, e-mail, fax, and by old-fashioned snail mail (which takes even longer than just mailing because of print mail security screening). Let’s take President Obama and his administration at their word and do exactly that: make our voices heard.
I promised I would provide concrete steps for keeping the pressure on the President and his administration, and here are five items that need action from this President NOW. You get a gold star and my unending esteem if you do all of them!
Please contact the President and urge him to:
- State now that he is ready to sign the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as soon as Congress passes it. His public support of this bill will help get it passed in Congress. Please also contact your Representative in favor of swift passage of an ENDA that covers both sexual orientation and gender identity, which is long overdue and still needed. ENDA is pending in the House.
- Make good on his promise that passage of the Uniting All Families Act (UAFA) is one of the top priorities for the Department of Justice. UAFA is a proposed bill that would provide same-sex couples with the same immigration benefits as opposite-sex couples. If passed, UAFA would allow U.S. citizens and permanent residents to file a visa petition on behalf of their foreign national same-sex permanent partners, allowing them to immigrate to the U.S. and adjust their status to become lawful permanent residents. The Obama Administration has explicitly stated that it supports passage of this bill. Please also contact your Representative in favor of passage of UAFA.
- Use his presidential “stop-loss” power to halt discharges under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy, and do all in his power to press for passage of the legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that is now pending in Congress.
- Do everything in his power to repeal the nefarious and so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), including supporting congressional repeal and instructing the Department of Justice to stop defending this unconstitutional law which harms families.
- Continue to press for health care reform—and we need to strongly urge President Obama to ensure that any reform that occurs does not discriminate against LGBT people. Politics should not trump the health of the American people.
As we have all seen in recent weeks, there are numerous ways to hold President Obama and his administration accountable for providing the leadership and visionary change that was promised throughout his campaign. In the past few weeks, many of us have done all of these: taking action with our wallets and our voices, in the press, on the web, in our communities.
Let’s keep that up so that our voices swell in unison and cannot be mistaken for anything other than the cry for equality that we deserve.
In solidarity,
