This post is correct.
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President Obama is the reason why I am alive today, I was able to come out of the closet and transition safely.
@dianea yo it's cool that you are here
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This post is correct. Also…those people Katelyn's talking about are sweeping under the rug what actually happened:
Obama supported gay marriage in the mid-90S.
When that became an electoral liability in larger races, he took the position of supporting same-sex civil unions instead of same-sex marriage (which would still have been a big win in 2008 if legalized nationally, and was still a risky position to take).
Then he switched back to favoring gay marriage in a hot second as soon as it seemed like public support was behind it and his opposition might become a barrier.
• • •
Say what you will about him being deceptive or opportunistic or incrementalist or scheming or you just hate Obama or whatever, fine, I don't really care. Katelyn’s point is the important one: Obama consistently staked out positions in the direction of •increased• civil rights for queer folks, and moved his position to keep pushing in that direction relative to whatever the political conditions were.
I would be perfectly frigging delighted if Democrats now would consistently do the same for trans folks. Come on, y’all.
P.S. Replies of the form “you mentioned Obama so here’s some other thing I don’t like about him” are tiresome and will be an instant mute.
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3gxyh4elwykcdnpci7gmqrvh/post/3mvg7jpxjq22i
@inthehands I mean like... He's a piece of shit and a war criminal, but at least he never regressed queer rights like a lot of politicians are now. That I can respect even if I don't respect him(which I don't)
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President Obama is the reason why I am alive today, I was able to come out of the closet and transition safely.
@dianea
And that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.There are people close to me who also owe their health and what freedom they have in choosing their life’s path to the ACA.
My unpopular-among-leftists take is that I think the man did just about as well with the US presidency as anyone could have. What remains broken after his time in office isn’t a mark of his personal faults so much as a testament to just how limited electoral politics really are as a way of repairing the world.
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@msbellows
I think that’s right, and the crime was letting it stand for so long — and now letting the country backslide from what progress it represented. I have similar feelings about the ACA.The hostility to “incrementalism” is well earned inasmuch as watering things down out of conflict aversion is no path to civil rights. But sometimes that hostility turns into “never take the win.”
@inthehands @msbellows But … the reason we’re worried about backsliding from DADT and the ACA is that incrementalism often never turns into “capitalize on the win and push for more”. (If there’s pushing for more, it’s usually the people who were criticizing the incrementalism who do the pushing, and rarely the pragmatic incrementalists.)
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@inthehands @msbellows But … the reason we’re worried about backsliding from DADT and the ACA is that incrementalism often never turns into “capitalize on the win and push for more”. (If there’s pushing for more, it’s usually the people who were criticizing the incrementalism who do the pushing, and rarely the pragmatic incrementalists.)
I am going to have to spend my whole life arguing against this shit take, aren't I?
Taking the win when it was the biggest win on the table •absolutely• can lead to further progress. That's what happened with queer rights, with civil rights, with women's rights…every one of these histories is a history of people seizing whatever was on the table.
The reason we’re worried about backsliding and fascism is that a real actual vast right-wing conspiracy with billions of dollars behind it has spent decades making incremental gains too, while carefully laying the large-scale groundwork for the situation we’re in now.
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@inthehands I agree, and it's very similar to how Bill Clinton treated gay military members. Everyone hates Don't Ask Don't Tell, and blames Clinton for implementing it, but they forget that before #DADT the military was allowed to proactively investigate servicemembers' sexuality, spy on them, grill their friends, etc. DADT was a step *forward* for gay rights and exactly the right thing to do at the time.
@msbellows @inthehands For those of us who were young at time of Clinton's presidency and lacked the historical context of DADT, I very much enjoyed For All Mankind's alternate history basically having the president come to the same conclusion. I don't want to say any spoilers, but the (non-Clinton) president wants to legalize gay marriage, but instead opts for DADT in order to stop investigations into military members.
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I am going to have to spend my whole life arguing against this shit take, aren't I?
Taking the win when it was the biggest win on the table •absolutely• can lead to further progress. That's what happened with queer rights, with civil rights, with women's rights…every one of these histories is a history of people seizing whatever was on the table.
The reason we’re worried about backsliding and fascism is that a real actual vast right-wing conspiracy with billions of dollars behind it has spent decades making incremental gains too, while carefully laying the large-scale groundwork for the situation we’re in now.
Since you mention DADT, it’s worth making it a case study.
We aren’t worried about backsliding from DADT because it ended in 2011. Obama replaced it with a policy of “it’s fine to for openly gay people to serve in the military, period” because by that time there were so many serving it was clear that it wasn’t actually a problem. DADT, an awful, discriminatory policy, •totally• served as a necessary and effective stepping stone to a much better outcome.
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Since you mention DADT, it’s worth making it a case study.
We aren’t worried about backsliding from DADT because it ended in 2011. Obama replaced it with a policy of “it’s fine to for openly gay people to serve in the military, period” because by that time there were so many serving it was clear that it wasn’t actually a problem. DADT, an awful, discriminatory policy, •totally• served as a necessary and effective stepping stone to a much better outcome.
@inthehands @joXn Exactly what I wanted to say. The incrementalism of DADT led directly to the acceptance of gay servicemembers. The enemy isn't the center-left; we can push them further left. The enemy is the centrists and the right.
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This post is correct. Also…those people Katelyn's talking about are sweeping under the rug what actually happened:
Obama supported gay marriage in the mid-90S.
When that became an electoral liability in larger races, he took the position of supporting same-sex civil unions instead of same-sex marriage (which would still have been a big win in 2008 if legalized nationally, and was still a risky position to take).
Then he switched back to favoring gay marriage in a hot second as soon as it seemed like public support was behind it and his opposition might become a barrier.
• • •
Say what you will about him being deceptive or opportunistic or incrementalist or scheming or you just hate Obama or whatever, fine, I don't really care. Katelyn’s point is the important one: Obama consistently staked out positions in the direction of •increased• civil rights for queer folks, and moved his position to keep pushing in that direction relative to whatever the political conditions were.
I would be perfectly frigging delighted if Democrats now would consistently do the same for trans folks. Come on, y’all.
P.S. Replies of the form “you mentioned Obama so here’s some other thing I don’t like about him” are tiresome and will be an instant mute.
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3gxyh4elwykcdnpci7gmqrvh/post/3mvg7jpxjq22i
@inthehands it won him votes, too! I think many have forgotten how the Hillary/Obama race played out in 2008, but a big part of what led him to winning the nomination (and presidency) was the fact he staked out clear political positions and stood by them. It's a shame to me that more democrats haven't learned from that lesson.
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Since you mention DADT, it’s worth making it a case study.
We aren’t worried about backsliding from DADT because it ended in 2011. Obama replaced it with a policy of “it’s fine to for openly gay people to serve in the military, period” because by that time there were so many serving it was clear that it wasn’t actually a problem. DADT, an awful, discriminatory policy, •totally• served as a necessary and effective stepping stone to a much better outcome.
In 79, in our platoon, we had one guy we knew was gay, then another guy entered the unit. We sat him down, told him how things worked, stay out of the gay bar in town, go up to the next big town.
And kinda stay on the down low, please.
There were G+L people in the DIVARTY, everyone knew, nobody said a thing. Worked beautifully the whole time I was in.
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